AJ07002
Introduction to American Studies:
Topics in Culture
Immigration
Immigration 1
Immigration 2
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Immigration 3
Centrum severoamerických studií
Center for North American Studies
Vocabulary (Webster definitions)
 Emigrate (verb)
 to leave one's place of residence or country to live elsewhere
Emigrant (noun)
a person who leaves a country or region to live in another one
 Defect (verb)
 to leave a country, political party, organization, etc., and go to a
different one that is a competitor or an enemy
Émigré (noun)
a person who emigrates for political reasons
 Immigrate (verb)
 to enter and usually become established; especially: to come into
a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence
Immigrant (noun)
a person who comes to a country to live there
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Immigration has 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.
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).
Immigration to the U.S.
 Pre-1860
 Northern and western Europe
Predominately Protestant, relatively prosperous
Political émigrés from Central Europe after failed revolutions of 1848
Exception: 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
 Ellis 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
 John Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1815)
 Born in Caen, Normandy, he immigrated to America in 1755
 In 1782, he published Letters from An American Farmer
 Letter III:
 “What then is the American, this new man?...He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient
prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new
mode of life he has embraced, the new government he
obeys, and the new rank he holds. He has become an
American by being received in the broad lap of our great
Alma Mater. Here individuals of all races are melted
into a new race of man, whose labors and posterity will
one day cause great changes in the world. Americans
are the western pilgrims.” (emphasis added)
Early 19th Century (1820-1860)
 “Old” immigrants
 Mostly from western and northern Europe
 To a limited degree China
 Territorial expansion
 Rapid industrialization
 Increased social stratification
 City slums
 Nativism
The American River Ganges,
Harper’s Weekly, September, 1871 by Thomas Nast.
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An illustration from Puck magazine, 1882
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Calling again for the
American Style Melting to Begin
 “In this continent—asylum of all nations,--the
energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles &
Cossacks, & all the European tribes,—of the
Africans, & of the Polynesians—will construct
a new race, a new religion, a new State, a
new literature, which will be as vigorous as
the new Europe which came of the smelting
pot of the Dark Ages […]”
 The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. by William H.
Gilman et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960-
1982), vol. IX, 1843-1847, ed. by Ralph H. Orth and Alfred R. Ferguson (1971), pp. 299f.
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
 Ellis Island
Ellis Island
 From 1892 to 1924, Ellis Island was
America's largest and most active
immigration station, where over 12
million immigrants were processed.
 On average, the inspection process
took approximately 3-7 hours. For the
vast majority of immigrants, Ellis Island
truly was an “Island of Hope” - the first
stop on their way to new opportunities
and experiences in America.
 For the rest, it became the “Island of
Tears” - a place where families were
separated and individuals were denied
entry into this country.
 https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ellis-island/
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Where is Ellis Island?
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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 Pulitzer,
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 on a bronze
plaque inside the pedestal, 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.
“The fool pied piper” S. D. Ehrhart, (1862-1937), 1909
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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.
“Devastation” 2 October 1880 by George Frederick Keller,
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp
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Madison Grant: The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
 Madison Grant, New York lawyer, writer, member of the
board of the Bronx Zoo and the American Museum of Natural
History, wrote this book, one that would have enormous
implications for population history in the U.S.
 In the this book, Grant argued that discoveries in
archaeology, linguistics and genetics all showed that the
Nordic race, having begun its existence in the mountains of
southern Russia, migrated from there to their present locale
in northwest Europe. These people possessed superior
physical, psychological and neurological abilities and were
able to subdue inferior peoples in their way.
 According to Grant, it was this group, with their superior
intellect and general prowess, having passed through
Palestine, Greece and Rome, that was responsible for
Christ, and Greek and Roman civilizations.
 After settling in northwest Europe, they were the driving
force of the developments in Europe and were the major
early settlers into America. It was there work and
genius that resulted in the great American Republic.
 Grant argued that with the enormous influx of
immigrants into the U.S., the quality of the genetic
materials of the Nordics is being diluted and the U.S.
faces an inevitable decline in greatness.
The Immigration Act of 1924
• The arguments made by Grant were used in U.S.
Congress to pass the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act
of 1924, which effectively ended the great age of
European immigration into the U.S.
• The act represented the first major attempt to restrict
immigration into the United States. The
establishment of a quota system limited immigration
from southern and eastern Europe (primarily Jewish
and Slavic) while allowing significant immigration
from northern and western Europe. Asians were
specifically excluded from immigration.
Anti-immigrant sentiment in political cartoons
A Finer Screen Needed, printed
in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1904
Reaction to the Reed-Johnson Act,
Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), 1924
30Název prezentace v zápatí
Post-war immigration to the U.S.
 Since the 1960s immigration has opened up to
all parts of the world using a quota system
 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
 Majority of new immigrants come from Latin America
and Asia
• In 2010, 21.2 million, or 53.1%, of the nation’s 39.9 million
foreign-born residents were born in Latin America or the
Caribbean.
• 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 this region.
Countries of origin: Top 10
1920 2010
Country % of
immigrants
Country % of
immigrants
Germany 12.1 Mexico 27.6
Italy 11.6 Philippines 4.3
Soviet Union 10.1 China 3.8
Poland 8.2 India 3.5
Canada 8.2 Cuba 3.4
U.K. 8.2 Vietnam 3.0
Ireland 7.5 El Salvador 2.7
Sweden 4.5 South Korea 2.5
Austria 4.1 Dominican Republic 2.4
Mexico 3.5 Canada 2.4
Where do immigrants come from today?
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Immigration by the numbers
Countries with the most immigrants
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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 in
agriculture but by 1910 only 14%
had a farming background
Foreign Born Population by Region of Birth
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Europe L. Amer. Asia Other
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Current Statistics on illegal/unauthorized immigration
Where are “illegal”
immigrants
Profile of “illegal”
immigrants
Regions of
Birth
Mexico and
Central America
7,797,000 71%
Caribbean 260,000 2%
South America 690,000 6%
Europe/Canada/
Oceania
423,000 4%
Asia 1,509,000 14%
Africa 342,000 3%
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Border fence with Mexico
 In 2006, Congress passed a law authorizing the
construction 1,125 kilometers of fencing along the border
with Mexico
Existing border fences:
Nogales, Arizona and San Diego, California
Build the Wall:
Proposed border wall prototypes
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Immigrant responses to life in the U.S.
range from resistance to acculturation
 Just about every immigrant groups held 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”
Football: Knute Rockne (1888-1931)
Born in Voss, Norway, emigrated at the age of 5
Played and coached at Notre Dame University (1913-1930)
“Win one for the Gipper” (George Gipp 1895-1920)
Baseball: Joe DiMaggio (1914-1999)
Born in San Francisco to Sicilian immigrants
Played for the New York Yankees (1936-1951)
The Yankee Clipper
43
 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
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Graduation from the Ford English School
Swedish housemaids in America, late 19th century
"Tenement Life in New York - Rag-pickers Court,
Mulberry Street" 1879
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
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).
Plzensky Sokol (1895), Pilsen neighborhood, Chicago
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Bohemian National Cemetery (est. 1877, entry building 1893)
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San Jose Sharks Czech Heritage Night, Feb. 15, 2017
52
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 in-group
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)
55
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