Immigration

Hey, I haven’t been blogging that much lately, because I’ve been busy visiting cities, shopping, and sightseeing, and I am very sorry about that. I’m having a really great time being here, and I don’t want to go home. In this post, I am going to tell you guys about the immigration in the USA.

The immigration consists of four waves. We can start with the very first wave; it is called “the founders.” It began in 1609 and ended in 1775. Most of the immigrants came from England, France, Germany, Ireland and Italy. Some of the immigrants came because they were looking for adventure, others came to leave their religious past behind them, and others came with a hope of a better economic future. The first Africans who came to the USA were slaves and they didn’t have it great at all.

After a break of immigration during the American Revolution and wars in Europe, a second wave of immigrants began arriving around 1820. Most of the immigrants came into the Country through New York. A bigger part of the Immigrants who came in the second wave was Irish and Germans. A potato famine hit Ireland during the 1840’s, and as much as one-third of the immigrants during this time were Irish fleeing that famine. Nearly the same amount of Germans came in the same period and a lot of them bought farms in the mid-west. Most of the Chinese came into USA through the port of San Francisco. Most of them were single men who planned to earn fortunes and go back to China again, but a huge part of them ended up spending the rest of their lives in the USA where most of them had low paid jobs. The second wave ended at the end of the 1870 century.

It got much easier so immigrate into the United States in the 1800. It was because of the increasing railroad companies. This was the beginning of the third wave. It was cheaper and less demanding to immigrate to USA, so the poor Europeans used the opportunity and went to the states. In the period between 1881 and 1920, 23 million people immigrated from all over the world into the USA, but it was mostly the Europeans who came.

In 1965, there were no quotas based on nationality and that was the beginning of the third wave. So it meant that how many people who came from which country had nothing to say. So is resulted that 120,000 immigrants came every year from the Western Hemisphere and 170,000 came from the Eastern Hemisphere. Eventually they changed the quota so that it didn’t matter if you came from the western hemisphere or the eastern hemisphere. They increased the quota for the number of immigrants to 700,000 people from 1992 to 1994 and fell to 675,000 in 1995. If you had family in the United States and wanted to stay with them, it didn’t have anything to say in the quota law.

In the 1800, Norway met an obstacle in the industry. This made it harder for the younger generations to find themselves jobs, so they left to the USA to provide their selves and their family. At this time, Norway had a lack of jobs, but America needed manpower. A lot of people took this opportunity and immigrated to the USA. The start of the Norwegian immigration began in 1825, when the ship named “Restauration” sailed to the USA with 53 norwegians aboard. But It wasn’t before 1865 a huge amount of Norwegian immigrated into the USA. The Norwegian wave of immigrants lasted for 8 years.  During this period, there was about 110,000 Norwegians who immigrated to the USA. The first people who immigrated to USA settled in New York. From there, the Norwegians started to move to the west (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and the Dakotas). For those who had family back home in Norway, for them it was common to send letters.

Ellis Island is located in the harbour of New York. The island was once the main port for those who immigrated to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Those who travelled on the first and second class were cleared on the ship to America, and were released on Manhattan. Those who travelled from 3rd class was sent to Ellis Island. Ellis Island was opened on 1 January 1892 and closed in November 1954. When it closed, had more than 20 million immigrants passed over the island. Of these, only about two percent was refused entry to the US and sent back to their homeland. Many of those who came into the land, was settled in New York and the northern parts of New Jersey. Ellis Island is now owned by the National Park Service, and is now run as a museum. It has a database that includes all immigrants from 1892 to 1954.

-Marthine

 

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island

http://www.energyofanation.org/3f9c3958-cf6f-43ed-a9bf-05b8ad118870.html?nodeid

http://immigrationinamerica.org/603-immigration-waves.html