Immigrants Turn the United States into a mixture of ethnicity

        For most new immigrants, life was a struggle; yet life in America still offered opportunities that their old countries did not. One of the most important opportunities was the opportunity for their children to receive a free public education. In the schools, immigrant children learned English and skills they needed to integrate into mainstream America (american). Despite the hardship encountered by their parents, many families were able to achieve a better life for themselves as their children accepted responsibilities to care for the family’s needs that would typically be handled by the adults. For example, because immigrants’ children often mastered the English language more quickly than their parents, they handled important chores like shopping and completing forms for housing, health care, etc.

Immigrants came to the US for the freedom to practice their religions, which was denied to them in countries outside the US (bergen). Until about 1845, the Roman Catholic population of the United States was a small minority of mostly English Catholics who were often quite socially prominent. But when several years of devastating potato famines led millions of Irish Catholics to flee to the United States in the mid-1840s, the face of American Catholicism began to change drastically and permanently. In the space of fifty years, the Catholic population in the United States suddenly transformed from a tight-knit group of landowning, educated aristocrats into an incredibly diverse mass of urban and rural immigrants who came from many different countries, spoke different languages, held different social positions and emphasized different parts of their Catholic heritage (nhc). This brought people from different heritages and statuses together to form a diverse America.

         Some immigrants were more accepted by the established population in the US than others. The English were most readily accepted because they spoke the same language, practiced the same religions, and were from the same culture. The Germans, Hungarians, Swedish, and most other immigrants who did not speak the same language, had a harder time being accepted by the people who had settled in the US before them. The Americans feared that the immigrant newcomers might take their jobs and work for lower wages. They even worried that if the immigrants succeeded they could displace them in the social ranks (nhc). One way in which these prejudices were expressed was through the popular belief that the "new immigrants," coming as they did from despotic monarchies, were incapable of understanding democracy, living by it, or taking part in it. As the years went on the established Americans realized that the immigrants were helping the economy by working for lower wages and filling jobs many other people didn’t want. Therefore, the tossed salad metaphor is an appropriate explanation for how the immigrants became a true part of the US. Although they had to over come some obstacles along the way, they were able to integrate into the US, and change the culture forever.  

Without the immigrants the US would be a country without any diversity in culture, religion, and lifestyle. The immigrants helped the US economy grow, which then helped the US become a more profitable country. If it weren’t for the immigrants, many industries that grew and prospered in the 20th Century would have not been able to survive. The tossed salad metaphor explains how the immigrants helped the economy and diversity of the US. The immigrants were able to mix in with the Americans while keeping their own cultures alive.