Essay On Immigration In The 1920s

The 1920’s was an interesting time in American history. This era was also known as the roaring twenties. Although it is remembered as a fond time before the Great Depression there was also a lot of conflicts arising, Cultural conflicts in particular were at the center. Prohibition and Immigration were two of the main cultural conflicts during this time period.

Also, in the course book on pages 611, it mentions how even though the conditions were bad in America, the Jews that came from Russia appreciated that America was a safe haven. I did some research and found a map titled, “Immigration to the U.S. in the Late 1800s”, by National Geographic Society. In this map, you can see the amount of immigrants coming into the United States from different locations. As you can see, America was slowly

After all of these drama in the south, a lot of African Americans decided it was time to move on to the North. When they move to the North it did not stop them from the “racial prejudice” however they were free to apply for lower jobs . Because of the shortage in the job market during World War 1 in 1917 the white laborers had to also compete with the blacks. With the competing of employment and housing it brought “racial violence” in East St. Louis . Chicago faced a white race riot in the year of 1919 where Irish and Polish laborers were killing men in black hoods

Founded by colonists, settlers and pioneers, the United States can be defined as a land of immigrants. But public opinion on immigration has changed dramatically in the past decades. In the 1920s, the majority of these immigrants originate from Europe, while immigrants in the United States today include a large percentage of those coming from Asia and Latin America (Chow and Keating). Immigration issues made division in the general public, especially among politicians. The greatest controversial subject in the immigration issue is the subject of illegal immigration. For example, immigration reform supporters block a street on Capitol Hill on Thursday, August 1, 2013, in protest against immigration policies and the House’s inability to pass a bill that contains a pathway to citizenship ("The Facts on Immigration Today.").

The number of immigrant to America reached 1.25 million and had a big tendency to increase. Americans began to doubt the government’s open door policy. Under pressure of the public, Immigration Act was passed on February 1917. Why American started feeling “angry” toward those new immigrants? The answers are: they were often poor; many of them were illiterate and had a big different cultural and religious background.

People began to realize that many of the immigrants were not of the highest class or did not have many values. They also noticed that this less than stellar crowd was beginning to cost domestic Americans jobs-- as mentioned in document C. The point of view of this author seems to be of the working class whose jobs are being taken by the foreigners willing to work for cheap. This is similar to the current debate on illegal immigration and the number of jobs being occupied by illegal aliens. By 1895, even the African Americans had began a political fight against immigrants (Document D).

The United States experienced an influx of immigrants between the 1890’s to the 1920’s. Immigrants entered the United States from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. From these demographic shifts we can also see that there were changed in the United States attitudes towards recent immigrants. These attitudes are grounded in racialized notions of foreign peoples and African Americans. Nativist notions are set in ideas of whiteness and different factors make Eastern Europe and Southern Europe immigrants not quite white.

When the outsiders made the journey to Ellis Island, they were expecting the United States to be a safe haven compared to the turmoil that sliced Europe into the Allies and Central Powers; instead, they were thrust into the tumultuous culture of the States during the war. Immigrants had to figure out how to make the shift from supporting radical ideals to living in a democratic country. Even then, they also needed jobs. It was not uncommon for the only available jobs for these migrants were those that would require them to be berated for being “scabs.” The increase in working radical foreigners (Document C) paired with the radical ideals they brought from their home countries made it rather difficult for them to blend in with American lifestyles.

Did the benefits of the immigration boom in the late 1800s outweigh the drawbacks? During the 1800s, many people migrated to urban areas because they wanted jobs and land. Many people thought that migrating to urban areas would be like a perfect dream, however they were disappointed when they realized that the benefits of migration did not outweigh the drawbacks. During the late 1800s, millions of immigrants were coming to the United States. Most of the immigrants came from Europe.

The year 1919 or to say the early period during the 20th century is also known as the First Red Scare in the history of the United States of America. There was a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism all over the United States, which was influenced by the Russian Revolution as well as the Worldwide Communist Revolution. Labor strikes, walkouts, social disorder, race riots, murders and much more violence had created chaos and paranoia throughout the nation. The threat of communist revolution in the United States following the World War I implied radical actions of American organized labor along with Bolshevism created tough challenges for maintaining social order as well as led to interracial violence among the whites and blacks. The Seattle

There were many groups living in the United States between 1860 and 1900 and most of the groups we can categorize people into had very different viewpoints. The main groups that most can be categorized into are the wealthy, the common people, the Indians and the Chinese. Starting with the wealthy they looked at the west as a big fat paycheck, the wealth folks went out west and bought up lots of land and production and monopolized, while the common people competed with these big companies for free and cheap land because they were the poor back east and came out west with hopes of finding gold while mining or getting rich off abundant crop land or maybe it was some common women who came out west because they were allowed to purchase land out west. The Indians were native to the west and after immigration started some of the bigger tribes fought back but most tribes were too small and were forced by the American

This reminded them too much of a king so they were worried about being controlled. To stop from Catholics from having too much sway in America, Americans started treating the them as less than people. Jenkins used the comparison of the prejudice in the 19th century to the prejudice against blacks in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This comparison makes it really easy for people in modern times to understand what it was like to be Catholic back in the 19th century. Catholics were treated as less than people.

While the events described in Arc of Justice were occuring, America was dealing with ever increasing racial tensions. These were not just the typical black and white tensions that many people characterize the time period with, but tensions between self-described “native Americans” and the new waves of immigrants coming over from places such as Ireland and Italy. Sources such as Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, showcase how these “new immigrants” were perceived as “[the new immigrants are] the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races.” Tensions were building across the country in the early 20th century, with “the widespread notion that hordes of undesirable ethnic minorities were about to swamp the nation’s social structure, destroying the cultural purity and intellectual standards [of America].” (Parrish, Anxious Decades, pg. 111)

In 1877 America was known as the melting pot of the world because everyone that lived there was a descendent of immigrants. Englishmen traveled to America to create the colonies and this was the start of people finding new opportunity in America. Salves were imported to the colonies to work on plantations. The Federal government declared two years of registry to make it harder for immigrants to become American citizens. Federalists wanted to control aliens, so they made the sedition acts.

America’s Diverse Population In the nineteenth century, rates of immigration across the world increased. Within thirty years, over eleven million immigrants came to the United States. There were new types of people migrating than what the United States were used to seeing as well. Which made people from different backgrounds and of different race work and live in tight spaces together; causing them to be unified.