Immigration+(1-7)

=Immigration=

media type="file" key="podcast 1.mp3"

Late 1800's pattern and Early 1900's Patterns
Jeff Bressler Immigration jumped to a new height in the first decade of the 20th century. It went from 3.5 million in the 1890's, to a high of 9 million at the start of the 1900's. These immigrants usually had similar reasons for coming to the United States from places such as Europe, Latin America, and Canada. Some of those reasons were escaping persecution, lack of opportuinity, famine, and/or contract labor agreements. Many crowded into the many growing cities looking to start a better life. Others shuffled into steel mills, coal mines, textile mills, needle trades, and pushcart markets for job opportuinities. However, most jobs included dangerous conditions and very low wages. As a result, the immigrants could only afford overcrowded, and unsanitary, urban housing. The low wages allowed businesses owners to bring in more money. Since they did not pay the immigrants very well, their corporations grew twice as fast. Factors like these led to the rise of big business. That is until workers started forming unions to rebel against unfair work environments (see Strikes).

Angel Island
Parag Karkhanis The Angel Island Immigration Station was the western counterpart to Ellis Island. It served as the landing point for Asian Immigrants crossing the Pacific to get to America and California. The Asians were promised to work in "gold mountains," but when they reached the US they were forbidden to work in gold mines and had to work hard labor jobs such as constructing railroad, fishing, and other jobs white Americans wanted more pay for. The Island processed over 175,000 people. Many Asians, like eastern Europeans in Ellis Island, were held in the detention centers on Angel Island. Some waited for up to two years.

Ellis Island
Parag Karkhanis In 1892, Ellis Island became the central point of immigrants on the east side of the country. It was the main entrance for most Europeans. Since many laws were in place, there were constantly detainees on the island. It was the eastern counterpart to Angel Island; instead of Chinese Immigrants being persecuted, it was the Eastern and Southern Europeans. Ellis Island's immigration stations were shut down and moved back to manhattan in 1954.

Immigration Laws
Parag Karkhanis

Chinese Exclusion Act
After Chinese were flooding in from their collapsing economy, they landed in California and took over the gold rush. White americans were angry that the Chinese took all the gold and business. They worked for longer hours and lower wages than white Americans, so the prospectors and mine runners chose to hire then to save money. Discrimination against the Chinese led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act was later added on to include many different Asian countries including Japan, Because of the act, which lasted until 1925, lots of Chinese were separated from their families, stuck in America, and overall in immigration trouble.

Immigration Act of 1917
This immigration act was implemented because of the massive population increase in the US. The amount of immigrants comming into the country grew to 800,000. The government (mainly congress) saw the need for reform and wrote a new act the excluded: "all idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons; persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; paupers; professional beggars; vagrants; persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living; persons who have been convicted of or admit having committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude; polygamists, or persons who practice polygamy or believe in or advocate the practice of polygamy; anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States." (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAE1917A.htm) They also added a literacy test to the immigration process with this clause, "aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English language, or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish." (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAE1917A.htm) The laws made it impossible for Asians to come in to the U.S., incredibly difficult for Eastern Europeans (Germans and Russians because of WWI), and difficult for uneducated western and northern Europeans.

Immigration led to the rapid industrialization of the U.S. due to cheap labor and lots of manpower. Today, immigrants from mexico provide the working class for jobs that the U.S. citizens refuse to do. This is a subject of controversy, however, just like it was back then, because the same issue of "immigrants stealing jobs" is a big one.

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