Working Toward Whiteness: : How America's Immigrants Became White : the strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs
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At America's Gates
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The Immigrant Experience in America
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Encyclopedia of North American Immigration
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Coming to America
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Island of Hope
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The Uprooted
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Nothing Like It in the World
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"The most famous, influential, and enduring of all muckraking novels, The Jungle was an exposé of conditions in the Chicago stockyards. Because of the public response, the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906, and conditions in American slaughterhouses were improved."
"The Jungle." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 15 Nov. 2018.
immigration(s) | industrialization | nativism | xenophobia | "Golden Door" | social tensions | propaganda | American dream
Kessner, Thomas. "Why Immigration Matters." History Now, Issue. 3, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Spring 2005, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/why-immigration-matters
Primary sources are important when doing historical research. They are documents of many kinds that were created during the time period you are studying -- personal accounts like letters and diaries, newspapers, magazines & journals, books, government documents, and much more.
"Immigration has shaped the contours of this nation's history from its founding to the present day. Immigration has shaped the nation's cities, its institutions, industries, and laws, its literature and its culture. Harvard's world-renowned library and museum holdings reflect these realities through guidebooks, ethnic publications, policy documents, diaries, photographs, and organizational records that chronicle the continuing impact of immigration on the United States." --Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Research Professor and Founder of the Open Collections Program at Harvard University.
Direct Source: Constitutional Rights Foundation: Immigration Law
U.S. Constitution (1789) gave Congress the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization."
Immigration Act of 1819 set standards for vessels bringing immigrants. Ship captains had to provide customs officials with a list of immigrants describing where they came from, where they were going, and their age, sex, and occupation. Passengers ill with contagious diseases had to be quarantined. States carried out the provisions of this law.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) granted U.S. citizenship to Mexicans living in the territory ceded by Mexico to the United States.
14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1868) guaranteed that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States . . . ."
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) banned for 10 years Chinese immigration and eligibility for citizenship. The law was renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. It was not repealed until World War II.
Contract Labor Law of 1885 outlawed the practice of signing up foreign laborers to work in America for low wages. No immigrant could have a job or a promise of a job before landing.
Immigration Act of 1891 gave the job of processing immigrants to the federal government. Federal inspectors examined immigrants on arrival. The law also barred persons suffering from "loathsome or dangerous diseases," those convicted of crimes involving "moral turpitude," polygamists, and those whose passage was paid for by others. Those rejected for immigration were deported at the expense of the shipping companies.
The Immigration Act of 1907 allowed the president to make an agreement with Japan to limit the number of Japanese immigrants. The law also barred the feebleminded, those with physical or mental defects, those suffering from tuberculosis, children under 16 without parents, and women entering for "immoral purposes."
Immigration Act of 1917 banned all "aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English language, or some other language or dialect . . . ."
National Origins (First Quota) Act of 1921 limited the number of immigrants from any country to 3 percent of the foreign-born persons of that nationality living in the United States in 1910. This formula provided for relatively large immigrant quotas for Northern Europe and small quotas for Southern and Eastern Europe.
National Origins (Second Quota) Act of 1924 further discriminated against Southern and Eastern Europeans by limiting the number of immigrants from any country to 2 percent of foreign born persons of that nationality living in the U.S. in 1890. Only 164,000 immigrants were to be admitted each year; this total was further reduced to 150,000 in 1929. The law also imposed new restrictions on Asian immigration.
Source: From the book The Making of America, published by National Geographic Society © 2002, National Geographic Books
Copyright © 1995-2005, Pearson Education, Inc
How the Other Half Lives
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"[Immigrant Group] + US Immigration + [time period]"
"[Immigrant Group] + US Pull factors + [time period]"
"[Immigrant Group] + Push factors + [time period]"
