Immigration 1
AJ07002
Introduction to American
Studies: Topics in Culture
Spring Semester 2012:
Week 11 – Immigration
Immigration 2
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programu
Vzdělávání pro
konkurenceschopnost
CZ.1.07/2.2.00/15.0188
Immigration 3
Centrum severoamerických studií
Center for North American Studies
Immigration to the U.S.
Pre-1860
Northern and western Europe
Predominately Protestant, relatively prosperous
Irish
1860-1870
Relatively little immigration due to the Civil War
1870-1914
Immigration from Central and Eastern Europe
Catholics, Jews, Orthodox
Relatively poor
Attempts to restrict immigration from outside Europe
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Compact with Japan in 1905
Elllis Island (1892-1954) – more than 12 million immigrants passed through
1914-1960s
WWI, WII and the Great Depression meant less interest in emigrating from
Europe
American attitudes and laws towards immigrants began to change in the
1920s
1924 Immigration Act established quotas that limited immigration from Europe
and basically ended it from all other parts of the world
Envisioning the American Melting Pot
“What, then, is the American, this new man? . . . Here
individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of
men, whose labours and posterity will once day cause
great changes in the world” (J. Hector St. John de
Crevecoeur, 1782).
Early 19th Century (1820-1860)
The “old” immigrants (mostly from western and northern
Europe, Asia)
Territorial expansion
Rapid industrialization
Increased social stratification
City slums
Nativism
Calling again for the American Style
Melting to Begin
“In this continent-asylum of all nations,--the energy of .
. . all the European tribes,--of the Africans, and of the
Polyneasians—will construct a new race, a new religion,
a new state, a new literature” (?, 1845).
Late 19th Century (1880s-1915)
The “new” immigrants (mostly from eastern and
southern Europe)
Closing of the frontier
Continued industrial growth
Labor unions
Resurgence of nativism (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,
Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907)
Statue of Liberty
The French government commissioned the Statue as a
gift to the people of the United States for the centennial
celebration of the American Revolution in 1876. The
purpose of the statue was to remember French support
of the revolution and to honor the two countries shared
commitment to liberty and democracy.
While the French government committed to finance the
statue, it was left to the American people to raise the
necessary funds for the statue’s base in New York
harbor. When fundraising floundered in the U.S., Joseph
Pulitizer, publisher of The World, a New York
newspaper, began an editorial campaign denouncing the
city’s wealthy and middle classes for failing to support
the project. Fundraising for the pedestal was not
completed until the summer of 1885. The Statue was
finally erected in July 1886, ten years after the
centennial celebration.
It was the delay in the fundraising campaign that gave
advocates of European immigration the opportunity first to
reconfigure the statue’s meaning. At an 1883 Art auction
for the statue, Emma Lazarus, a published poet and one of
the founders of the Society for the Improvement and
Colonization of East European Jews, read her poem
imagining the statue as a beacon drawing the oppressed of
the world to the land of Freedom. Born into a very wealthy
fourth-generation New York Jewish family, Lazarus was an
outspoken advocate of Jewish and Immigrant concerns,
while the Society that she had helped to found was a
Zionist organization committed both to aiding Immigrant
Jews and to raising international concern about anti-Jewish
pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Lazarus died just a year after her first public reading of
“the New Colussus.” By 1901, however, advocates of
Eastern European immigration had succeeded in having her
poem inscribed on the statue’s base and over the
generations since the Statue of Liberty has become a
symbol not only of the role of Immigrant families and their
descendants in nation's history but of the Immigrant
Narrative itself.
Statue of Liberty
“THE NEW COLOSSUS”
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to
land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall
stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes
command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”
cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your
poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to
me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
With this poem at its base, the
statue has become the most
recognizable symbol of the U.S.
commitment to immigration and
to the granting of democratic
rights to the oppressed of the
world.
However, the symbolic
association of the statue with
immigration was the intention not
of those who originally proposed
the statue but of immigrant
advocates who successfully
commandeered the statue for
their political agenda in the years
after it was first proposed.
Reporting on the Melting Process
“Yes East and West, and North and South, the palm and
the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the
cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them
with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build
the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God” (Israel
Zangwill, 1908).
Czech immigration
Three major waves:
1880-1920
1945-1950
Post-1968
About 400,000 immigrants between 1850 and 1950
Three major centers:
Chicago
Cleveland and New York City also important
Chicago had more Czechs than these two combined
Upper Midwest: Nebraska, Iowa
Predominately Bohemian
Texas
Predominately Moravian
Early immigrants were primarily agriculture but by 1910
only 14% had a farming background
Czech Ancestry
Post-war immigration to the U.S.
Since the 1960s immigration has opened up to all
parts of the world using a quota system
Majority of new immigrants come from Latin America
and Asia
In 2000, 14.5 million, or about half, of the nation’s 28.4
million foreign-born residents were born in Latin America.
The size of the foreign-born population from Latin America
has grown rapidly. In
1960, about 900,000 (or 9 percent of the total foreign-born
population) came from Latin America.
By 1990, this population numbered 8.4 million, or 44 percent
of the total.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Percent of Foreign Born
Population in the U.S.
1850
1870
1890
1910
1930
1950
1970
1990
2000
Foreign Born Population by Region of Birth
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Europe L. Amer. Asia Other
1970
1980
1990
2000
Countries of origin: Top 10
1920 2000 1820-1996
Country % of
immigrants
Country % of
immigrants
Country No. of immigrants
Germany 12.1 Mexico 27.6 Germany 7,142,393
Italy 11.6 Philippines 4.3 Mexico 5,542,625
Soviet Union 10.1 China 3.8 Italy 5,427,298
Poland 8.2 India 3.5 U. K. 5,225,701
Canada 8.2 Cuba 3.4 Ireland 4,778,159
U.K. 8.2 Vietnam 3.0 Canada 4,423,066
Ireland 7.5 El Salvador 2.7 Soviet Union 3,752,811
Sweden 4.5 South Korea 2.5 Austria 1,841,068
Austria 4.1 Dominican Rep. 2.4 Hungary 1,673,579
Mexico 3.5 Canada 2.4 Philippines 1,379,403
Immigration resulted, and continues to result, from
both push and pull factors
"Push"-Factors
Ireland:
The Enclosure: English Protestant Landlords force subsistence tenant farmers off of estates so
that they could raise cattle for the English market.
The Potato Famine: Between 1845 and 1855 more than a million Irish peasants die from
malnutrition after potato blight wipes out 10 years of potato crops, the staple of the Irish diet.
As a result of British colonial policy in Ireland, 5 million Irish immigrated to the U.S. between
1815-1920.
China:
Growing British Imperial influence leads to increased taxes, social disruption that impoverish the
poor, restrict economic opportunity for large portions of the population.
Imperialism and the Market Revolution:
Ireland, Eastern Europe, China & Japan were all located on the Periphery of the Industrial
Revolution and the Age of Colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lacking
capital/financial systems necessary to compete with British and American economies, these
countries, along with the rest of the non-Euro-American world, became sources of natural
resources and low-wage labor for those economies.
"Pull" Factors
Industrial development means jobs at wages significantly higher wages than those available in
the immigrants' homelands.
Employers seeking cheap labor arrange affordable passage. For example, English workers offered
Indentured Servitude in the 17th century and the credit-ticket system in the 18th century;
following the Civil War, southern planters recruit Chinese labor to compete with freedpeople in
an effort to keep down the cost of agricultural labor.
Immigrants and Labor Recruiters Tell Stories of the Instant Riches Available in the U.S.
Immigrant responses ranged from resistance to acculturation
Just about every immigrant groups was the belief that economic success
was the key to becoming American.
This idea we might call Earned Citizenship-- the belief that hard work and
loyalty to one's new country will convince native-born (white) Americans to
treat immigrants and their communities as full members of the nation.
Sport (baseball and football) played an important role in the second
generation
Many famous players were clearly “immigrant”
Schools as a tool for acculturation in the second generation
Language
The Pledge of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic
for which it stands: one Nation [under God], indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for
all.
First used in 1892, made official (i.e. put in law) in 1942, “under God” added in 1954 – currently
the subject of a 1st Amendment legal challenge
Resistance: It’s important to remember that acculturation was not the goal
of every immigrant.
Many came to the U.S. to make their fortune and then to return home.
More than half of Chinese immigrants to California and Japanese immigrants to
Hawaii before 1930 returned to their homeland.
The return rate for Italian migrants was 60%.
Image of “streets paved with gold” supported in film, literature, photographs
and newspaper reports
Graduation from the Ford English School
Swedish housemaids, late 19th century
Reality of the immigrant experience could be quite different
The next morning, early, Bartolo told us to go out and pick rags and get bottles.
He gave us bags and hooks and showed us the ash barrels. On the streets where
the fine houses are the people are very careless and put out good things, like
mattresses and umbrellas, clothes, hats and boots. We brought all these to
Bartolo and he made them new again and sold them on the sidewalk; but mostly
we brought rags and bones. The rags we had to wash in the backyard and then
we hung them to dry on lines under the ceiling in our room. The bones we kept
under the beds till Bartolo could find a man to buy them. Most of the men in our
room worked at digging the sewer.
Rocco Corresca
December 1902
At seven o'clock we all sit down to our machines and the boss brings each one
the pile of work that he or she is to finish during the day.... This pile is put
down beside the machine and as soon as a skirt is done it is laid on the other
side of the machine. Sometimes the work is not all finished by six o'clock and
then the one who is behind must work overtime.... The machines go like mad
all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my
haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it.... The
machines are all run by foot power and at the end of the day one feels so weak
that there is a great temptation to lie right down and sleep. But you must go
out and get air, and have some pleasure....
Adie Frowne
from The Independent, 1902
"Tenement Life in New York - Rag-pickers Court,
Mulberry Street" 1879
Institution-building
In many ways, though, the immigrant experience was more
collective than individual.
For most immigrants, their ability to survive and prosper in
the U.S. was based on their ability to build collective
organizations and strong communities: families, churches,
fraternal organizations, unions, businesses, and ethnic
enclaves. Within each of these institutions, we can find
elements of resistance and acculturation.
They were sites both for defending ethnic traditions and
solidarities and for claiming Americanness, either by
asserting their democratic rights or by demonstrating their
fitness to be included in American society (earned
citizenship).
Ethnic Niche Strategies
Central to the range of immigrant strategies for life in the U.S. was
the development of Ethnic Niches within the American Economy that
served as the basis for either immigrants to save money for their
eventual return home or as a springboard, usually for the next
generation, for entering parts of American life and business that had
previously been blocked to people of one’s ethnicity and race.
Why did specific immigrant groups tend to end up concentrated in
specific industries and occupations?
The reasons are myriad from the presence of specific skills and
experiences brought from the old country and the success of
individual entrepreneurs to anti-immigrant discrimination in other
parts of the economy.
What is important for our course is to pay attention to the ways that
ethnic niche strategies combined old world traditions and ethnic
solidarities with American aspirations and individualist ideals,
particularly the belief that hard work would enable immigrants to
earn the wealth and cultural attributes necessary to enter into
mainstream American society.
Ethnic identity in American society
While immigrants to the U.S. bring with them a sense of ethnic
identity and cultural values and traditions, it is within their
American experience and their interactions with both native
Americans and other members of other ethnic and racial groups that
their sense of identity-- of what means to be Irish, Jewish,
Japanese-- is remade.
Moreover, what it means to be Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese in
America is largely defined by distinguishing one group from another.
Drawing contrasts with the other is crucial to the development of ingroup
understanding of what makes one's group different from
others.
Use of “ethnic holidays”
St. Patrick’s Day – March 17 (Irish)
Columbus Day – October 12 (Italian)
Cinco de Mayo – May 5 (Mexican)
Martin Luther King Jr. Day – 3rd Monday in January (African Americans)
Casimir Pulaski Day (Illinois) – March 1 (Polish)
Christmas Variants:
Hanukkah
Kwanza
Lunar New Year – January/February (Asians)
Social Models in the History of
American Ethnic Relations
Ethnic Hierarchy
One-Way Assimilation
Cultural Pluralism
Group Separatism
Ethnic Hierarchy
The first immigration law passed by Congress in 1790
specified that only white immigrants were eligible for
naturalization.
The dominant group during the nineteenth and early
twentieth century was not simply white but also
Protestant and Anglo-Saxon.
In an age of eugenics, scientific racism, and social
Darwinism, the notion that northwestern Europeans were
innately superior gained wide currency.
The impoverished ghettos, barrios, and reservations are
evidence that ethnic hierarchy in a clearly racialized
form persists in practice if not law.
One-Way Assimilation
Assimilationist thinking does not deem minority groups to
be innately or biologically superior to the majority
group.
The professed goal is equality—but on terms that
presume the superiority, purity, and unchanging
character of the dominant culture.
When carried to its logical conclusion, the assimilationist
project demands “cultural genocide.”
The massive “Americanization” campaigns just before
World War I produced the concept of America as a
“melting pot: in which cultural differences would be
obliterated.
Cultural Pluralism
Cultural pluralists argue that cultural diversity is a
healthy and normal condition that does not preclude
equal rights and the mutual understandings about civic
responsibilities needed to sustain a democratic nation-
state.
The result of cultural pluralism can be compared to a
symphony, with each immigrant group represented as a
section of the orchestra.
In the 1980s discussions of cultural pluralism shifted from
focusing on various European cultures to focusing on
“non-white” groups (African Americans, Mexican
Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans).
Group Separatism
It originates in the desire of a culturally
distinctive or racialized group to withdraw as
much as possible from American society and
interaction with other groups.
It emanates from ethnocentric concerns about
the status and destiny of particular groups
(Amish and Hutterite communalism, Native
American tribalism, African American / mexican
American nationalism).
Current Responses to immigration
California’s proposition 187, passed in 1994
Police must check immigration status of anyone
arrested
No one may receive public benefits without proving
they are in the country legally
Including health services and education
Federal courts issued injunctions preventing the
implementation of the law. Democratic governor Gray
Davis dropped the state’s appeals in 1998, effectively
killing the law
English-only legislation
Border fence
In 2006, Congress passed a law authorizing the
construction 1,125 kilometers of fencing along the
border with Mexico
Existing border fences in Nogales,
Arizona and San Diego, California
New Arizona legislation
In April 2010, the Arizona legislature passed and its
governor signed a new law regarding “illegal”
immigration
Law makes failing to carry immigration papers a state
crime
It has been a federal offense since the 1940s
Requires police to ask about the immigration status of
anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” of being an
illegal immigrant
This case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court
AJ17050 – Sub-Arctic 40
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