Immigrants in the United
States
Dr. Marni Davis
Assistant Professor of History
Georgia State University
“Once I thought to write a history
of the immigrants in America. Then
I discovered that the immigrants
were American history.”
- Oscar Handlin,
The Uprooted (1951)
1870s – 1920s:
• Approximately 23.5 million
immigrants arrived in the
United States
• Primarily from Southern
Europe (Italian Catholics)
and Eastern Europe
(Russian and Polish Jews)
• And: Germans, AustroHungarians, British,
Irish, Scandinavians,
Mexicans, Chinese,
Japanese
• The Making of Modern
America:
• industrialization
• urbanization
• consumer capitalism
Framing the issue…
1. Why did immigrants come to the
United States?
2. What was their arrival like?
3. Once they got here, what did they
do?
4. What did other Americans think of
immigrants?
5. How did they become
1. Why did immigrants come to
the United States?
• An era of worldwide population
movement
• The PUSH and the PULL
– PUSH: cataclysm in home country
– PULL: attraction of destination country
• Economic Opportunity
2. What was their arrival like?
Castle Garden Immigrant Landing and Processing Depot, NYC
(1866)
Ship Manifest of Immigrant
Passengers
(available at www.ellisisland.org)
Inspecting and Testing Immigrants
Angel Island, CA
Ellis Island, NY
3. Once they got here, what did they
do?
A) They went where the jobs were …
• Agriculture (both permanent and seasonal)
– Central Europeans and Scandinavians in Midwest
– Asians and Mexicans on West Coast
– Chinese and Italians in South
• Railroad
– Chinese immigrants in the West
– Irish immigrants in the East
• Industrial labor
– Slavic immigrants and Northern Europeans in
heavy industry (coal, steel)
– Eastern European Jews in garment industry
– Chinese and Japanese in western fish industry
3. Once they got here, what did they
do?
B) They went where their people were …
• ETHNIC ENCLAVES
A great teaching tool: The New York Times INTERACTIVE IMMIGRATION
MAP:
4. What did other Americans think of
immigrants?
November 22, 1869
Naturalization Act of 1790
“… Any Alien being a free white person, who shall
have resided within the limits and under the
jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two
years, may be admitted to become a citizen
thereof ...”
BUT: Who is “White?”
“the Number of purely white People in the World is
proportionably very small ... in Europe, the
Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and
Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy
Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons
only excepted, who with the English, make the
principal Body of White People on the Face of the
Earth.”
Chinese Immigrants in
19th Century America
On the “Chinese Question”
Harper’s Weekly, July 16, 1870
Lithograph, San Francisco, late 1860s
On the “Chinese Question”
Harper’s Weekly, June 12. 1869
European
Immigration
as a Threat
“The Stranger at Our Gate,”
Our Day (1896)
Puck Magazine, June 7, 1882
Urbanization and Reform
Settlement House in Chicago, early
twentieth century
Garment workers’ strike, NYC, 1909
The closing of the gates …
• 1924: Johnson-Reed Act: Permanent
immigration quota law established a
preference quota system by national
origin.
– Border Patrol also established.
• 1929: Annual quotas of the 1924 Act were
made permanent.
– Quota law remains in place until 1965
5. “Becoming” “American”
• Assimilation:
– The conversion of nutriments into living
tissue.
– The process whereby a minority group
adopts the customs and attitudes of the
prevailing culture.
• Acculturation:
– the adoption of the behavior patterns of
the surrounding culture; socialization.
• Adaptation:
– Change in behavior of a person or group
in response to new or modified
surroundings.
The “Melting
Pot”
(and other
metaphors)
How did these immigrants become
“American?”
Factors that affected “Americanization”:
- Continued pull of transnational networks
- Ethnic community as circumscribing
force
- Gender / Generation
- Economic status
- Popular culture / Sports
- Passage of time / Changing attitudes
toward particular immigrant groups
http://www.leftycartoons.com/history-marches-on-nativism-marches-in-place/