Friday, January 27, 2012

immigration 1880-1920

http://www.path.coe.uh.edu/seminar2002/week2/immigrant_facts.pdf



This document provides facts and figures of who, how many, when and most importantly why so many people immigrated to America during the time period of 1880 to 1920.

As Anti-Chinese riots began in the late 1870's and early 1880's this put in place a Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, prohibiting Chinese labourers to enter America for ten years. After this act was lifted however, only certain Chinese workers and their families were allowed to enter, but with strict regulations creating only a selected handful of people to become citizens. This began the age of the 'new immigrant.'

The document continues to detail that around 24 million people immigrated to America between 1880-1920, mostly coming from Eastern and Southern Europe. This was for a few different reasons, one being due to the industrialisation in Europe occurring, as the decline of agriculture increased. Mostly in places such as Russia, low wages, unemployment, disease and religion forced people to leave and try and discover the American dream, hoping for a better life.
It gives a mixed view of America for children to learn and may interpret in a few different ways. It says that the Russians found it difficult to settle into the American lifestyle due to the language barrier and the lack of Government trust rooting from their own country.  This could mean that America was slightly arrogant for not learning other languages and expecting other nations to learn to speak American, however the lack of trust within Governments could promote America as a better place as they fled to leave their own Government but also it makes America seem stable and secure.

Another way America could be interpreted as unethical is due to the immigrants having to work for low paid factory jobs. Although treated better than slaves, it still presents America undermining other national people due to them not being American and still treating them as second class citizens.

Due to the mix responses of putting in place boundaries for immigration, but also allowing people to enter America and 'take jobs, homes, etc' shows and tells American children that America has grown from a mixture - melting pot- of different nations, and today would be a different place if people had not immigrated for a better lifestyle, which establishes the America dream.

1 comment:

  1. Not very informative. Where is the document from? Which school? In which state? How do the children use it and what does that tell us? You need to do better.

    ReplyDelete