Immigration Dbq Essay

Immigration DBQ
Through 1860-1915 America’s economy was flourishing. This was a result of increased immigration and the industrialization of the United States. With this oncoming wave of immigrants many different outlooks were cast upon them. Most of these outlooks were predominantly negative. Overall, the American attitude towards immigrants was extremely harsh and judgmental, this affected their societal conditions through, terrible working conditions, bad living conditions, and restricting their rights. During the industrialization of America most immigrants had jobs in factories. These factories often had horrible working conditions, bad pay, and long hours. Most American’s didn’t bat an eye at these conditions because of their deep-rooted

These tenements were apartment complexes that had 3 or more families living in them at a time. These often-had terrible living conditions as having all these families meant that they were breeding grounds of disease and vermin. These living conditions are shown in Document D which is a photograph of a tenement at Baxter Street. Many Americans had felt as if these living conditions were the fault of immigrants. This was shown by the Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration Library of Congress in which stated that immigrants were “declining to go where they might be wanted because of they are neither physically nor mentally fitted to go to these undeveloped parts of our country and do as did the early settlers form northern Europe.” (Doc G). This essentially created a scapegoat to not help to improve immigrant living conditions because of Americans felt as if they were deserving of them. This displays how immigrants living conditions were worsened through most American’s xenophobic attitudes towards

The first instance of a significant law’s passing in which restricted immigrants arrival to the US was that of the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act stated that “until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming Chinese laborers to the United States be... to remain within the United States.” (Doc C). History.com states that the reason that congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act was in order to ““placate worker demands and assuage concerns about maintaining white racial purity."(History.com Staff). This displays how because of America’s xenophobia many Chinese immigrants’ societal conditions were worsened. After the Chinese Exclusion Act’s passing the Immigration act of 1891 was created. This act stated that “the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States… assisted by others to come” (Doc I). With the passing of this act immigrants’ societal conditions were worsened even more because of the Chinese Exclusion act was essentially expanded onto many more immigrants. The aforementioned information displays how American’s negative outlooks on immigrants worsened societal conditions for them