Immigration The doubling of foreign-born population between

Key Vocabulary Terms  Push Factors  Pull Factors  Ellis Island  Angel Island  Assimilation  Nativism  Quotas  Gentlemen’s Agreement  Chinese Exclusion Act

Push and Pull Factors  Push Factors (reasons for being pushed out of their home countries)  Farmers pushed off land, needed new start (China, 7% of population of Mexico)  Wars and revolutions in home countries (China & Eastern Europe)  Political Persecution  Religious Persecution (especially Russian and eastern European Jews)  Famine  Pull Factors (reasons to be attracted to move to America)  Plentiful land (Homestead Act)  Plentiful work with industrial explosion  Recruited to build railroads, dig mines, work in factories, harvest produce  Discovery of gold – get rich quick  “Birds of Passage” – make $, go home  Chain immigrants – joining family or friends already here

Ellis Island vs. Angel Island  Ellis Island (East/European)  Located in New York Harbor  “Right” immigrants – Most spoke English, progressive ideas, Anglo- Saxon background  Mostly 3 rd Class European Immigrants  Only 2% denied entry to America  After 1900, 70% of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, Hungary)  Inspections included medical, background for crimes, make sure immigrant could speak at least some English, had some money  Angel Island (West/Asian)  Located in San Francisco Bay  “Wrong” immigrants – Latin and Asian, downtrodden, looked different, hard to assimilate  Processed mainly Chinese and Japanese  Were interrogated and often detained for days or weeks  Processors assumed the immigrants would be lying about their circumstances to gain entry to America  Most turned away

Assimilation  Before the 1900s, most immigrants tried to assimilate into American society  They learned English  They learned how to cook American dishes  They tried desperately to blend into the American culture  After 1900, with the increasing population from Asia and Eastern and Southern Europe, immigrants tried less to fit in, and instead kept their own cultures  They congregated with people who shared the same culture, religions, languages, values  They created their own newspapers  They formed their own social clubs and aid societies

Nativism  With immigrants refusing to assimilate, the idea of nativism, the superiority of those native born to America, started to rise  Protestants in America were suspicious of Catholics (most Italians, Irish, Germans, and Polish), and refused to hire, vote for, or work with them  Some Americans signed contracts agreeing not to sell or rent property to Jews, Catholics, Asians and other “non- natives”  Scientific evidence was developed linking immigrants’ physical characteristics with criminal tendencies and lower intelligence

Limiting Immigration with Quotas  When Americans started to fear that their culture was suffering, they started heavily limiting immigration…focusing especially on how to limit Asian and Eastern/Southern Europeans.  The Immigration Act of 1921 set up emergency quotas for how many people could immigrate. The Act set the annual quota of any nationality at 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality who resided in the US as of  The impact was minimal for British and Irish immigrants, but significant for countries like Italy, whose immigration fell more than 90%.  It was revised in 1927, limiting immigration totals to 150,000, percentages based on population in the 1920 census.

Restricting Asians  Chinese Exclusion Act 1882  Chinese were viewed as inferior because they would work for far less than what an American could afford to work for  The Chinese Exclusion Act halted the immigration of all Chinese except merchants, clergy, diplomats, students, or people with close blood relatives in America  Limited rights of Chinese in America  Chinese afraid to visit home because they would be denied entrance back into America  The act continued to be renewed until the 1940s  Gentlemen’s Agreement  Japanese were mostly immigrating to work in gold fields, make money, then return home  California segregated the Japanese in schools and neighborhoods  The Japanese government, in protest, threatened to start treating visiting Americans they same way, so the Gentlemen’s Agreement was signed  Japan agreed to limit the amount of unskilled laborers sent to America, and America agreed to desegregate the Japanese