Essay On 19th And 20th Century Immigration

Changes in the numbers and sources of international migrants in the 19th and 20th centuries greatly altered the ethnic and social makeup of the U.S. population. Starting in the early 1800s, there were many waves of migrants with a fluctuating amount of people coming to the United States, and with each group of people America was made all the more culturally diverse. However, such a large influx of people did have adverse consequences, especially for African Americans. In 1820, almost 8,000 immigrants arrived from Europe, however, in 1932 there was a sharp increase in the number of migrants, and after that year, the number of new arrivals never fell below 50,000 a year. From the 1830s through the 1850s, nearly 4 million people from northern Europe crossed the Atlantic for a new life in the United States. Most of these immigrants settled in cities in the north, such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The cause for such an inundation of people was cheap and rapid ocean transportation, famines and revolutions in Europe, and the United States’ growing reputation as a country with abundant economic opportunities and political freedom. These immigrants greatly

However these did not stop a flow of newcomers. Beginning in the 1890s and continuing to the outbreak of World War I, the national origins of most immigrants changed, the “new” immigrants came from southern and Eastern Europe, they were Italians, Greeks, Croats, Slovaks, Poles, and Russians, and most crowded into poor ethnic neighborhoods. In their crowded quarters, different immigrant groups created distinct ethnic neighborhoods where each group could maintain its own language, culture, church or temple. All over the United States the effect of immigration was felt, population increased by millions of