U.S. History

Immigration to a Nation of Immigrants

Colonial Period (1600s)• Beginning in 1607:English via Virginia Company• Purpose: Trade • 1620: British (Puritans/Pilgrims) for Religious Freedom• By 1670: Africans via Slave Trade• French in Great Lakes and Canada• 1609: Dutch in Hudson River Valley

Colonial Period: 1700s• Quakers and other immigrants persecuted• First Great Awakening• By outbreak of revolution, predominant ethnic groups: -

German (Middle and Chesapeake Colonies) –Dutch (Middle Colonies) -African (Chesapeake, South)–Scots-Irish (Backcountry: NY, NH, SC, NC, VA,PA)

Revolution and Early Republic• Migration to new regions (Core cultures transplanted-New

England and slave hierarchy)• Conflict over Western Expansion• War of 1812 and Commercial Rights (West/South v. North

East)

Industrialization & Immigration• Internal slave trade moves slavery west• Forced migration of Native Americans• 1840s Nativism arises from German and Irish immigrants• Immigrants replace native-born women in factories

Gilded Age Immigration• East & West• Betw. Civil War and

WWI- 25 million immigrants

• Some skilled• Many unskilled• Niches- ex: German

brewers

• Persecution:• European Jews• Poor• Faced religious

persecution

• Legal Persecution: 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act

Dennis Kearney: California Workingman’s Party• 1877• To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has

sent to China—the greatest and oldest despotism in the world—for a cheap working slave. It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free American in the Labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white Labor.

• These cheap slaves fill every place. Their dress is scant and cheap. Their food is rice from China. They hedge twenty in a room, ten by ten. They are wipped curs, abject in docility, mean, contemptible and obedient in all things. They have no wives, children or dependents.

1920s Isolationism• Post World War I Nativism• ¼ of U.S. population in 1920 were foreign born• “Moral Decline” of 1920s seen as caused by immigrants• 1924 Quota Act: annual immigration from any given country

could not exceed 2% of that nationality’s percentage of the U.S. population as it stood in 1890.

• Fear of Catholic influence• KKK and Protestant anti-immigrant sentiment

What are the implications of this photograph?

World War II• Bracero Program• Initiated btween U.S.

gov and Mexican gov during WWII to import thousands of temporary workers.

• 1962 UFW founded• Ended 1964• Many believe was the

source of exploitation

Post Vietnam War• Operation Baby Lift

• Cambodian Refugees

Distinguish between Immigration and Migration..• First Great Migration• 1930s Dust Bowl

Migration• Second Great

Migration• Rust Belt to Sun Belt

World War I Migration

Jacob Lawrence