Immigration Dbq Essay

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The United States was a growing, prosperous nation in the 1800’s. They were the shining example of democracy and freedom for citizens. As people watched the US grow, they wanted to be a part of a great country. Immigrants flooded in from everywhere around the world to become American citizens as shown in Document A where the US was compared to Noah’s ark and shows immigrants escaping taxes, kings and opression. The American citizens began to express frustration with the overwhelming amount of immigrants coming to the United States. Although the United States was a prime example of freedom, it was not perfect. The United States still had large amounts of racial tension and minority races were heavily discriminated on and that resulted in eve …show more content…

As the immigrants poured in and took jobs wherever they could find, finding a job became much harder. American citizens became infuriated that the immigrants were taking their jobs. This issue also stems back to racism as the main reason they were upset was that a minority was taking jobs. The American citizens feared that they would in essence be replaced by the immigrants. It almost became an every man for himself situation. Some protested by boycotting work due to the amount of immigrants in their workplace. Everyone just wanted to be able to support their respective family and with more jobs being taken up it was hard for Americans to do that. Immigrants also still had a hard time finding a job. Even when they did, they worked just as hard if not harder than others, but got paid much less than the average white male. The discriminatory actions that occurred in this time period not only happened in public, but in the workplace and essentially everywhere. The reduced amount of jobs made American Citizens call for immigration legislation. In Document C for example, the National People’s party called for new legislation and denounced what they called “ineffective laws”. People like James Bryce in Document B, called for a temporary back and forth of immigrants to bring them in when needed and push them out when not needed. The Government would eventually respond to these issues as tensions continued to rise in the United