The Newcomers: Immigration

• Escape from oppressive governments

• Escape religious persecution/religious freedom

• Hope for better opportunities

• Adventure

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, in Europe and Asia, leaving home and traveling to America was the only way to survive. Millions of people left their homelands and embarked on a long and dangerous journey to America to start over, hoping for a better life.

As millions of immigrants poured into the U.S., cities like New York began to quickly grow. Cities struggled to house and feed all these newcomers.

Most immigrants entering the East Coast came through Ellis Island. They waited hours in line to be processed and check screenings, such as health. Most did not speak a word of English. How would they make a new life in this strange land?

Follow the directions to take an interactive tour of Ellis Island.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/

While most immigrants settled in the cities along the East Coast (New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago) some were able to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 and moved onto the farmlands of the Midwest.

The cities soon grew rapidly and many problems arouse. Cities were infested with rats and roaches, immigrants struggled to find food and housing....How would they survive in these urban ghettos?

Immigrants crowded into tenements (run down apartment buildings) in dangerous and dirty ghettos. An urban ghetto is a poor area of a city where people from similar ethnic groups live (for example Italian, Chinese, Jewish). The tenements were so crowded, people had to take shifts sleeping. Rats and roaches ran throughout the tenements.

Thanks to efforts by muckrakers (journalists, photographers, speakers who worked to exposed the filth and corruption in cities), efforts began to improve life in the cities.

Jane Addams worked to provide assistance to immigrants in Chicago. She created the Hull House, a settlement house that provided temporary housing, education, child care, life skills, and a place to make friends.

• Immigrants often worked the worst jobs for the lowest pay, lived in terrible housing and endured discrimination simply for being an immigrant.

• For people from China, Ireland, Italy, and Poland, and Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Russia, it was a constant struggle.

• Despite the U.S. being a land of immigrants, the American Indian being the only original people here, hostility against immigrants grew.

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

• Job discrimination: No Foreigners Need Apply

• Forced to live in terrible neighborhoods with substandard housing

• Manipulation and abuse by politicians, the political machine.

• As immigrants began to vote and ban together groups like Political Machines formed to "help" and in many ways take advantage of immigrants.

• Political machines worked to get their candidate, often a corrupt and dishonest one, elected. They made promises to people for votes.