Salem Press

	A good contribution to the study of immigration in the U.S. and is recommended for high school and public libraries. Even libraries that own some of the larger sets on which it is based will appreciate the convenience of having widely scattered material pulled together in two volumes.
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Immigration in US History
History of US Immigration

Definition: Survey of immigration in American history
Immigration Issues: Chinese immigrants; Demographics; European
immigrants; Irish immigrants

Significance: Immigration to the North American continent began during the early sixteenth century, when settlers from the British Isles established the dominant culture of what is now the United States. Immigrants who have arrived since then have faced conflict and discrimination before being accepted into American society.

The movement of people from Europe to the Americas began at the end of the fifteenth century with the urge to explore new lands and to take their riches back to the Old World. The desire to settle permanently in the Americas was caused by upheavals in European society that saw a doubling of the population, battles over agricultural land, and the Industrial Revolution, which threw craftspeople and artisans out of work. While some immigrants came to escape religious persecution, most came with the hope of bettering their economic position. The labor of these immigrants made possible the development of the United States as an industrial nation.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which substantially changed U.S. immigration policy toward non-Europeans. Johnson made a point of signing the legislation near the base of the Statue of Liberty, which has always stood as a symbol of welcome to immigrants. Lower Manhattan can be seen in the background. (LBJ Library Collection)

British Dominance
The dominant culture of the early colonies in North America was established by immigrants from the British Isles, and this cultural tradition still prevails in American life. Nevertheless, it was the Spanish who achieved the first permanent settlement, founding St. Augustine (in what is now Florida) in 1565. Other early Spanish settlements included Santa Fe (now New Mexico) and the missions in California founded by Father Jun¡pero Serra.

The Spanish political role in early American life ended with the cession of part of Florida to the British in 1763, the return of Louisiana to the French in 1800, a treaty that ceded the remainder of Florida to the United States in 1819, and Mexican independence from Spain in 1821. Yet these early settlements, combined with twentieth century immigration from Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, continue to influence American culture. Spanish is the second most frequently spoken language in the United States.

The Virginia colonies in 1607 were the first British settlements in North America. The British immediately saw the need for laborers to develop the new land. They considered American Indians (the Indian population in the seventeenth century has been estimated at from four to eight million) to be an inferior race. Whereas the Spanish colonists had attempted to integrate the American Indians into the life of their settlements (while exploiting their labor), the British colonists first tried, unsuccessfully, to use them as slave labor, then forced them to move off whatever land the colonists wanted for themselves. Through the years, the Indian population was reduced by war and European diseases. A large number of immigrants in the seventeenth century came from the British Isles as indentured servants or convicts. These immigrants usually were assimilated into the general population after their servitude, often prospering in their own enterprises.

African Immigrants
Black explorers had accompanied the French and Spanish during early explorations of the North American continent. Landowners in the West Indies had been importing slaves from Africa to work on their plantations for many years before the first Africans were brought to the Virginia colony in 1619. Slavery quickly took hold in America as the solution to the insatiable demand for labor to develop the new land, especially in the South with its economy based on rice, indigo, and tobacco.

Estimates of the numbers of slaves who survived the brutal conditions of the Atlantic passage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries range from hundreds of thousands to millions. This forced migration constituted one of the largest population movements in the history of the world.

Nineteenth Century Immigration
Emigration from Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was stimulated by political and economic forces that had been building for hundreds of years. Early settlers in addition to the British included significant numbers of Dutch and French people. The voyage by sailing ship, which could take from one to three months, was fraught with hardship--disease, overcrowding, and deprivation of food and water. Nevertheless, the population of the colonies was approximately 2.5 million by the beginning of the revolutionary war. By the early eighteenth century, most Americans were native born.

The greatest wave of immigrants, an estimated thirty million, came from Europe between 1815 and World War I. During the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish, victims of British land laws and several years' failure of the potato crop, became the largest group of immigrants. The second-largest group, German middle-class artisans and landless peasants, came as a result of an increase in population and the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution. Others emigrated from Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries. Ellis Island in New York was the port of entry for most immigrants from 1890 until 1954.

On the West Coast, an estimated 100,000 Chinese laborers were imported. These immigrants, considered a threat by native workers, were often treated like slaves. Between 1890 and 1924, a wave of immigrants began coming from Italy, eastern and central Europe, and Russia. A number of European Jews also came to escape religious persecution. Smaller groups came from the Balkan countries and the Middle East. These people, with different appearances and customs, were not as easily assimilated as had been the people of western or northern Europe.

Twentieth Century Immigration
Until the early twentieth century, the United States government welcomed newcomers. While some local and state laws restricted the entry of lunatics, the illiterate, anarchists, or people with communicable diseases, there was little regulation of immigration. The late nineteenth century, however, saw an upsurge of demands for restrictive legislation born of the fear that the quality of American life was being eroded by the newcomers. During the early 1920's, in response to this fear, the federal government began to regulate immigration.

There was little immigration during the Great Depression of the 1930's. Following World War II, however, and in the years since, a new wave of immigrants has come to the United States, many of them from Asia, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. According to one estimate, by 1990, 6 percent of the population of the United States had been born in a foreign country. The increasing entrance of unknown numbers of undocumented immigrants since the 1970's had, by the late 1980's, created a sentiment for new restrictive legislation.

Ethnic and Racial Conflict
The history of immigration to the United States is, in many ways, a record of ethnic and racial conflict. Almost all new immigrant groups have faced a degree of resistance, ranging from quiet disapproval to blatant discrimination and violence, before being accepted as part of the American population. History books have traditionally romanticized the idea of the American "melting pot" in which the cultures of all ethnic groups combine into a new, unique American culture. More recently, however, many scholars have argued that becoming an American essentially entails adopting the ways of a dominant culture that is strongly based on Anglo-Saxon traditions and ideals; this phenomenon of adaptation has been termed "Anglo-conformity." Nevertheless, immigrant groups have affected the culture of the United States in many ways, great and small.

As for the immigrants themselves, far from being the poor and oppressed people celebrated in myth and poetry, most were healthy, ambitious young men and women. The weak and hopeless did not have the necessary energy to pull up stakes and take the risks required to start again in a new land. Identifying with their national origins and seeking to protect their own traditions, these immigrant groups often struggled against one another and against the larger society to find a place in American society.

Immigrants during the colonial period, faced with immediate threats to their survival on the frontier and the backbreaking labor needed to develop the land, apparently gave little heed to ethnic identification or cultural difference. These early settlers (disregarding the fact that people were already living there) believed that Divine Providence had given them this new land, and they achieved a political unity that welcomed newcomers. During the late eighteenth century, however, Congress, fearing foreign-born political dissidents, passed the short-lived Alien Act in 1798 to expel suspected foreign spies. Although local and state controls on immigration had attempted to prohibit "undesirables" from entering, the first major federal immigration legislation excluded prostitutes and convicts in 1875.

Nativism, a political and social movement that pits native-born Americans (themselves descendants of earlier immigrants) against newer arrivals, has been a persistent theme in American history. The movement was particularly strong during the mid-nineteenth century during the massive influx of Irish Catholics escaping famine in Europe. These Irish immigrants were persecuted by native Protestants fearing political domination by the Roman pope.

These religious quarrels often ended in violence. In Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834, a mob burned the Ursuline convent in the belief that the nuns had kidnapped young women and were forcing them into the Roman Catholic sisterhood. In 1844 a series of riots in Philadelphia between Catholic and Protestant workers left many dead and injured and resulted in extensive destruction of property. This xenophobia, directed against the Germans and other "foreigners" as well as the Irish, culminated in formation of the Know-Nothing Party, a political organization that attempted to influence the elections of 1854 and 1855 but ultimately declined as the nation headed toward Civil War.

Anti-Asian Discrimination
On the West Coast, a similar pattern of persecution was directed against Asians. Chinese immigrants began coming during the gold rush of 1848. Unlike the Irish, who immigrated in family groups, most Chinese were men who did not plan to stay; they intended to make money and return to their homeland. Chinese workers were employed by the thousands in building the railroads, as well as on farms and in many menial occupations. Bigotry against the Chinese took many forms, including broad accusations of vice and idolatry. Considered inferior and a threat to native-born Americans, Asians became the target of increasing resentment and violence. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress; it remained in force until 1943.

Japanese immigrants began to enter the United States during the early twentieth century and were blamed for taking away jobs by providing cheap labor. A "gentlemen's agreement" between the governments of Japan and the United States in 1907 limited the number of Japanese immigrants. By 1924 all Asians were excluded from entering the United States. Discrimination against Asians after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 resulted in the unconstitutional internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, and the confiscation of their property. In 1988 Congress offered an apology and partial financial restitution to the families of these Japanese Americans.

Late Twentieth Century Blacklash
A new form of nativism intensified during the 1980's and 1990's, based on the realization that there was a large and increasing population of undocumented immigrants, most of whom had entered or were remaining in the United States illegally. The majority of these undocumented immigrants were from Mexico, but there were also many from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The problem, many people began to believe, was that these workers and their families were taking jobs away from American citizens and were placing a financial strain on government educational and welfare programs.

The economic downturn of the late 1980's deepened such concerns. Considerable debate occurred concerning the reality or fantasy of this "threat" and concerning the actual costs versus benefits of the undocumented population; it was noted, for example, that many do pay taxes and that many perform jobs that most native-born Americans do not want.

Immigrant Adjustments
Immigrants to the United States, despite their many cultural differences, have shared the common experience of being uprooted from their familiar ways of life and of having to adjust to the lifeways of a new culture. As these immigrants become assimilated, they begin to think of themselves as Americans; ironically, members of assimilated groups may then begin to distrust more recent immigrant groups as being threats to the "American way of life" to which the older immigrants feel they belong. The traditional pattern of assimilation is for first-generation immigrants to begin at the bottom of the economic ladder and work their way upward. They often settle in ethnic neighborhoods and continue to speak their native language. The second generation, having been educated in the public schools, tends to reject the "foreign" language and customs of their parents. Members of the third generation often return to their heritage, seeking both to be acculturated Americans and to recover their roots.

The most glaring exception to this pattern has been the lack of true assimilation of African Americans. Because they were brought involuntarily to the United States and because the vast majority lived in slavery for more than three hundred years, they have faced unique handicaps. Following the Civil War, African Americans in the South experienced a brief period of political power during Reconstruction, but the backlash of the white supremacy movement put an end to this hope. The rise of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan, voting restrictions that kept African Americans from voting, Jim Crow segregation laws, and a Supreme Court decision that gave approval to segregated facilities (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) were among the factors that stood in the way of assimilation following slavery. Slavery has left a legacy that still haunts the social, political, and cultural life of the United States.

Several social and political movements during the late nineteenth century created a national demand to restrict immigration. Nativism was strong; the Ku Klux Klan's activities were directed against "foreigners" as well as against African Americans. The fact that the appearance and customs of eastern and southern Europeans were different from other European Americans made them easy to identify, and this made them easy targets for discrimination. So-called scientific theories about race were prevalent among white Europeans and Americans at the time, and these theories assumed the superiority of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic peoples. This belief led to the eugenics movement. Racial purity was believed to be desirable, and there was a fear that "inferior" races would breed with the native-born European Americans and would lead to a morally debased American population.

In the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress established quotas for immigrants based on a complex set of rules about national origin, favoring northern Europeans. The first significant deviation from this policy came when President Harry S. Truman used his executive powers to grant asylum to European refugees fleeing World War II. The McCarran-Walter Act (the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) revised the quota system used to determine immigration; it maintained the exclusion of immigration from Asia. The Immigration Act of 1965 finally ended the system of quotas based on national origin.

Marjorie J. Podolsky

Further Reading
Conley, Ellen Alexander. The Chosen Shore: Stories of Immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Collection of first-hand accounts of modern immigrants from many nations.

Greene, Victor R. A Singing Ambivalence: American Immigrants Between Old World and New, 1830-1930. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004. Comparative study of the different challenges faced during the peak era of immigration to the United States by members of eight major immigrant groups: the the Irish, Germans, Scandinavians and Finns, eastern European Jews, Italians, Poles and Hungarians, Chinese, and Mexicans.

Houle, Michelle E., ed. Immigration. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Greenhaven Press/Thomson/Gale, 2004. Collection of speeches on U.S. immigration policies by such historical figures as Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.

Meltzer, Milton. Bound for America: The Story of the European Immigrants. New York: Benchmark Books, 2001. Broad history of European immigration to the United States written for young readers.

Roleff, Tamara, ed. Immigration. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Collection of articles arguing opposing viewpoints on different aspects of immigration, such as quotas and restrictions, revolving around questions of whether immigrants have a positive or negative impact on the United States.

Sandler, Martin W. Island of Hope: The Story of Ellis Island and the Journey to America. New York: Scholastic, 2004. History of the most important immigrant reception, from 1892 through 1954. Written for younger readers.

Vought, Hans Peter. Redefining the "Melting Pot": American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897-1933. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 2001. Study of the role of U.S. presidents in American immigration policy through an era of heavy European immigration and fundamental changes in American immigration policy.

Wepman, Dennis. Immigration: From the Founding of Virginia to the Closing of Ellis Island. New York: Facts On File, 2002. History of immigration to the United States from the earliest European settlements of the colonial era through the mid-1950's, with liberal extracts from contemporary documents.

Williams, Mary E., ed. Immigration: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Various social, political and legal viewpoints are given by experts and observers familiar with immigration into the United States.

See Also
Demographics of immigration; European immigration to the United States, 1790-1892; European immigration to the United States, 1892-1943; Illegal aliens; Immigration and Naturalization Service; Immigration "crisis"; Immigration law; Justice and immigration; Migration; Push and pull factors; Undocumented workers.