The New Immigration

In the half century after the civil war immigration exceeded twenty-six million- five times greater than in the previous fifty years and three times greater than in the previous two and a half centuries. Up to 1880 or so immigrants came predominantly from northern and western Europe. Thereafter a growing majority—85 percent by 1914—originated in southern and eastern Europe, more particularly Austria—Hungary, Italy, and Russia. This so-called ‘new immigration’ brought to the U. S. a bewildering variety of unfamiliar types : Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians; Finns, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, and Ruthenians ; east European Jews; Portuguese, Italians, and Greeks; Turks, Armenians, Syrians, and Lebanese.

The new immigration from southern and eastern Europe resulted basically from the same economic changes that had earlier affected the north and west of the continent—a massive population increase, the collapse of the old agricultural order, the industrial revolution. However, many emigrated to avoid compulsory, military service. Others fled religious persecution, notably the Russian Jews forced out by Czarist pogroms like those of 1881 and 1904. The transition from sail to steam, virtually complete by 1870, helped swell the exodus by robbing the Atlantic crossing of its worst terrors. Steamship companies did not, as contemporaries frequently alleged, lure Europeans peasants from their homes with promises of well-paid American jobs; that was not only illegal but also unnecessary. But competition for steerage traffic certainly stimulated emigration, especially through the expansion of the prepaid passage system. In 1901 it was estimated that between 40 and 65 percent of immigrants traveled on tickets prepaid by their relatives and friends in the U.S. or brought with remittances received from them.

To a far greater extent than the old immigrant groups, the new immigrants congregated in America’s industrial cities. Agriculture held little appeal for them, since they lacked the capital to begin farming and was attracted by the high wages obtainable in factories, mines and mills. Their preference for urban life gave American cities a strongly foreign flavor. By 1910 one third of the population of the twelve largest cities was foreign born and another third was made up of the children of immigrants. New York had more Italians than Naples, more Germans than Hamburg, twice as many Irish as ...

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Immigration Restriction

The movement for immigration restriction, was aimed not only at ending immigration but at selective controls to exclude undesirables, especially those deemed inferior and unassimilable. Trade Unions supported the demand. They saw the new immigrants, with their low living standards as a threat to the American working man, and mistakenly believed that the great majority had been recruited as contract labourers by American employers to break strikes and hold down wages.

But the spearhead of the restrictionist movement was the Immigration Restriction League, founded in 1894 by a group of race-conscious Boston Patricians. Arguing that the Anglo-Saxon element in the American population was in danger of being swamped by lesser breeds, the League campaigned vigorously for a literacy test as a means of excluding most of the new immigrants.

Yet a vocal liberal minority was reluctant to abandon the long-standing tradition of asylum. They felt that the literacy test was a gauge of opportunity rather than of ability. These considerations led Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson successively to veto literacy test bills. Yet from the 1880’s onwards the immigration laws became increasingly complex and restrictive. The first federal immigration law in 1882 debarred convicts, lunatics, paupers and persons likely to become a public charge. The first of a series of Chinese Exclusion Acts was passed the same year. Thereafter the list of excluded classes was successively enlarged. By 1907 it included contract labourers, persons suffering contagious diseases, polygamists, prostitutes, anarchists, and persons advocating the violent overthrow of the US government. Ellis Island, which replaced Castle Garden in 1892 as New York’s immigrant landing depot, was given the task of detecting and excluding undesirables. In fact only about 2 percent of the arrivals were found inadmissible and sent back to Europe. But all immigrants were subjected to searching interrogation and scrutiny and many thousands were annually detained for inquiry for varying periods before being finally admitted to the Promised Land.

In the 1930’s

Immigration which had exceeded four millions in the 1920’s, dropped to barely half a million in the 1930’s, the lowest total for more than a century. This was the consequence, less of the immigration-quota system, than of the Depression. Few foreigners wanted to come to an economically crippled country. In some years more people left the US than entered it. Perhaps half the new arrivals were refugees, especially German and Austrian Jews, fleeing from Nazi persecution. They included some eminent figures : Albert Einstein, the novelist Thomas Mann, the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, the theologian Paul Tillich, the composer Paul Hindemith. The refugee influx would have been larger but for the fact that, with millions out of work, Congress refused to grant asylum to more people than the quota system permitted.

1945-1980

Immigration between 1940 and 1980 amounted to nearly eleven million. The national – origins quota system introduced in the 1920’s remained nominally the basis of public policy until 1965 but was progressively diluted and ultimately undermined. The first exception to the system was the war brides act of 1946, permitting the entry of some 150,000 foreign-born wives and fiancées of American servicemen, together with their 25,000 children. Next, in an attempt to relieve the massive refugee problems created by world war 2, congress passed two Displaced Persons Acts (1948,1950) which together provided for the admission of 410,000 persons, chiefly from central and eastern Europe, and the Refugee Relief Act (1952) permitting the entry of a further 214,000 people, most of them escapees from behind the Iron Curtain. Subsequently a series of special laws was passed and obscure legal provisions invoked to cope with fresh waves of refugees and deportees; by such means 35,000 ‘freedom fighters’ were admitted after the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and 650,000 Cubans after Castro came to power in 1959. In all refugees accounted for a fifth of the total immigration between 1945 and 1965.

Immigration Laws

Pre-World War 1

The first federal immigration law in 1882 debarred convicts, lunatics, paupers, and people likely to become a public charge. The list of Chinese Exclusion Acts was passed the same year. By 1907 it included contract labourers, persons suffering from contagious diseases, polygamists, prostitutes, anarchists, and persons advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government.

The Literacy Tests (1917)

The Literacy Test was designed to exclude immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, but had manifestly failed to do so.

National Origins (1921-4)

Congress hastily passed an Emergency Quota Act in 1921. The first measure to impose quantitative restrictions on immigration, it set a limit of 357,000 a year and established quotas for each eligible national group at 3 percent of the number of foreign-born residents in the united states in 1910.That meant a drastic reduction in the number of new immigrants. The National Origins Act of 1924 tilted the balance still further against them.

Displaced Persons Act (1948-50)

In an attempt to relieve the massive refugee problems created by world war 2, Congress passed two displaced persons acts.

Refugee Relief Act (1952)

The refugee relief act permitted the entry of a further 214,000 people, most of them escapees from behind the Iron Curtain.

Immigration Restriction League

The immigration restriction league was founded in 1894 by a group of race-conscious Boston patricians. Arguing that the ‘Anglo Saxon’ element in the American population was in danger of being swamped by lesser breeds, the league campaigned vigorously for a literacy test as a means of excluding most of the new immigrants.

Irish Immigrants

Irish immigrants feared the economic competition of freed Negroes flocking to the north, while northern businessmen, especially those with southern connections, were apprehensive lest southerners react to abolitionist agitation by boycotting Northern products.

In the New York draft riots of July 1863 a largely Irish mob terrorized the city for three days, lynching blacks, destroying property and burning down a Negro orphan asylum.

Urban concentration was most marked among the Irish. Despite their overwhelmingly rural origin only about 8 percent settled on the land.

City bosses were usually men of little education and of a recent immigrant origin (usually Irish), preferred not to seek political office themselves but to operate behind the scenes.

Jewish Immigrants

There was increasing hostility to another prominent element in the new immigration, the Jews. Vicious racist slurs and anti-Semitic cartoons appeared in the popular press; Jews found themselves increasingly excluded from clubs, hotels, summer resorts, and private schools.