IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES



IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATESIN THE NINETEENTH CENTURYThe United States is sometimes called the “Nation of Immigrants” because it has received more immigrants than any other country in history. During the first one hundred years of US history, the nation had no immigration laws. Immigration began to climb during the 1830s. “Between 1830-1840, 44% of the immigrants came from Ireland, 30% came from Germany, 15% came from Great Britain, and the remainder came from other European countries.”The movement to America of millions of immigrants in the century after the 1820s was not simply a flight of impoverished peasants abandoning underdeveloped, backward regions for the riches and unlimited opportunities offered by the American economy. People did not more randomly to America but emanated from very specific regions at specific times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “It is impossible to understand even the nature of American immigrant communities without appreciating the nature of the world these newcomers left.”The rate of people leaving Ireland was extremely high in the late 1840s and early 1850s due to overpopulation and to the potato famine of 1846. “By 1850, there were almost one million Irish Catholics in the United States, especially clustered in New York and Massachusetts.”Germans left their homeland due to severe depression, unemployment, political unrest, and the failure of the liberal revolutionary movement. It was not only the poor people who left their countries, but those in the middle and lower-middle levels of their social structures also left. “Those too poor could seldom afford to go, and the very wealthy had too much of a stake in the homelands to depart.Many immigrants came to America as a result of the lure of new land, in part, the result of the attraction of the frontier. America was in a very real sense the last frontier—a land of diverse peoples that, even under the worst conditions, maintained a way of life that permitted more freedom of belief and action than was held abroad. “While this perception was not entirely based in reality, it was the conviction that was often held in Europe and that became part of the ever-present American Dream.”Today, in an ever shrinking global society, what does the future hold for those who wish to come to America? Difficult economic times, a staggering National debt, the decline of cities and the end of the cold war will almost certainly impact on population movements around the world and in America. Whether she can continue to be the “Land of Opportunity” in the decades ahead is a question that only time will answer.IMMIGRATION’S IMPACT IN THE UNITED STATESThe opportunity to directly transfer a skill into the American economy was great for newcomers prior to the 1880s. “Coal-mining and steel-producing companies in the East, railroads, gold- and silver-mining interests in the West, and textile mills in New England all sought a variety of ethnic groups as potential sources of inexpensive labor.” Because immigrants were eager to work, they contributed to the wealth of the growing nation. During the 1830s, American textile mills welcomed hand-loom weavers from England and North Ireland whose jobs had been displaced by power looms. It was this migration that established the fine-cotton-goods trade of Philadelphia. “Nearly the entire English silk industry migrated to America after the Civil War, when high American tariffs allowed the industry to prosper on this side of the Atlantic.”Whether immigrants were recruited directly for their abilities or followed existing networks into unskilled jobs, they inevitably moved within groups of friends and relatives and worked and lived in clusters.As the Industrial Revolution progressed, immigrants were enticed to come to the United States through the mills and factories who sent representatives overseas to secure cheap labor. An example was the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, located along the banks of the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire. In the 1870s, the Amoskeag Company recruited women from Scotland who were expert gingham weavers. Agreements were set specifying a fixed period of time during which employees would guarantee to work for the company.In the 1820s, Irish immigrants did most of the hard work in building the canals in the United States. In fact, Irish immigrants played a large role in building the Erie Canal. American contractors encouraged Irish immigrants to come to the United States to work on the roads, canals, and railroads, and manufacturers lured them into the new mills and factories.“Most German immigrants settled in the middle western states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri.” With encouragement to move west from the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered public land free to immigrants who intended to become citizens, German immigrants comprised a large portion of the pioneers moving west. “They were masterful farmers and they built prosperous farms.”Now, as we approach the turn of a new century, technology is once again transforming the way Americans live and shaping the climate for new immigrants of the modern age. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download