About U.S. History Immigration

The United States, known as the "melting pot of races", is a typical immigrant country, with its immigration history dating back to 1620. Over the past 400 years, the American nation has become a mixture of more than 100 ethnic groups. Even the "Statue of Liberty" standing in New York "immigrated" to the United States from France in 1886. With their own dreams in mind, immigrants traveled across the ocean to come to this ideal land, setting off several major waves of immigration in the history of the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that immigrants created the United States, developed and changed the United States.

Attracting immigrants was once the most important diplomatic task of the United States.

At the beginning of the founding of the United States, the total domestic population of the United States was only 3.9 million. Except for about 760,000 black people, the rest are almost all white, and most of them come from Western Europe. Out of concerns about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the domestic employment environment, several governments in the early days of the United States had many doubts about immigration policies and formulated some policies to restrict immigration. Between 1796 and 1815, the average number of European immigrants to the United States was only about 3,000 per year.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Europe regained peace. With the demobilization of a large number of military personnel, unemployment in European countries has become increasingly serious, and the number of immigrants to the United States has increased year by year. At this time, the United States also changed its policy of restricting immigration due to domestic construction needs. After the European Revolution in 1848, the wave of immigrants to the United States became higher and higher. In the 100 years from 1820 to 1920, the United States admitted approximately 33.5 million immigrants, forming an immigration wave that lasted for a century.

The first immigration climax, which American historians call "the great human migration movement", occurred from 1820 to 1860, with the total number of immigrants reaching 5 million during this period. Immigrants mainly come from Western and Northern Europe, including about 2 million Irish, about 1.7 million Germans, and a large number of African slaves who were trafficked to the United States. At the same time, a small number of immigrants also came from Asia, mainly Chinese who came to the United States to prospect for gold.

The second immigration boom was from 1861 to 1880, when about 5 million immigrants came to the United States. After the Civil War, the United States ushered in the peak period of industrialization and the demand for labor was strong. In order to attract European immigrants to the United States, in 1864, President Lincoln lobbied Congress to pass the "Encouragement of Immigration Act." Secretary of State Seward even issued a notice to U.S. diplomats in Europe, asking them to treat attracting European immigrants as one of their most important diplomatic tasks. In order to recruit skilled workers from Europe to work in the United States, some companies also organize recruitment tours to Europe. They placed advertisements in many European newspapers and published pamphlets, depicting the attractive prospects of the United States to Europeans who wished to immigrate. Some companies also provide travel expenses for Europeans willing to immigrate to the United States.

The third climax was from 1881 to 1920, when the number of immigrants soared to 23.5 million. The peak of immigration was 1907, reaching 1.285 million people. During this stage, the U.S. government enacted legislation many times to restrict European immigration and exclude Asian immigrants. The growth of "old immigrants" from northwest European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden is limited, but the growth of "new immigrants" from southeastern European countries such as Italy and Russia is rapid.

After these three immigration upsurges, the total population of the United States exceeded 100 million for the first time in 1920. In the 100 years from 1820 to 1920, the number of immigrants accounted for more than 20% of the annual growth of the U.S. population.

Immigration has changed the destiny of the United States

These three waves of immigration in American history not only had a profound impact on the formation of the American national character, but also made the United States grow in just over a hundred years. China can rise rapidly, replace Britain as the world's largest economic power, and lay the foundation for becoming a world superpower in the future. It can be said that the wave of immigrants has made the United States strong.

The United States enjoyed the benefits of the immigration wave, receiving thousands of skilled workers from Europe without the need for education or training. According to statistics, between 1871 and 1892, about 23% of immigrants from Western and Northern Europe were skilled workers. They brought industrial technologies such as steel and textiles and became an important technical force in the American Industrial Revolution.

After immigrating to the United States, Samuel Slater, who was once hailed as the "Father of American Manufacturing" by Jackson, the 7th President of the United States, successfully copied the secrets of the British textile industry in the United States. High-efficiency cotton spinning machines were invented and cotton spinning mills were set up, sounding the clarion call for the American Industrial Revolution.

Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone, and Samuel Morse, the father of the telegraph, were also immigrants or descendants of immigrants. In addition, immigrants from Asia, such as China, Japan and the Philippines, brought agricultural and horticultural technologies, while Italian immigrants played an important role in municipal construction technologies such as gas, electricity, and tap water.

Among these immigrants, 85% are between the ages of 14 and 44, and most of them are men. These immigrants were in the prime of life and provided labor for the U.S. cotton textile industry, mining industry, construction industry, etc. The Irish, Germans, Italians, and Nordics were the main force in tunneling and railroad engineering in the eastern United States. In the "Westward Movement" that changed the early political structure and social landscape of the United States, the role of Chinese labor cannot be underestimated.

In this movement centered on railway construction, Chinese workers spent their blood, sweat and lives, and under extremely difficult and harsh conditions, brilliantly completed the western section of the Pacific Railway project across the United States from east to west. construction. To this day, you can still see a metal plaque with Chinese inscriptions along the railroads in California, which reads, "California Railroad, connecting the north and the south. The spirit of Chinese Americans, the dedication of blood and blood." As Crocker, an advocate of recruiting Chinese labor, said: "The timely completion of this railway is largely due to the poor and despised Chinese working class - to their loyalty and industry. "This sentence later became the famous "one-sentence history" in the history of American immigration.

Immigration also contributed to saving the Union and abolishing the black slave system during the American Civil War. After the 1848 Revolution in Europe, a large number of German immigrants with rich military experience came to the United States. Many of these German immigrants, known as the "Patriots of 1848," became hardcore elements supporting the Republican Party and Lincoln. They helped organize the federal army and defended the country and the system to the death. The most famous of them is Major General Carl Schulz. After the failure of the German Revolution, he immigrated to the United States in 1852 and actively participated in the anti-slavery movement. In 1861 he was appointed United States Minister to Spain. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he took the initiative to lead the troops in the war. In order to encourage German immigrants to support Lincoln, he also traveled to various states in the United States to give speeches, with a total distance of nearly 40,000 kilometers.

The wave of immigration triggers a countercurrent of exclusion

In the wave of immigration that has lasted for more than 100 years, immigrants have experienced exclusion in one way or another. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, its immigration policies are not static. From 1815 to 1882, the U.S. government implemented a completely liberal immigration system. But starting in 1882, U.S. immigration policy changed a lot. Laws restricting and excluding immigrants were introduced one after another. The regulations are even more bizarre, such as prohibiting entry for idiots and weak-willed people. After 1920, the United States completely ended the era of free immigration and began to implement a restrictive immigration policy with quotas.

Due to conflicts over employment, religion, and national issues, American xenophobia reached its peak from 1880 to 1920. Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Italians, and Hungarians have all become targets of wanton exclusion and persecution by native American workers and immigrants from northwest Europe. What's more, in May 1882, the U.S. Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act that specifically prohibited Chinese workers from entering the United States. This act was not repealed until 61 years later. During this period, anti-foreign organizations such as the American Patriot League and the American League, composed of native Americans and immigrant Protestants from northwest Europe, came into being. Among them, the most influential one is the "American Protective Association" founded in 1887. This association fanned the flames everywhere and blamed political corruption, lagging municipal construction, rising crime rate, and declining people's living standards in American society during this period. The arrival of new immigrants.

After the end of World War II, as the American people rationalized their attitudes towards immigrants, the contribution of immigrants to the United States was gradually recognized by most Americans. As U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said: "The United States would like to thank immigrants for their contributions. The huge wave of immigrants has brought rich cultural heritage to the United States and also provided impetus for the development of the United States."