immigration

Examples of immigration in the following topics:

• Toward Immigration Restriction

  • The early 20th Century in the United States saw widespread racism targeting immigrants and the emergence of a “nativist” movement demanding favored status for established citizens over new immigrants.
  • Eugenics, a racially based pseudo-science, also fueled anti-immigrant sentiment.
  • The debate continued, though, and opponents of a literacy test called for the establishment of an immigration commission to focus on immigration as a whole.
  • This was a temporary measure and was followed by a further lowering of the immigrant quota to 2% in the Immigration Act of 1924, which also reduced the number of immigrants to 164,687.
  • It contributed to the anti-immigration movement and consequently, immigration quota legislation in the 1920s.

• Ellis Island

  • America's first federal immigration station was established in 1890 on Ellis Island.
  • The Federal Government assumed control of immigration on April 18, 1890, and Congress appropriated $75,000 to construct America's first Federal immigration station on Ellis Island.
  • Almost 450,000 immigrants were processed at the station during its first year.
  • Bureau of Immigration had processed 12 million immigrants .
  • The peak year for immigration at Ellis Island was 1907, with 1,004,756 processed immigrants.

• The Pull to America

  • While most immigrants were welcomed, Asians were not.
  • Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was the gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the United States as the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954.
  • The federal government assumed control of immigration on April 18, 1890, and Congress appropriated $75,000 to construct America's first federal immigration station on Ellis Island.
  • Civil War, some states started to pass their own immigration laws.
  • Danes had comparably low immigration rates due to a better economy; after 1900 many Danish immigrants were Mormon converts who moved to Utah.

• Nativism

  • In the United States, anti-immigration views have a long history.
  • Responding to these demands, opponents of the literacy test called for the establishment of an immigration commission to focus on immigration as a whole.
  • This bill was the first to place numerical quotas on immigration.
  • Though this bill did not fully restrict immigration, it considerably curbed the flow of immigration into the United States.
  • Illegal immigration, principally from across the United States–Mexico border, is the more pressing concern for most immigration reductionists.

• Immigration to the U.S.

  • Large scale immigration resumed in the 1830s from Britain, Ireland, Germany, and other parts of western Europe, and the pace of immigration accelerated in the 1840s and 1850s.
  • Between 1841 and 1850, immigration nearly tripled, totaling 1,713,000 immigrants.
  • In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese.
  • Male German and Irish immigrants also competed with native-born men.
  • One impetus for immigration was the Gold Rush of 1849, which brought thousands of immigrants from Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe to California.

• Nativism

  • Nativism was an anti-immigration movement which favored those descended from the inhabitants of the original thirteen colonies.
  • The large numbers of immigrants that came from dramatically different cultures during the middle of the 19th century sparked a number of anti-immigration movements.
  • Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Irish Catholic immigration.
  • The Nativists went public in 1854 when they formed the American Party, which was especially hostile to the immigration of Irish Catholics and campaigned for laws to require longer wait time between immigration and naturalization.
  • In 1856, Millard Fillmore was the American Party candidate for President and trumpeted anti-immigrant themes.

• Immigration Restriction League

  • The Immigration Restriction League called for restrictions on immigration of people from certain parts of the world.
  • It felt that these immigrants were threatening what they saw as the American way of life and the high wage scale.
  • They worried that immigration brought in poverty and organized crime at a time of high unemployment.
  • The goal of this bill, called "An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence in, the United States," was to reduce as much as possible the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe while increasing the number of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe (who the League thought were people with kindred values).
  • Potential immigrants were required to be able to read their own language.

• The Immigration Act of 1990

  • The Immigration Act of 1990 increased the number of immigrants permitted to enter the U.
  • The Act increased total, overall immigration to allow 700,000 immigrants to come to the U.S. per year for the fiscal years '92–'94, and 675,000 per year after that.
  • As of 2010, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 were immigrants or the children of immigrants.
  • Legal immigrants to the United States are now at their highest level ever, at just over 37 million legal immigrants.
  • Illegal immigration may be as high as 1.5 million per year, with a net of at least 700,000 illegal immigrants arriving every year.

• Immigrant Labor

  • Many of the economic gains in the United States during the 19th century were made possible by immigrant labor.
  • Male German and Irish immigrants also competed with native-born men.
  • Many immigrants were attracted to the United States by the availability of cheap farmland.
  • In particular, large numbers of German and Arab immigrants became farmers in the United States.
  • Describe the contribution immigration made to economic growth in 19th-century America

• The Immigration Act of 1965

  • The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 changed national immigration regulations to a model based on skills and family relationships.
  • The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler Act) changed the nation's laws regulating immigration.
  • The act had a profound and long-term affect on immigration into the United States and, thus, on American demographics.
  • However, debate continues to wage between ideas of assimilation (that immigrants should adopt white, English-speaking American   culture), multiculturalism (the idea that groups should retain their distinctive identities and pursue political representation as groups), the economic impact of immigration, the impact of illegal immigration, and the role of languages other than English in public life.
  • The Johnson administration supported the reform of the immigration laws, proposed by Democratic congressmen.