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Francisco Silva
Mrs. Schierer
AP U.S. History
19 January 2020
Early Migration To The U.S. The Real Ones
During the early 17th century during the year 1600, many migrations started to
commence with the destination for many of those immigrants being the United States. Due to
wars, civil wars, ethnic strife, famine, diseases, and religious persecution, many people were
pushed out of their homes causing many immigrants to migrate over to the U.S. Many of these
immigrants came by ships and had to deal with terrible conditions. Since many of the immigrants
were poor, many of them ended up traveling in the steerage class. Most immigrants either arrived
at Elis Island or at Angel Island where they had to be processed to get into the U.S. The first
being in the years 1600 to 1840, these immigrants came from Western Europe who were mainly
from England, France, The Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, and The Scot Irish. These
immigrants mostly settled on the East Coast and also became farmers and craftsmen. Then, in the
1840s came another wave from Western Europe and Asia. This group of immigrants was
Germans, Irish, Chinese and Japanese. The Irish became laborers on the East Coast, the Germans
became farmers in the Midwest, and the Japanese and Chinese became laborers and farmers on
the West Coast. Also, another wave of migration began in the years 1880 to 1920, which was
called The New Immigrants. These immigrants were mainly Italians and Jews that fled from
Russia. Overall, all of these immigrants mostly came to the U.S. to look for jobs, and overall for
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a better life for themself or their families, but at the same time, there were also so bad things
about moving over to the U.S.
One of the reasons why immigrants migrated over to the United States was because of a
better economy for the immigrants. For example, many had to live with economic issues and
much other stuff which caused many people to seek a better life somewhere else. According to
Document 3, the author implies that “... Work over there was very bad. In those days, a worker in
Greece made about five dollars a day, when a worker’s pay in the United States was about thirty
dollars a day. But the reason I came to the United States was because the situation in Greece was
bad” (Coming to America: Immigrants from Southern Europe). This quote stated that the
conditions back in Greece were very bad for the people who lived there. This quote is significant
because it shows us how the economy in the U.S. was six times better than Greece’s. Hence, a
reason why many immigrants decided to migrate over to the U.S.
Another reason why immigrants came over to the U.S. was because of many disasters
such as war, famine, and many other things. In this case, wars and stuff like that usually caused
the lives of many to get worse due to the worst living conditions. In the document “In Search of
America,” the author illustrates a timeline showing the number of immigrants that came every
ten years. Within this timeline, we can see how many people all over the world were dealing with
situations that were bad. For example in the timeline, we can see that between the years of 1900
to 1910, there was anti-semitism and draft in Russia as well as hard times and epidemics in Italy
which caused many immigrants to move over to the U.S. (Document 1). This shows us how
things like drafts and epidemics were happening during this time. This is significant because it
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shows us how disasters motivate many people to come over to the United States to look for a
better life.
On the other hand, there were some bad things about migrating to the United States. For
instance, things like nativism started to surface in the 1840s as well as just hard times in the
United States. According to Document 5, we can see from an illustration that immigrants had to
live in tenements where everyone had to work. We can also see that these tenements were
probably small places, causing the immigrants to be crowded with little space to move around
(Lewis W. Hine). This illustration shows us how immigrants had to work and live in small places
in the U.S., therefore living in poor living conditions that are nowadays seen as unjust. This is
important because it shows us that by moving to the United States, in order to find better lives
for themselves, many people had to work in inadequate workplaces that provided very little
comfort.
Another hardship that immigrants had to face when they arrived in the United States
would be that many people had to work over 8 hours a day. In this case, back then many people
had to do labor over a long period of time in order to get paid. In the document “Historical Atlas
of the United States,” we can see that the illustration shows us that many immigrant workers
were protesting for not having good working conditions (Document 6). This illustration shows us
that working conditions in the U.S. were not the best and that in order for the people to try and
achieve better living standards, they needed to fight back to at least grab the attention of the
higher-ups to consider giving better workplaces for the workers. This is important because it
shows us that even the U.S. had its ups and downs when it came to working since for one, the
workers probably had better working conditions here in the U.S. than from where they came
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from, but at the same time, the working conditions were not the most adequate they could have
been. Overall though, the immigrants still had many other reasons why it was good to migrate
over to the U.S. rather than staying back home in their native lands.
Therefore, there were many reasons why immigrants came over to the United States. For
one, the economy in the United States was better than many economies out there in the world.
Second of all, the United States allowed people to have a better life overall. On the other hand,
there were also some bad things such as bad working conditions and a small living space that
people had to deal with. In general, many people migrated over to the U.S. since they valued the
benefits of moving to the U.S. more than those from staying at their homes as well as the
immigrants viewed the U.S. as an escape from all the poverty and discontent that they had back
at their homes.