The effects of immigration into the US in the 19th Century.

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Jasmine Fortune

US History Period 5

January 4, 2012

Immigration Essay

Coming to America

The United States today is so diverse with a variety of different cultures and religions. But most Americans ancestors came to the U.S from another country. Between 1880 and 1920 people immigrated from all directions from all over the world. Most settled in large cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Boston. Previous immigrants had come to America from western and northern Europe and were often well educated, spoke English and had useful skills they could use. Immigrants coming from Europe came from Southern and Eastern Europe tended to be Catholic or Jewish, poor, unskilled and did not know English. Their ways and culture were very different from native-born Americans already here. Immigration in the 19th century resulted in political, economic, and social shifts in the U.S.

Immigration in the 19th century resulted in political shifts in the U.S.  For example,“Nativism”. It impacted politics in the mid-19th century because of the large inflows of immigrants from cultures that were somewhat different from the existing American culture. Nativists objected primarily to Irish Roman Catholics .Nativist movements included the Know Nothing or American Party of the 1850s, the Immigration Restriction League of the 1890s, the anti-Asian movements in the West, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.The peak year for admission of new immigrants was 1907, when approximately 1.3 million people entered the country legally. Within a decade, the outbreak of  caused a decline in immigration. In 1917, Congress enacted legislation requiring immigrants over 16 to pass a literacy test, and in the early  immigration quotas were established. The Immigration Act of 1924 created a quota system that restricted entry to 2 percent of the total number of people of each nationality in America as of the 1890 national census. This system favored immigrants from Western Europe-but unfortunately prohibited immigrants from Asia. So no one from Asia was allowed to enter the U.S.

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Immigration in the 19th century resulted in economic shifts in the U.S. With many lands being available in the U.S there was a strong demand for workers. The Expansion in the west became the gold mine of the 19th century. For this very reason that thousands of individuals, both internal and international begins to settled in the west in search of a better opportunity. Therefore, politicians had to formulate many laws that pertained to the welfare of the newcomers, and also to control the massive numbers of immigrants that were crossing the US border. While the America economy, demographic, social and political ...

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