U.S. History / Unit 5: Industrialization, Immigration and the Gilded Age
5.4 The New Immigration
Notes
From 1880 to 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrived in the United States.
- "Old" immigrants (before about 1880) came mainly from Northern and Western Europe. "New" immigrants came mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Poland, Russia, Greece), many of them Catholic or Jewish.
- Push factors (reasons to leave): poverty, religious persecution such as attacks on Jews in Russia, lack of land. Pull factors (reasons to come): jobs, freedom, opportunity.
- Ellis Island (opened 1892) in New York Harbor processed European immigrants. Angel Island (1910) near San Francisco processed Asian immigrants, often with long detentions.
- Immigrants settled in ethnic neighborhoods and kept their languages, churches and newspapers while adapting to American life (assimilation).
- Nativism (hostility to immigrants) grew. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) banned Chinese laborers from entering, the first major law to bar a group by nationality.
Practice
Which is an example of a "push" factor for immigration?
Push factors drive people out of their homelands; pull factors draw them to a new one.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is an example of:
It reflected hostility toward Chinese immigrants, especially in the West.
An immigrant from Italy arriving in New York in 1905 would most likely have been processed at:
Ellis Island processed most immigrants arriving on the East Coast.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 5 test.