The Immigration History of the United States

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Immigration.

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It’s been the defining characteristic of America since before our country even began,

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so it’s important to remind ourselves of our rich history...of where we all came from

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to create this one-of-a-kind melting pot of people that is the United States in the 21st

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century.

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The first successful colony in America was established in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia

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by English settlers.

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But, these first europeans arrived in a land that was already home to other people.

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To indigenous, Native Americans who thousands of years before had crossed over a land bridge

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from Siberia into what’s now the state of Alaska.

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They were the first explorers of this beautiful land, and they would spread throughout the

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entire continent and throughout central and southern America too.

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Native Americans thrived by harnessing the power of nature, and over time, they formed

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into many distinct groups, each with their own languages and cultures.

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Then, in 1492, as legend has it, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and arrived

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in the Bahamas and immediately encountered a group of these indigenous people called

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the Arawak.

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The Arawak were curious and friendly, but Columbus was filled with greed, and took some

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of them prisoner, demanding they show him where the gold they were wearing came from.

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Now, the Native Americans were so easy going and poorly armed compared to these Europeans

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- who had modern weaponry like metal-forged swords and armor, and even guns - that Columbus

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said “I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased.”

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And that’s exactly what he, and other Spanish conquistadors who came after him, did.

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They vanquished indigenous group after indigenous group with cunning and sheer brutality, and

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got a lot of help from diseases like smallpox that moved ahead of them and just wiped the

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natives out.

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“When smallpox was taken to the new world nobody in the new world had every seen a disease

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like this before.

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So the number of people who were susceptible was much greater.

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There was no natural immunity, so the number of people who could contract the disease and

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then spread, and the number of people to receive it once it’s been spread, was much higher.”

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“Some scholars think there may have been a population of 20 million native americans

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and the vast majority, perhaps 95%, were killed by old world diseases.

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A continent virtually emptied of its people.

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Once word of the discovery of the New World spread throughout the Old World - the kingdoms

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and empires of Europe - many people began to plan journeys of their own across the Atlantic

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Ocean.

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Starting around 1620, tens of thousands of British, German and Dutch - but mostly British

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Puritans - came to North America to escape religious persecution, or to search for better

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opportunity, or simply for an adventure.

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The Puritans spread throughout New England in the northeast, the Dutch settled along

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the Hudson River in New York and established rich, successful trading posts and cities

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like New Amsterdam (which we now call New York City).

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English Quakers established the Pennsylvania colony and its commercial center, Philadelphia.

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More than 90% of these early colonists became farmers.

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And, because they were living in small, widespread villages, disease didn’t spread as easily

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as it could back in Europe, which kept the death rate among settlers in America low.

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All these farmers needed large families to help them farm, which caused the population

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to boom, especially in the New England colonies.

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As land became harder to come by along the coasts, the roughly 350,000 Scottish and Northern

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Irish who arrived throughout the 1700’s settled inland in western Pennsylvania and

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along the Appalachians deep into the south.

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The British sent 60,000 prisoners across the ocean to Georgia, although the only thing

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many of these men were guilty of was being poor and out of work.

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Tobacco was a highly profitable cash crop in the southern colonies, so many British

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settled there and began to take advantage of the thriving slave trade.

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“Those of us who study immigration history think in terms of why people leave their homelands

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and why they come here.

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And those are generally encapsulated in two words: push and pull.

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Something pushes them out of their homeland and something pulls them to the United States.

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Now obviously in the earliest cases of slavery they were not necessarily pushed from their

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homeland, but they were taken from their homeland.

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But the reason why they were taken was because there was labor to be done here in the United

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States.

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It was a global force, the slave trade was fairly global - at least in the Atlantic - and

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later Asia would become involved in it as well.

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So here you have a forced migration.”

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Hundreds of thousands of Africans were mercilessly captured and taken prisoner in their own lands,

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then put on ships bound for America, where they were sold into a life of hard labor for

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no pay, and no chance at freedom.

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[Graph] This is the population breakdown of the country around 1790, shortly after the

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colonies’ hard-won war of independence with the British and the adoption of the American

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constitution, which made the country of the United States official.

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The Native American population was so decimated by disease, war, and migration to the west,

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that only about 100,000 were left inside the territorial United States.

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Out west, many Spaniards moved north from Mexico across the Rio Grande to settle in

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California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

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Not all of these settlers were of European descent.

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They all could speak spanish, but ethnically, they were a melting pot of whites, Indians

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and mestizos, or people of mixed race.

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French settlers established footholds mainly along the Saint Lawrence River and the Great

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Lakes, along the Mississippi River, and along the Gulf Coast, establishing the city of New

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Orleans.

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Their descendants are known as Cajuns.

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These French and Spanish populations would be incorporated into the United States in

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the coming decades through the Louisiana Purchase and the granting of statehood to the western

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territories.

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After more than four decades of relatively little immigration into America after its

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founding, in the 1830’s, tens of thousands of immigrants began arriving on her eastern

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shores, again, mainly from Britain, Ireland and Germany.

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Some were attracted to the cheap farmland that was made available by westward expansion,

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while others took advantage of the manufacturing boom in the cities sparked by the industrial

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revolution.

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The Irish were mainly unskilled laborers who built most of the railroads and canals, took

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jobs in the emerging textile mill towns in the Northeast, or worked in the ports.

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About half of the Germans became farmers, mainly in the midwest, and the other half

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became craftsman in urban areas.

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Asian immigrants - mainly from China - began crossing the Pacific to work as laborers,

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particularly on the transcontinental railroad or in the mines.

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[History Professor Scott Wong] “Immigration also during the 19th century was usually male

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dominated—males in their prime working years between the years of 18-25.

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The Irish being the one exception.

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Eventually there would be more Irish women who immigrated than Irish men.

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Immigrants to this day often follow established patterns.

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They leave on village or one city and go to another city in the United States because

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someone has already established that pattern for them.

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People go to where they know people.

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And those people here can often arrange for jobs and places to live and so on.

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It was often said that your first job coming off the boat was whoever picked you up at

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the docks.

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Now people say your first job is whoever picked you up at the airport.

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[Show graph] After tripling from the decade before, in

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just two more decades, from the 1830s to the 1850s, the amount of immigrants arriving in

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the US each year tripled again, to about 170,000.

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By the 1850s, when the total population of the country passed 20 million and things began

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to get a bit crowded, America’s first measurable anti-immigrant feelings began to take root,

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mainly targeting Irish-catholic immigrants who were arriving in large numbers to escape

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the poverty and death of the potato famine that was hitting them hard at home.

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But with a huge boom on the horizon, this early xenophobia was nothing compared to what

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would come later.

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Large, steam-powered ships took to the seas after 1880, replacing the older, slower sailing

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ships, which meant it was suddenly much faster - and cheaper - to cross the ocean, making

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the dream of a journey to America more accessible to many around the world.

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“Processed and ticketed, they waited for their ship.

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They boarded in many parts of Europe and in many kinds of vessels.

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Most to New York and some to other ports.

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But they had one thing in common—they were traveling steerage, and the steamship companies

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understood the profit in numbers.”

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[Chart] Before long, millions of immigrants were arriving

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on America’s shores.

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They passed through immigration processing stations like Ellis Island in New York and

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Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

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This wave was much more diverse than before.

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Coming mainly from Southern Europe, it was led by Italians, Poles, Greeks, Swedes, Norwegians,

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Hungarians, Jews, Lebanese, and Syrians.

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“It was as if god’s great promise had been fulfilled.

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I’m going into a free land.

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I don’t think I ever can explain the feeling I had that time.

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It’s not my native land, but it means more to me than my native land—it means more

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to me than my native land…Any country on earth this never happen.

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And become a human being again--it’s a miracle...everybody had hopes.

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And one thing I was sure, and thousands like me: that the degradation, and the abuse, and

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the piration that we had in Europe, we wouldn’t have here.”

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This group was young, most were under 30 years old, mainly because an entire generation of

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the children of farmers and factory workers in Europe and the Russian empire couldn’t

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find work because the owners of the farms and factories preferred to have an efficient

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machine - that they didn’t have to pay - do the work instead of a human being.

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Well, this was fine by America, whose steel, coal, automobile, textile, and garment production

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industries were booming.

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It happily took in this pool of eager, hard workers and put them to work in its growing

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industrial cities.

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“As mills and factories sprouted across the land, cities grew up around them.

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In turn, the cities beckoned to workers by the millions from the American countryside

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and from overseas to fuel the burgeoning industrialization.

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What was once a rural nation was rapidly becoming an urban state.

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From 1860 to 1910, the urban population grew from over 6 million to over 44 million.”

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The United States also took full advantage of Europe’s paralyzation during the first

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World War.

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With millions dying in the midst of the bloodiest struggle the European continent had ever seen,

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every country there had to completely focus its industries on producing all the supplies

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- the guns, the uniforms, the tanks, the boats, the bullets - all the stuff needed to carry

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on and win the fight.

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But with many of its working-aged men on the front lines, in hospitals or at home after

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horrific injuries - or dead - the factories of Europe couldn’t meet all the demand,

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so US factories made up for the shortfall in production.

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Before long, the United States had leapt to the front ranks of the world’s economic

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giants.

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And when the Americans entered the conflict themselves in 1917, US industry was now tasked

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with supplying its own soldiers too.

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It was during this 50-year immigration wave, from about 1870-1920, when many well-off,

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white, native-born Americans began to consider mass immigration a danger to the health and

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security of the country.

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They started actively organizing to exert political power to slow it down.

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The first immigration law in American history was known as the Asian Exclusion Act.

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It was passed in 1875 and - you guessed it - outlawed Asians, specifically Asian contract

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laborers, from stepping foot on American soil, plus any other people considered convicts

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in their own countries.

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In 1921, Congress pushed through a law that marked a turning-point in American immigration

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policy--a law that passed the Senate 78-1.

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The Emergency Quota Act set strict limits on the amount of immigrants who would be allowed

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into the country each year.

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It was very effective.

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The number of new immigrants let in fell from over 800,000 in 1920 to just over 300,000

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admitted in 1921.

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[CHART] If the pace of immigration had been like a

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raging river, this law acted like a dam.

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But that drop off in the flow of persons into America still didn’t satisfy the anti-immigration

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crowd who, just three years later in 1924, forced congress to tighten the quota even

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more, established the border patrol, and stated that any undocumented immigrants who entered

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the country were subject to deportation.

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It’s during this time that the definition of “illegal alien” was born, a term that

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would be used to stigmatize the next group the anti-immigration community’s crosshairs

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became fixed on: latin-american migrants living and working in the US Southwest.

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After the quota laws passed by the US Congress in the 1920’s, immigration was capped for

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the first time in American history.

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One of the exceptions to the strict quotas were documented contract workers from the

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western hemisphere who could come into and out of the US freely.

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The other major exception were the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were allowed

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in, mainly Jews escaping the horrors of the Holocaust during and after World War II, and

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the roughly 400,000 families who fled Cuba after the Castro-led revolution of 1959.

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The US entrance into World War II also meant many more Mexican workers were needed to fill

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in for all the young American men who were off fighting the Germans in Europe and the

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Japanese in the Pacific.

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At the end of this period, between 1944 and 1954, the number of immigrants coming from

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Mexico increased by 6,000 percent, as many Latin American workers were offered low wage

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agricultural jobs in the American Southwest as part of the bracero program.

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But large numbers of Mexicans without the necessary paperwork came in search of the

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American dream too, and what followed is one of the ugliest periods in US immigration history.

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With pressure mounting to do something about the thousands of immigrants easily crossing

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the southern border each year, President Eisenhower turned to Gen. Joseph Swing, who launched

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“Operation Wetback” in 1954.

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That derogatory name reveals the insensitivity of the policy, which directed hundreds of

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federal officials to lead thousands of local police officers on sweeps through neighborhoods

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throughout the American southwest, stopping any “Mexican looking” person and demanding

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to see their papers.

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If they didn’t have their papers, they were arrested and deported.

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Some estimates put the amount of illegal immigrants thrown out of the country above one million,

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leading to countless families being torn apart.

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In some cases, their American-born children were even sent away.

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Obviously, this program angered many Mexican-American citizens, and anyone else who saw it as a

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blatant violation of human rights on a massive scale.

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[History professor Miguel Levario] “What we have here is an aggressive and sort of

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paramilitary approach to deportation and mass deportation and of course the use of propaganda

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to address the issue of unauthorized Mexican workers in the United States.

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Because the Border Patrol agency was so small - I mean, they’re using local law enforcement

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- so while they’re out there trying to look for undocumented immigrants what aren’t

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they doing?

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Their own basic responsibilities of keeping neighborhoods safe, addressing burglaries,

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murders, whatever it could be.

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Operation Wetback was terminated in large part because of cost, in large part because

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it just became too taxing on local resources.

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We also found out that regardless of how far you sent them into the interior, within days,

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sometimes weeks, they were right back in there.

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The final era of immigration to America is the one we’re still currently in, which

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began in 1965 with the passage of the Hart-Celler Act.

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This law finally replaced the unfair quota system with a policy that gives preference

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to immigrants who have relatives already in the United States, or people with job skills

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that are highly sought after.

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All other past restrictions targeting specific groups were thrown out.

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This was one of the crown jewels in President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program and

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it fundamentally shifted who was allowed in.

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[CHART]

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In 1970, 60% of immigrants came from Europe, this number just fell off a cliff by the year

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2000, when only 15% were from Europe.

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The one thing that didn’t change were the many undocumented immigrants from Latin America

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who continued to come across the border in search of a better life.

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So, in an effort to address this, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration

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Reform and Control Act, which gave green cards to about 2.7 million immigrants.

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It was the largest single moment of legalization in American history.

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As a conservative from the anti-immigration party in modern America, the Republican Reagan

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compromised in exchange for more restrictions on employers who hire illegal immigrants,

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and tighter border security.

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But it was a flawed law in a number of ways, mainly, it didn’t effectively fix the broken

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system that was allowing businesses to hire illegal immigrants in the first place.

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So since the businesses could still break the rules, many low paying jobs remained for

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the millions of undocumented immigrants in America that the law didn’t legalize.

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The bill also didn’t adequately fund and equip the border patrol, which meant there

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was still a fairly consistent flow of people coming across the border.

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To fix some of these problems, Sen. Ted Kennedy introduced, and Congress passed, the Immigration

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Act of 1990, which President George H.W.

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Bush signed into law.

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This increased the number of legal immigrants entering the United States from around 500,000

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per year to 700,000--an increase of 40%.

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This bill is also noteworthy because it was bipartisan, with a democratically-controlled

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congress working with a Republican president to pass major, common-sense immigration reform.

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Since the passage of that 1990 bill, about 1,000,000 immigrants on average legally achieve

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residence in the United States each year.

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These are the top ten countries ranked by the number of legal immigrants from these

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countries who came to the United States in 2013 according to the Department of Homeland

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Security.

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[Chart]

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According to the 2010 Census, these are the countries from which all immigrants currently

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in the United States came from, ranked by the total number of people in America who

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say they were born in each country.

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Today, 14.3 percent of the total American population is foreign born.

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That’s more than 45,000,000 people.

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The United States is home to nearly 20% of all the immigrants in the world.

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It’s estimated that more than 10 million of the immigrants in the United States are

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here illegally, living in the shadows.

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Thank you for watching, I hope you gained a greater appreciation for who we are as a

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nation and how immigration has allowed us to attract people from all over the rest of

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the world, how that is the single-most important factor in binding us together and making us

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such a dynamic country.

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This video was proudly created by the two-brother team that is the daily conversation, the video

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editor Brendan Plank and myself.

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Until next time, for TDC, I’m Bryce Plank.

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Click on the screen to watch our full documentary on the most fascinating mega-projects under

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