The New Immigrants
Ch.7 Section 1
Through the “Golden Door”
 Europeans
 1870-1920: approximately 20 million Euros arrived in the U.S.
 Mostly southern and eastern Europe
 Reasons for leaving include; religious persecution, scarcity of
land, reform and revolt
 Chinese and Japanese
 Chinese: 1851-1883: 300,000 came because of the gold rush
and stayed to work on the railroad, farm, and set up businesses
 Japanese: 1884 were recruited to work on Hawaiian plantations
 By 1920, over 300,000 Japanese lived on the West Coast
Through the “Golden Door”
 West Indies
 1880-1920: 260,000
 Scarce jobs
 Mexico
 1910-1930: 700,000
 Flee political turmoil and find work
Life in the New Land
 A Difficult Journey
 Steamships across the Atlantic (1 week) or Pacific (3weeks)
 Steerage accommodations in the cargo hold
 Crowded, unsanitary conditions resulted in some deaths
 Ellis Island
 Only 2% of those detained were denied entry
 Processing could take 5 hours or a few days
 Angel Island
 1910-1940: 50,000 Chinese
 Lengthy questioning and waiting process
Life in the New Land
 Cooperation and Survival
 Challenges of finding a place to live, getting a job, language, and
culture
 Ethnic communities were created
 Pooled money to build churches, formed social clubs and aid societies,
orphanages, old people’s homes, cemeteries, and published newspapers
 Native-born Americans sometimes disliked the unfamiliarity
of immigrants and viewed them as a threat to American
culture
Immigration Restrictions
 Rise of Nativism
 Overt favoritism toward native-born Americans
 Believed Anglo-Saxons were superior to other ethnic groups
 Immigration Restriction League(1894)
 Desirable immigrants were British, German, and Scandinavian
 American Protective Association (1897)
 Anti-Catholic
 Anti-Asian Sentiment
 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
 Banned all Chinese except students, teachers, merchants, tourists, and
government officials; repealed in 1943
 The Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907-1908)
 Japan agreed to limit emigration of unskilled workers and San
Francisco would repeal its segregation order in schools