Push and Pull: Eastern US (Ellis Island -Using Pennsylvania as an example)
Everyone came from somewhere else
When people move from one place to another to live, we call it a migration. We call a person moving into a place an immigrant. A person
moving out of a place is an emigrant.
Push and Pull
Historians use the words "push" and "pull" when they study migration. Something "pushes" migrants away from their original homes.
Something "pulls" them to their new home.
Push: Deciding to leave
If everything is going well at home, most people don't want to leave. Something must push them to make such a big change. Most often
people are pushed by not having enough money or land to feed and clothe their families. Others leave home because they are not free to
practice their religion. Some leave because of war. It is not safe to stay in their home country.
It is not easy to decide to leave home. Even though there may be strong reasons to leave, there are still some good reasons to stay. People
must decide if what they gain is worth what they must give up.
If you could listen to immigrants from the past talking about the "push" to move, you might hear something like this:
I'm the last of five sons. If my father divides his farm between us, no one will have enough land to feed our
families. If he gives it all to my oldest brother, I get nothing. If I'm drafted into the prince's army, I may
not live long enough to worry about farming! There is nothing for me here. I need to move away from all
this confusion and find a peaceful place to farm.
--Karl, Prussia, 1840
Those hateful bullies have gone too far. First they rode through town shouting terrible things about us.
Next, they wrecked our synagogue. Now they break into our homes! The police do nothing to stop them. I'm
afraid it is time to leave.
--Nina, Russia, 1890
Even when life was hard, people loved their homelands.
It was hard to make the decision to leave for America.
Pull: Deciding where to go
How do immigrants decide where to move? Something about a place must attract them. Most migrants choose a place where they know
they can find work. They also look for a place where they can afford to live.
The chance to be free to practice their religion pulls some migrants. Others want to live in a democracy where they can vote for their
leaders. They want to be free to express their opinions. Sometimes, immigrants are pulled to a place because someone they know already
lives there. Often, people migrate for more than one reason.
If you could listen to immigrants from the past talking about the "pull" to a place, you might hear something like this:
I hear that William Penn is trying something new with his colony
Pennsylvania. He's letting people worship as they please. They get
to vote for an Assembly who makes the laws. They also need
carpenters like me and are willing to pay a high price. I'd like to
get in on that experiment!
--John, England, 1690
My cousin wrote me a letter from America. He says he's making good
money -- much more than he ever had at home. The factory works around
the
clock, every day, even Sunday! They always need new workers. He
promises me I will have work if I come! I can stay at the boarding house
where he stays.
--Josef, Poland, 1905
Jewish men look at the damage to a building
after Russians ransacked their village.
Forced migration
Sometimes people migrating do not have a choice about moving. They are forced from their homes as prisoners or slaves. Some people have
to flee their homes for fear of being killed or imprisoned. They are called refugees. Some people must leave homes destroyed by flood or
hurricane. Others leave because of a food shortage. When migrants do not have a choice, the migrations are all push and no pull!
Another Wave
In the 1830s, immigrants started coming again. There was plenty of farmland for a low price. People who did not farm could get jobs in
building boats and ships, making glass, or working in other new industries. Between 1830 and 1870 about half a million new immigrants
came to Pennsylvania.
The Irish
About half of the new immigrants were Catholics from Ireland. A terrible plant disease had killed Ireland's main food crop, potatoes. Almost
a million Irish starved to death. Another million and a half came to America. They were penniless and didn't have many job skills. Many men
got jobs building the railroads. Women became servants.
Many of the people already here did not like Catholics moving to the state. They had forgotten William Penn's dream! Businesses hung up
signs that said, "No Irish Need Apply." This unfair treatment is called discrimination.
More Germans, Welsh, and English
Things weren't going well in Germany either. It was divided into many small states. Each state had its own prince. Princes often fought each
other for land. They made the men in their states serve in their armies.
Some of the people revolted and tried to join the states together into one free nation. When this did not work, many people decided to
move to the United States. Many came to Pennsylvania to join the Germans already living here. Some came with enough money to buy
farms. Others had skills needed by glass and other factories.
Our coal, iron, and glass industries needed workers and miners. Americans went to Europe to find these workers. They offered them more
money if they would move to the Pennsylvania.
German glass workers immigrated to Pittsburgh's many glass factories. English ironworkers settled in Johnstown and other towns where the
iron factories were starting up. Welsh miners immigrated to the coal regions, including Cambria County. In fact, Cambria is the ancient
Roman name for Wales!
The Underground Railroad
During this time, some brave souls became involved in a secret migration. Many African
Americans wanted to escape from slavery in the South. Free black and white
abolitionists helped them on the Underground Railroad. At first many of the
“passengers” stayed in Pennsylvania. Later, it became too dangerous. A new law made
Northerners return runaways to slavery. They started moving all the way to Canada.
There they could not be caught as fugitives.
New immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. At Ellis they
will be "processed" before they are allowed to continue
their journey to find a new home.
A Bigger Wave
Around 1890, immigration changed again. This time even more people came. Pennsylvania's growing coal and steel industries needed
cheap, unskilled labor. That was the "pull." The "push" for most came from hard times in Europe. Discrimination pushed others. Jewish
people living in Russia and Poland would be attacked by mobs of people while the government did nothing to stop them.
Millions of immigrants from Italy, Poland, Russia, and other countries of central and eastern Europe came to America on steamships. It
became the largest migration the world has ever seen. By 1920, 36% of Pennsylvanians (about one out of three) were foreign born!
So many people arrived every day in New York City that the government built a special place called Ellis Island just to check them in. Many
of the newcomers boarded trains and went straight to work in Pennsylvania's mines and mills. They settled in neighborhoods with others
from their homelands, who shared their language and customs.
The Great Migration
World War I cut off the flow of immigrants. But the mines and factories needed more workers than before. This was the "pull" for thousands
of African Americans in the South. They were glad to leave behind unfair laws in the South. They came for higher paying jobs in the North.
This “Great Migration” reached its peak during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Quota Laws
After World War I, immigration almost stopped completely. Many people were worried that new immigrants would take their jobs. Congress
passed laws that limited the number of immigrants that could come each year from each country.
These laws kept immigration down until 1965 when Congress passed new laws that let people come to America from any country.
Push and Pull: Western US (Angel Island)
From 1910 to 1940, tens of thousands of immigrants entered the West Coast of the United States through the Angel Island
Immigration Station. Located in San Francisco's North Bay, not far from Alcatraz Island, the buildings were nearly forgotten
and their history almost lost, until one day in 1970, when Alexander Weiss, a California State Park Ranger, re-discovered the
treasure they held. His chance discovery began the long journey to save the immigration station, and ultimately, to save the
stories hidden within it, and to help us remember its sad, but important role in American history.
The exact number of immigrants who passed through Angel Island is unknown. In addition to being a detention site, the
station was also an administrative site. As such, it processed the paperwork for all people coming into and leaving the United
States, and not just for those who spent time at the site. Current estimates put the figure of actual immigrants who passed
through the Station at about 300,000. Comparatively, Ellis Island received about 12 million throughout the time of its
operation.
Of those who arrived at Angel Island, it is estimated that anywhere from 11 percent to 30 percent were ultimately deported,
whereas the deportation rate for the East Coast was only 1 percent to 2 percent.
After 1940, the station was used briefly as a detention site for the internment of Japanese nationals returning to Japan and
World War II prisoners of war. In 1946, the site was finally closed down and abandoned by the Army.
When Ranger Weiss rediscovered the site in 1970, the Parks Administration did not share
his enthusiasm for preerving the buildings and the poetry written on and carved into their
walls. In fact, the Parks Administration was planning to demolish the buildings -- the
former employee cottages had already been burned down for the filming of Robert
Redford's The Candidate.
The detainees at the Angel Island
Immigration Station were kept in very tight,
closed quarters, sleeping six people on each
three-tiered set of bunk beds.
Weiss then alerted San Francisco State University Professor George Araki, whose class he
was attending at the time, and, along with Araki's colleague Mak Takahashi, they
arranged to photograph all the walls that had poems carved into and written on them.
Soon after, students in Asian American studies classes were taking trips to Angel Island
and word began to spread about the elaborate poetry carvings and writings that were a
hidden treasure of American history.
The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation was founded in 1983 and is the primary
advocate for the site's preservation, restoration and interpretation. In 1997, the Angel
Island Immigration Station was named a National Historic Landmark. The site will be
closed to the public from November 2004 through 2005 as it finally undergoes the first
phase of a long-awaited renovation.
Immigration from China
Meaningful immigration from China occurred during the California Gold Rush. People
came from all directions to seek their fortunes after the news spread of gold being
discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848. It is estimated that some 25,000 Chinese arrived in
California from 1849 to 1851.
Chinese laborers also found work in the railroad, lumber and agricultural industries.
They came through entry portals up and down the West Coast, from Vancouver to
southern California. They also came through labor networks that had routed them into
Mexico and Cuba. The overwhelming majority of the laborers were men, and as their
numbers grew, they quickly set up networks of supporting enterprises in urban centers
and towns across the West.
A political cartoon from The San Francisco Wasp
advocating for the Chinese Exclusion Law, 1882.
As the West boomed, however, competition for jobs increased, and economic depression ensued by the early 1870s. Chinese
laborers faced increasing discrimination and persecution by other ethnic labor groups. The Chinese were willing to work for
lower wages, which pitted them against various interest groups, from those who were seeking to build labor unions to those
who felt that America was only for Europeans to those who were against foreigners of any sort. The persecution was often
violent, including total destruction of property, and sometimes deadly. And the economic depression of the early 1870s
fueled the enmities.
By 1882, the interest groups successfully won passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese laborers from
entering the country altogether. The Exclusion Act also prevented immigrants who were already in the country from being
allowed to bring their wives or children. Merchants, diplomats, students, and all who could prove they were the son or
daughter of an American citizen were exempted. The Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902, not
to be undone until the 1943 Immigration Act instated new regulations across the board for all immigrants.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the immigration records for the Chinese in California. There was no way for
anyone to know who was or was not a legitimate citizen under the existing laws. Suddenly and serendipitously, many
Chinese could get around the laws of the Exclusion Act and claim their right to be in the country. Furthermore, this allowed
people to bring over spouses, sons and daughters, which led to the "paper sons" and "paper daughters" phenomenon.
Hopeful Chinese immigrants, legitimate or not, were held at Angel Island for lengthy periods of time -- a few months to
more than a year -- and subjected to grueling, repetitive interrogations before given passage or deported.
Immigration from Japan
Immigrants from Japan began entering the United States in the 1880s. They were largely
farmers from southern Japan before U.S. laws limited their numbers. Japan's industrial
and land reforms under the Meiji Restorationhad disenfranchised many in this region,
so they sought to earn a living across the ocean, where opportunities were opening up on
the sugar plantations in Hawaii. From there, many found their way to California.
In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt forced the San Francisco School Board to
rescind an order that segregated Japanese schoolchildren in return for Japan's curb on
emigration of peasants and laborers to the United States. Japan entered into a treaty,
the famous "Gentleman's Agreement," with the United States, agreeing to regulate the
number and type of Japanese who were allowed to immigrate to the United States. Japan
permitted only the educated to immigrate, restricting the immigration of laborers,
whether unskilled or skilled.
Japanese Immigration Through Angel
Island
Japanese women entering the
Administration Building of the
By the time Angel Island Immigration Station opened
Immigration Station.
in 1910, and until the Immigration Act of 1924 took
effect, Japanese immigration was controlled by a
treaty between the United States and Japan known as the Gentleman's Agreement of
1907. Japan, not wanting its citizens to be subjected to the discriminatory treatment that
the Chinese immigrants had been subjected to, agreed to allow only the educated and
their direct family members to leave and resettle in the United States.
About 60,000 Japanese are estimated to have come through Angel Island Immigration
Station. Most of them were picture brides or returning American-born Japanese. Often
Japanese in the United States could not afford to return to Japan to marry, so they had
friends and relatives find them prospective brides, whom they knew only through letters
and photographs before the women arrived to begin their new lives in America.
Japanese Picture Brides arriving at
Angel Island.
Given the Gentleman's Agreement between the two nations, the immigrants were usually
released within two or three days, after having faced the standard medical examinations.
Later, during World War II, the immigration station became a deportation and prisoner-of-war internment center. Some of
the Japanese inscriptions on the barracks' walls reflect the sentiments of those awaiting deportation.
Immigration From the Philippines
An explosion on the Battleship Maine while it sat in Havana
Harbor was blamed on Spain as an act of aggression and
triggered the Spanish-American War of 1898.
In the late 1800s, Jose Rizal founded the Filipino League, which began fighting Spanish colonial rule of the Philippine Islands.
Emilio Aguinaldo succeeded Rizal after his execution and led negotiations with American officials George Dewey and Spencer
Pratt to join forces against Spain. Thus the Spanish-American War of 1898 came to be fought on two fronts, in the
Caribbean and in the Pacific.
However, Filipino representatives were barred from participating in the Treaty of Parisnegotiations concluding the war. And
under the treaty, the United States purchased the Philippines for $20 million.
As American nationals, Filipinos could travel relatively freely to and within the United States. They did so during roughly
three waves of migration to Hawaii and the mainland. In the first wave, young Filipino men went to the mainland as
students, sponsored under the Pensionado Act of 1903. A few years later, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters'
Association began recruiting workers to fill the labor gap that had been left by Asian worker groups. The U.S. Census
registered that from 1909 to 1931, 112,828 Filipinos arrived in Hawaii. Although the majority of these were known to have
returned to the Philippines or stayed in Hawaii, more than 18,000 migrated to the mainland, mostly to the West Coast,
finding work in the agriculture fields and fisheries.
In California during the 1920s and 1930s, an anti-Filipino movement developed, arising both from the Depression and
from the same resentment on the part of workers of European descent that other ethnic groups had faced. Legislation was
passed in California that made marriage between a White and a "person of the Malayan race" illegal. But it wasn't until the
passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 that Filipinos faced any legislated restrictions on their ability to immigrate to
the United States.
Little is known about Filipinos who passed through the Angel Island Immigration Station. Many records were lost when
fire befell the administration building in 1940, and particularly few records remain to provide details of the experiences of
Filipinos at the immigration station. Given their status as American nationals up until 1934, however, they most likely were
not detained for much longer than the time needed for medical examinations and quarantine inspections.
Russian American Immigration
Immigrants from Russia entered the United States at both coasts starting in the
late 1800s. Nearly 3 million Russians entered during the first wave of open
immigration that began in the late 19th century and continued into the early
20th century. However, only about 20,000 found their way into America during
the period that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 up through World War
II.
World War I, the Russian Revolution, and then the Bolshevik Revolution
produced refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods. Nearly 1 million fled
the country. Many Russians who ended up in Siberia and Manchuria, whether
migrating for work or fleeing violent conflicts, found their way to the American
West Coast -- first stop, the Angel Island Immigration Station, where the
average stay of a Russian ranged from a few days to four months.
But after World War I ended, the United States, which didn't ratify the League of
Russian men entering through Angel
Nations charter, became extremely isolationist. Americans were fearful of the
Island.
troubles of the outside world and likewise of foreigners, so the U.S. immigration
laws became more restrictive.
The 1921 and 1924 U.S. immigration laws reduced the number of people
allowed to come from southern and eastern Europe, which dropped the number
of Russian immigrants to about 2,248 per year. Although they were not
subjected to the extreme interrogations at Angel Island to which the Chinese
were subjected, they could be excluded on the basis of extreme poverty which
would make them "likely to become a public charge"; disease and chronic ill
health, which would render them unable to work; and the subjective judgment
that they might turn to prostitution to earn a living.
Moreover, the 1917 immigration law required that immigrants be able to prove
they were literate in their own language. If they were not able to read a
paragraph in their own language, they would be marked for deportation.
Russian women and children waiting to
be processed.
And finally, American reaction to the waves of domestic labor strikes and the
Bolshevik Revolution resulted in the "Red Scare" of the 1920s. Thousands of
Russian immigrants and labor activists were swept up in the Palmer Raids,
named for then-U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, and held without trial.
More than 500 individuals were deported on suspicion of so-called radical
political activity.
Immigration From India
Early immigration from India to the United States was very short-lived, lasting only from the late 1800s until
the 1917 Immigration Law instituted the Asiatic Barred Zone. These earliest immigrants came from the
Punjab region of India. Most were Sikh men, though some came from the Muslim and Hindu communities.
In 1849, the British annexed the Punjab region into the rest of its colonial holdings in India. The subsequent
land reform laws disenfranchised many Punjabis, and younger sons were encouraged to find work abroad. Their
destinations ranged from British territories in Africa to the Caribbean to Hong Kong and Singapore to Canada.
Many Sikhs found employment with the British army, often ending up being posted in many of these same farreaching places.
Sikh soldiers fought on behalf of the British Empire in the Middle East and Africa,
were sent to Beijing, China, in 1900 to put down the Boxer Rebellion, and
fought in World War I. After their service, many made their way toVancouver,
Canada. They found employment in the burgeoning lumber industry, and, as
subjects of the British Commonwealth, they were able to travel freely. But as
their numbers grew, discrimination against them by Canadian workers of
European descent also grew. Indeed, European Canadian worker protests
became so strong that, eventually, ships carrying Indians to Vancouver were
barred from landing.
These workers found their way further south, into the northwestern United
States, where an economic boom was in the works. From Washington to
Oregon, and eventually California, the Indian immigrants worked in the lumber
industry, found jobs building railroads, and worked in the orchards and
vineyards throughout the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Imperial valleys. And
like the Indian immigrants in Canada, they received an acrimonious reception
from workers of European descent not wanting to compete against them for
jobs.
Sikh men arriving at Angel Island.
Initially, Indian immigrants could enter the United States directly, through one of its ports. Many entered
through San Francisco; it is estimated that some 3,000 people from India came through the Angel Island
Immigration Station. Then the 1917 law created the Asiatic Barred Zone, which defined by latitude and
longitude an area that effectively restricted immigrants from South and Southeast Asia. This put a stop to most
Indian immigration, and although the ban was lifted for a new annual quota in 1943, Indian American
communities did not see significant growth until after the 1965 immigration reforms. Some of the earlier
immigrants were known to have married into Mexican Californian families.
Notwithstanding the Asiatic Barred Zone, some Indian students, diplomats and other prominent individuals were
able to pass through U.S. borders by finding sponsorship from an influential group or institution.