aim: were the hopes of immigrants realized in the united states?
TRANSCRIPT
Aim: Were the hopes of Immigrants realized in the United States?
• Do Now: The Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by the people of France in 1886. Most likely donated to honor the union victory in the Civil War and the end of slavery, the statue depicts Liberatas, the Roman goddess of freedom, with a tablet labeled with the date July 4, 1776, a torch, and a series of broken chains around her ankles. Inside, a poem by Emma Lazarus, the child of Jewish immigrants, is engraved on a bronze plaque:
The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus, 1883"Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed tome,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
What do you think the Statue of Liberty will come to symbolize for new immigrants arriving in the United States?
The New Immigrants
• Prior to the Gilded Age, most immigrants to the United States had been Protestant Europeans, with many of them being relatively wealthy
The New Immigrants
• For various reasons, extremely large groups of new Immigrants began emigrating to the United States
• These immigrants were aided by new technologies, such as the Steamship
• In this time period, there were virtually no limits on immigration
European Immigrants
• Primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe
European Immigrants
• Many were Catholic or Jewish
• Came for better economic and political opportunity, often to flee dysfunction at home
European Immigrants
• Were extremely poor• Most arrived through
Ellis Island in New York• Both groups would tend
to settle in communities of the same ethnicity
• Many settled in Eastern cities
Asian Immigrants
• Mostly from China and Japan
• Came for economic opportunity or to flee poverty
• Many paid for their passage with indentured servitude-style work agreements
Asian Immigrants
• Most arrived through Angel Island in San Francisco
• Most would settle on the West Coast, the Chinese playing a vital role in constructing the Trans-Continental Railroad
• Both groups would tend to settle in communities of the same ethnicity
• Which group do you think will most easily adjust to life in the United States? Why?
Nativism
• Nativist sentiment would see a resurgence thanks to these new groups.
• Many Americans feared new immigrants would work for less, driving down wages
Nativism
• Eugenics: Evolution from Social Darwinist beliefs, many Americans saw these new immigrants as inferior and as a threat to the “blood” of superior European descendants
Nativism
• Groups such as the Immigration Restriction League form to restrict Immigration
• Nativist groups would actively discriminate against immigrants through laws barring employment and through violence, including lynchings
“Speech to the Workingmen of San Francisco”, 1885
What are the complaints being levied against Chinese immigrants?
“The Biography of a Chinaman”, Lee Chew, 1903
According to Chew, why are Chinese facing discrimination?
Anti-Asian Immigration Policies
Chinese Exclusion Act• Passed in 1886• Nativist response to fears
of labor competition from the Chinese
• Banned all Chinese immigration to the United States, the first and most extreme restriction to be placed on a group
The Gentleman’s Agreement
• Following the annexation of Hawaii and the Chinese Exclusion Act, many Japanese began to emigrate to the West Coast
• Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to the U.S., but many Japanese travelled to the U.S. from Canada and Mexico causing a surge in anti-Japanese sentiment
• San Francisco schools began to segregate Japanese children, causing rising tension between the U.S. and Japan
• 1907- Teddy Roosevelt strikes an informal deal: Japan would recognize the U.S.’s right to deport or refuse all Japanese immigration if San Francisco ended its policies
Immigration Act of 1917
• Institutes literacy test requirements for immigrants
• Bars groups such as “homosexuals, idiots, criminals, insane persons, alcoholics, polygamists”
• Bars any immigration from the “Asiatic Barred Zone” (most of Southern Asia and the Middle East)
Immigration Act of 1924• Establishes a quota system
for all new immigrants• The number of immigrants
from a country would be limited to 2% of the current number of people from that country currently living in the United States
• Resulted in massive drops of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
• Although this wave of immigrants would face significant trouble adapting to life in the United States, they will eventually become important to American life, and will forever change the culture and life in American cities and towns
