“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!”

-Statue of Liberty

The Great Migration• 1880- Old Immigrants

England • Germany Northwestern

Europe• Scotland• Ireland

• Italy Eastern & Southern

Europe• Russian Jews • Poland• Greece

1910- New Immigrants

Photo A

Push & Pull Factors1. Less work in their homelands

b/c machines replaced farmers

2. Believed America was a “magic land”

Photo B

Journey Across the Atlantic

• 8-14 days on the sea. • Lived in steerage compartments• Few toilets• Usually had to bring their own food• Paid $65-$100 per ticket(most used all of their saving for

voyage)

Ellis Island

Photo C

Photo D

Arrival in America

• Immigrants from Europearrived at Ellis Island in New York• Home of Statue of Liberty

Photo E

Medical Inspections• Immigrants under went medical

inspections.• Lasted 45 minutes• Sick ones had to return to

homeland

Photo F

Legal Inspections• Asked questions by inspector• Name & address of relative pinned

to immigrants• Names misspelled i.e. Kapelovich

to Kaplowitz

Video Clip from The Godfather

• Click Here

Photo G

The Reality

• Quote from Italian Immigrant:

“I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.”

Ethnic Enclaves

• Immigrants settled in big cities- New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia

• Lived in neighborhoods w/ others from their country

• Not enough affordablehousing in cities• Still exist today (LittleItaly, Chinatown)

Tenements

Living Conditions

• Five-cents-a-spot-nickname they received duo to cost for a place to sleep.

• Tenements (very crowded and filthy apartments)

Chinese Immigrants

• Chinese come to the U.S. via California in the 1850s to find gold.

• As more Chinese emigrated to California, white miners became frustrated.

• The California governor passed a tax that took half of the Chinese miners earnings.

• The murder of Chinamen happened daily.

Photo G

Chinese Immigrants

• The Transcontinental Railroad provided new opportunities for Chinese immigrants.

• The railroad companies needed men who would take on the dangerous work of clearing land and laying track.

• Chinese men who had been driven out of the gold mines took this opportunity.

• The Chinese earned $35 per month and had to provide their own food (white men did not).

• A special crew of Chinese set a world record for laying track and were skilled and efficient workers.

Chinese Exclusion Act

• On May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act placed a ban on Chinese immigrants entering the United States

• In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to stop immigration from China.

• This act was not lifted until 1943.

PoliticalCartoon:ChineseExclusionAct

Angel Island

Angel Island

• From 1910-1940 the Chinese immigrants arrived on a tiny island in San Francisco Bay called Angel Island.

• They were detained for weeks or sometimes months as officials processed their papers.

The Immigration Act

• Passed on May 26, 1924, the Immigration Act stemmed the massive tide of immigration that had been flowing into the United States since the mid-19th century.

• Of particular concern was the high number of nonwhite and Eastern European immigrants who had been coming into the country by the hundreds of thousands for decades.

• The law established a quota system for immigration that highly favored Northern Europeans over all others and set the standard for immigration policy until the 1960s.

Americans’ Treatment of Immigrants

• Nativism- native born (Americans) good; foreign born is bad.

Life as an Immigrant

• Now, you will imagine your life as an immigrant.– Write a 1 page letter home on a piece of

notebook paper to your family. Imagine you are in the United States as an immigrant from the 1800s. Tell them what life is like for you in the United States and other things you are experiencing.

– Put this in folder when complete.