19th and 20th Century US Immigration PDF

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the population of America exploded as thousands of people moved there to try to create a better life for themselves. Many people were chasing the American Dream, the idea that they could have a better life with more opportunities in America rather than in their...

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the population of America exploded as thousands of people moved there to try to create a better life for themselves. Many people were chasing the American Dream, the idea that they could have a better life with more opportunities in America rather than in their own country. At this time, the USA had an open-door policy to immigration, which means that there were very few restrictions to prevent people entering the country. As a result, around 35 million people emigrated to the United States between 1950 and 1914. However, in the 1920s, this open-door policy changed and attitudes towards immigrants switched from welcoming to hostile. The American government began to limit the number of immigrants it allowed in. For example, in 1921, the Emergency Quota Act was introduced which specified the number of immigrants that could move to America each year. As the 1920s progressed, more and more people who lived in America began to become more prejudiced and racist towards certain immigrants from Europe. Before the 1920s, most immigrants to America came from Northern Europe, especially countries like Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. These immigrants were nicknamed WASPs, which stands for White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, and they were considered to be good immigrants, and were welcomed into America as they were usually skilled workers who could speak good English and generally had successful lives. By the 1900s, however, a new wave of immigrants started moving to the USA from countries of Southern and Eastern Europe, such as Poland, Italy, and Russia. These immigrants were usually poor, unskilled, and Catholic or Jewish. When they moved to America, instead of moving into neighborhoods with other Americans, they often created their own isolated communities where they could continue to speak their own language, dress in traditional clothing, and eat traditional food. For example, many Italian immigrants lived in an area called Little Italy in New York City. Many established immigrants in America, like the original WASPs, became increasingly hostile towards these new immigrants. Another group who disliked immigrants was the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK. The KKK wanted to keep America white and Protestant. By 1925, membership of the KKK had reached about 3 million and included prominent businessmen, police officers, and politicians. The KKK despised Catholics, Jews, and non-white people, and actively promoted racist and prejudiced views towards these new immigrants. The fact that membership of this group was so high shows how racist and prejudiced white people were in America towards immigrants at this time. By the 1920s, many people believed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were culturally and racially inferior to them and could not be part of American society. These new immigrants were seen as a threat to society and their values as they did not look the same, sound the same, and they did not assimilate, so they pushed for the policies that would limit immigration from these inferior parts of Europe. Prejudice and racism had shaped American immigration policy long before the 1920s. For example, in 1907, the US government set up the Dillingen Commission to investigate immigration and the differences between old immigrants and new immigrants. In 1911, the Dillingen Commission concluded that these new immigrants were unsuited to life in America and that they should take a literacy test before being allowed to enter the country. This shows that racist attitudes toward new immigrants existed well before the 1920s. By the 1920s, there was a growing fear across America that immigrants would bring with them new radical political ideas to try to start a revolution. By the start of the 20th century, there were a lot of radical ideas about how to govern a country which scared many people. Then, in 1917, there was a dramatic revolution in Russia and it became a communist country. People in America were very fearful of this happening in the United States as they hated communism and did not want to live in a communist country. They became increasingly concerned that new immigrants from Russia or Eastern Europe would bring these communist ideas to America which made them distrust them. The public became even more fearful of a political revolution in June 1919 when US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's house was blown up by political extremists. That same month, several letter bombs were sent to the US government. As a result, between 1920 and 1919, the police arrested thousands of people across 33 different cities in America who they suspected of holding radical and violent political beliefs. These arrests were called the Palmer Raids, named after Mitchell Palmer, and thousands of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were arrested and many were subsequently deported from America without trial. People in America began to fear that immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe would bring extremist and radical political ideas with them to try to change the American political system. They began to once restrict immigration to prevent this happening. The increase in political violence in 1919 and the subsequent Palmer Raids also arguably showed the attitude of the government towards immigrants by the 1920s and the extent that the government was willing to go to to stop those revolutionary ideas spreading. The hysteria of communist revolution in America was short-lived though. By May 1920, the Palmer Raids had stopped and the public sphere of revolution had subsided, showing the sphere of revolution had less of an impact on changing attitudes as it was short-lived. By the 1920s, there was a growing belief that immigrants were causing housing shortages and were also responsible for increased levels of crime. The first social problem with immigration was housing. At the start of the 20th century, the majority of immigrants settled in large cities of northeast America, like Chicago, Boston, and New York. New immigrants were typically poor and could only afford to live in the cheapest houses in the worst areas of those cities, known as ghettos. This put pressure on the amount of housing available for everyone in those areas. Another problem in the 1920s was increasing levels of crime, especially violent crimes like murder or assault, which was blamed on new immigrants. One case that made headline news was that of Sacco and Vanzetti. They were Italian immigrants who were arrested in May 1920 on suspicion of murdering two men. They were found guilty and sentenced to death by electric chair. It was widely believed, however, that the judge and jury in their trial were anti-immigrant and they did not receive a fair trial. Despite this, they were both executed in August 1927. By the 1920s, poorer working-class Americans became increasingly angered that there was a shortage of housing and higher crime rates in American cities, and they directly blamed new immigrants for these problems. They believed that new immigrants were a serious threat to living conditions and law and order, and for many Americans, curbing immigration was the only sensible solution to tackling rising crime rates and improving housing problems. However, in the 1920s, charity workers and social investigators studied crime rates across the big cities, and proved through data that most crimes committed by immigrants were petty theft and burglary, not murder. This research shows that not all Americans blamed immigrants, and some people were on their side and willing to show that immigrants were not bad for America. Isolationism was the American policy of staying out of foreign affairs. Before the 20th century, America had only been involved in three foreign wars, and there was a determination to remain neutral if another war started. However, in 1917, the USA joined World War I, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,116,000 American soldiers. After the war, there was a strong desire to return to the policy of isolationism. The USA wanted to leave Europe behind after the horror of World War I. After 1918, many Americans did not want new waves of immigrants bringing European problems to the USA. Another problem during World War I was that a large part of the US immigrant population was of German origin. Many of these immigrants had supported Germany in the war, and society was split when the USA joined the war against Germany in 1917. As a result, during World War I, anti-German feelings began to increase across America. Shops and businesses were targeted, and many descendants of the old German immigrants faced more discrimination. There was also a rise in nativism, a belief that favoured native-born Americans over new immigrants. This continued for some time after World War I ended. Many Americans' attitude towards immigration changed during and after World War I because they became angry towards certain immigrants, including those from Germany. They did not want these immigrants in their country and became hostile towards them. They also became less welcoming towards any European immigrants, as they wanted to stay isolated from Europe after World War I. The experience of immigrants in America during World War I wasn't always bad. For example, thousands of immigrants, including those of German origin, bought liberty bonds, which were a key way for the US government to fund the war. This was a vital contribution to the war effort and showed the loyalty and support they had for their adopted country, which made many Americans tolerate them more.