The Huddled Masses: Immigration
The Statue of Liberty
It is the tallest metal statue ever constructed, and, at the time it was completed, the tallest building in New
York, 22 stories high. It stands 151 feet high and weighs 225 tons. Its arms are 42 feet long and its torch is
21 feet in length. Its index fingers are eight feet long and it has a 4-foot 6-inch nose. For people all around
the world, the statue symbolizes American freedom, hope, and opportunity.
There may be grander monuments, but this statute was not like the Egyptian pyramids or the Colossus of
Rhodes, "the brazen statue of Greek fame."
The statue was originally proposed by a now obscure French historian, Edouard de Laboulaye, a
prominent French abolitionist, and designed by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. The statue
has severed chains on one of her feet.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from French Republicans who wanted to advance their political cause: the
replacement of the monarchy of Napoleon III with a republican system of government. It was modeled, in
part, on the Roman goddess Libertas, the personification of liberty and freedom in classical Rome, which
led some critics to object to a heathen goddess standing in New York harbor. Others derided the statue as
a "useless gift," "Neither an object of Art or of Beauty," and it seemed possible that the statue would be
placed in Boston or Philadelphia.
The final $100,000 for the statue's pedestal were raised by the Hungarian-born publisher Joseph Pulitzer,
who asked New York's poor for contributions. In exchange, he printed their names in his newspaper. One
wrote a letter to his paper, The World: "I am a young girl alone in the world, and earning my own living.
Enclosed please find 60 cents, the result of self-denial. I wish I could make it 60 thousand dollars, instead
of cents, but drops make the ocean."
Over time, the statue's symbolic meaning has been transformed. It was originally intended to express
opposition and slavery. After the America's emergence as a world power after its defeat of Spain in the
Spanish-American War of 1898, the statue became a symbol of American might. It was not until the 20th
century and massive immigration from eastern and southern Europe that the statue became "a lady of
hope" for immigrants and refugees.
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Emma Lazarus
On a tablet on the pedestal of the statue of liberty is inscribed a poem. Entitled "The New Colossus," it
contains the famous words, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free."
These words were not originally attached to the statue. The poem, which was written in 1883 to help raise
money for the statue's pedestal, was forgotten until it was rediscovered in a Manhattan used-book store.
The text was only placed on the pedestal in 1903, and it transformed the statue's meaning.
Its author, Emma Lazarus, was an American Jew, born in New York City in 1849. She had a privileged
upbringing, and wrote a volume of poetry that was privately printed by her father.
In 1881, a wave of anti-Semitism swept across Russia. Soldiers destroyed Jewish districts, burned homes
and synagogues. Thousands of Jews set sail for America. Lazarus was shocked by what she saw and
devoted herself to helping the refugees.
The final sum needed to complete the pedestal came from an auction of literary works by such authors as
Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Emma Lazarus was asked to contribute a poem. She was reminded of the
Colossus of Rhodes, a huge bronze statue of the sun god Helios, one of the wonders of the ancient world.
She called her poem "The New Colossus," and it was sold for $1,500. At the time, she was dying of
cancer. She was just 38 years old when she died in 1887.
The New Immigrants
Some 334,203 immigrants arrived in the United States in 1886, the year of the statue's dedication. A
Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti, wrote: "Irishmen, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Germans freed from tyranny or
want--all hail the monument of Liberty because to them it seems to incarnate their own uplifting."
The immigrants who would catch a glimpse of the statue would mainly come from eastern and southern
Europe.
In 1900, 14 percent of the American population was foreign born, compared to 8 percent a century later.
Passports were unnecessary and the cost of crossing the Atlantic was just $10 in steerage.
European immigration to the United States greatly increased after the Civil War, reaching 5.2 million in
the 1880s then surging to 8.2 million in the first decade of the 20th century. Between 1882 and 1914,
approximately 20 million immigrants came to the United States. In 1907 alone, 1.285 million arrived. By
1900, New York City had as many Irish residents as Dublin. It had more Italians than any city outside
Rome and more Poles than any city except Warsaw. It had more Jews than any other city in the world, as
well as sizeable numbers of Slavs, Lithuanians, Chinese, and Scandinavians.
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Unlike earlier immigrants, who mainly came from northern and western Europe, the "new immigrants"
came largely from southern and eastern Europe. Largely Catholic and Jewish in religion, the new
immigrants came from the Balkans, Italy, Poland, and Russia.
Birds of Passage
Many of the millions of immigrants who arrived into the United States in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries did so with the intention of returning to their villages in the Old World. Known as "birds of
passage," many of these eastern and southern European migrants were peasants who had lost their
property as a result of the commercialization of agriculture. They came to America to earn enough money
to allow them to return home and purchase a piece of land. As one Slavic steelworker put it: "A good job,
save money, work all time, go home, sleep, no spend."
Many of these immigrants came to America alone, expecting to rejoin their families in Europe within a
few years. From 1907 to 1911, of every hundred Italians who arrived in the United States, 73 returned to
the Old Country. For Southern and Eastern Europe as a whole, approximately 44 of every 100 who arrived
returned back home.
Some immigrants, however, did not come as "sojourners." In particular, Jewish immigrants from Russia,
fleeing religious persecution, came in family groups and intended to stay in the United States from the
beginning.
Chinese Exclusion Act
From 1882 until 1943, most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the United States. The
Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation's first law to ban immigration by race or nationality. All Chinese
people--except travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States--were barred
from entering the country. Federal law prohibited Chinese residents, no matter how long they had legally
worked in the United States, from becoming naturalized citizens.
From 1850 to 1865, political and religious rebellions within China left 30 million dead and the country's
economy in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, the canning, timber, mining, and railroad industries on the
United States's West Coast needed workers. Chinese business owners also wanted immigrants to staff
their laundries, restaurants, and small factories.
Smugglers transported people from southern China to Hong Kong, where they were transferred onto
passenger steamers bound for Victoria, British Columbia. From Victoria, many immigrants crossed into
the United States in small boats at night. Others crossed by land.
The Geary Act, passed in 1892, required Chinese aliens to carry a residence certificate with them at all
times upon penalty of deportation. Immigration officials and police officers conducted spot checks in
canneries, mines, and lodging houses and demanded that every Chinese person show these residence
certificates.
Due to intense anti-Chinese discrimination, many merchants' families remained in China while husbands
and fathers worked in the United States. Since Federal law allowed merchants who returned to China to
register two children to come to the United States, men who were legally in the United States might sell
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their testimony so that an unrelated child could be sponsored for entry. To pass official interrogations,
immigrants were forced to memorize coaching books which contained very specific pieces of information,
such as how many water buffalo there were in a particular village. So intense was the fear of being
deported that many "paper sons" kept their false names all their lives. The U.S. government only gave
amnesty to these "paper families" in the 1950s.
Angel Island
It was called the "Ellis Island of the West." Located in San Francisco Bay, Angel Island was also a check
point for immigrants in the early years of the 20th century. But only a small proportion of the 175,000
people who arrived at Angel Island were allowed to remain in the United States. Angel Island was a
detention center for Chinese immigrants. It was surrounded by barbed wire.
Thirteen-year-old Jack Moy and his mother sailed to the United States in 1927. The two spent a month in
the detention center separated from one another. Immigration officials asked insulting personal questions,
such as whether their mother had bound feet or how many water buffalo a village had or "who occupies
the house on the fifth lot of your row in your native village." Discrepancies in an answer could mean
deportation to China. Immigration officials marked down every identifying mark, including scars, boils,
and moles.
To join her husband in the United States, Suey Ting Gee had to pretend that she was the wife of another
man. Under a U.S. law in effect from 1882 to 1943, the Chinese wives of resident alien laborers could not
join them in this country.
Japanese Immigration
Overpopulation and rural poverty led many Japanese to emigrate to the United States, where they
confronted intense racial prejudice. In California, the legislature imposed limits on Japanese land
ownership, and the Hearst newspaper ran headlines such as 'The Yellow Peril: How Japanese Crowd out
the White Race.'
The San Francisco School Board stirred an international incident in 1906 when it segregated Japanese
students in an 'Oriental School.' The Japanese government protested to President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt negotiated a 'gentlemen's agreement' restricting Japanese emigration.
Contract Labor
During the 19th century, demand for manual laborers to build railroads, raise sugar on Pacific Islands,
mine precious metals, construct irrigation canals, and perform other forms of heavy labor, grew.
Particularly in tropical or semi-tropical regions, this demand for manual labor was met by indentured or
contract workers. Nominally free, these laborers served under contracts of indenture which required them
to work for a period of time--usually five to seven years--in return for their travel expenses and
maintenance. In exchange for nine hours of labor a day, six days a week, indentured servants received a
small salary as well as clothing, shelter, food, and medical care.
An alternative to the indenture system was the "credit ticket system." A broker advanced the cost of
passage and workers repaid the loan plus interest out of their earnings. The ticket system was widely used
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by Chinese migrants to the United States. Beginning in the 1840s, about 380,000 Chinese laborers
migrated to the U.S. mainland and 46,000 to Hawaii. Between 1885 and 1924, some 200,000 Japanese
workers went to Hawaii and 180,000 to the U.S. mainland.
Indentured laborers are sometimes derogatorily referred to as "coolies." Today, this term carries negative
connotations of passivity and submissiveness, but originally it was an Anglicization of a Chinese work
that refers to manual workers impressed into service by force or deception. In fact, indentured labor was
frequently acquired through deceptive practices and even violence.
Between 1830 and 1920, about 1.5 million indentured laborers were recruited from India, one million
from Japan, and half a million from China. Tens of thousands of free Africans and Pacific Islanders also
served as indentured workers.
The first Indian indentured laborers were imported into Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, in 1830.
Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, tens of thousands of Indians, Chinese,
and Africans were brought to the British Caribbean. After France abolished slavery in 1848, its colonies
imported 80,000 Indian laborers and 19,000 Africans. Also ending slavery in 1848, Dutch Guiana
recruited 57,000 Asian workers for its plantations. Although slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886,
the rising costs of slaves led plantations to recruit 138,000 indentured laborers from China between 1847
and 1873.
Areas that had never relied on slave labor also imported indentured workers. After 1850, American
planters in Hawaii recruited labor from China and Japan. British planters in Natal in southern Africa
recruited Indian laborers and those in Queensland in northeastern Australia imported laborers from
neighboring South Pacific Islands. Other indentured laborers toiled in East Africa, on Pacific Islands such
as Fiji, and in Chile, where they gathered bird droppings known as guano for fertilizer.
Steam transportation allowed Europeans and their descendants to extract "surplus" labor from
overpopulated areas suffering from poverty and social and economic dislocation. In India, the roots of
migration included unemployment, famine, demise of traditional industries, and the demand for cash
payment of rents. In China, a society with a long history of long-distance migration, causes of migration
included overpopulation, drought, floods, and political turmoil, culminating in the British Opium Wars
(1839-1842 and 1856 and 1860) and the Taiping Rebellion, which may have cost 20 to 30 million lives.
Overwhelmingly male, many indentured workers initially thought of themselves as sojourners who would
reside temporarily in the new society. In the end, however, many indentured laborers remained in the
regions where they worked. As a result, the descendents of indentured laborers make up a third of the
population in British Guiana, Fiji, and Trinidad by the early 20th century.
Some societies, such as the United States, passed legislation that hindered the migration of Asian women.
In contrast, the British Caribbean colonies required 40 women to be recruited for every 100 men to
promote family life.
Immigration Restriction
Gradually during the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States imposed additional restrictions on
immigration. In 1882, excluded people were likely to become public charges. It subsequently prohibited
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the immigration of contract laborers (1885) and illiterates (1917), and all Asian immigrants (except for
Filipinos, who were U.S. nationals) (1917). Other acts restricted the entry of certain criminals, people who
were considered immoral, those suffering from certain diseases, and paupers. Under the Gentlemen's
Agreement of 1907-1908, the Japanese government agreed to limit passports issued to Japanese in order to
permit wives to enter the United States; and in 1917, the United States barred all Asian immigrants except
for Filipinos, who were U.S. nationals. Intolerance toward immigrants from southern and eastern Europe
resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924, which placed a numerical cap on immigration and instituted a
deliberately discriminatory system of national quotas. In 1965, the United States adopted a new
immigration law which ended the quota system.
During the 20th century, all advanced countries imposed restrictions on the entry of immigrants. A variety
of factors encouraged immigration restriction. These include a concern about the impact of immigration
on the economic well-being of a country's workforce as well as anxiety about the feasibility of
assimilating immigrants of diverse ethnic and cultural origins. Especially following World War I and
World War II, countries expressed concern that foreign immigrants might threaten national security by
introducing alien ideologies.
It is only in the 20th century that governments became capable of effectively enforcing immigration
restrictions. Before the 20th century, Russia was the only major European country to enforce a system of
passports and travel regulations. During and after World War I, however, many western countries adopted
systems of passports and border controls as well as more restrictive immigration laws. The Russian
Revolution prompted fear of foreign radicalism exacerbated by the Russian Revolution, while many
countries feared that their societies would be overwhelmed by a postwar surge of refugees.
Among the first societies to adopt restrictive immigration policies were Europe's overseas colonies. Apart
from prohibitions on the slave trade, many of the earliest immigration restrictions were aimed at Asian
immigrants. The United States imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It barred the entry of Chinese
laborers and established stringent conditions under which Chinese merchants and their families could
enter. Canada also imposed restrictions on Chinese immigration. It imposed a "head" tax (which was $500
in 1904) and required migrants to arrive by a "continuous voyage."
Xenophobia: Hatred of foreigners and immigrants.
Nativism: The policy of keeping a society ethnically homogenous.
Migration as a Key Theme in U.S. and World History
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Digital History ID 3300
The massive movement of peoples as a result of voluntary choice, forced removal, and economic and
cultural dislocation has been one of the most important forces for social change over the past 500 years.
Changes produced by migration--such as urbanization or expansion into frontier regions--transformed the
face of the modern world. Migration has also played a pivotal role in the formation of modern American
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culture. Our most cherished values as well as our art, literature, music, technology, and cultural beliefs and
practices have been shaped by an intricate process of cultural contact and interaction. Because ours is a
nation of immigrants, drawn from every part of the world, the study of migration provides a way to
recognize and celebrate the richness of our population's ancestral cultures.
Why Do People Migrate?
In trying to understand why people migrate, some scholars emphasize individual decisionmaking, while others stress broader structural forces. Many early scholars of migration
emphasized the importance of "push" and "pull" factors. According to this viewpoint, people
decide to leave their homeland when conditions there are no longer satisfactory and when
conditions in another area are more attractive.
In recent years, many scholars have argued that a thorough understanding of the decision
to migrate involves looking at various levels of explanation: the individual, the familial and
the structural-institutional. The first level of explanation--the individual or the psychological-focuses on individual perception and asks what advantages individuals hope to obtain by
migrating. These often include the prospects of increased economic opportunity or a higher
standard of living or escape from social turmoil.
A second level of explanation focuses on family needs. Often, the decision to migrate is not
simply a personal but a family decision, reflecting the desire of a larger family unit to
enhance its security or improve its well-being. Many family or kin groups receive
"remittances"--cash payments that help to support family members--from relatives who
have migrated to another area.
A third level of explanation--the structural and institutional--focuses on the broad social,
political and economic contexts that encourage or discourage population movement. Factors
that stimulate migration include improvements in transportation and communication or
income differentials between more economically advanced and less advanced areas. War,
too, often induces migration. Factors that inhibit migration include immigration laws
restricting exit or entry or laws or social practices that tie farmers to the land (such as
sharecropping or debt peonage which prevented many African Americans from leaving the
post-Civil War American South).
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Push Factors: Factors that repel migrants from their country of origin--include
economic dislocation, population pressures, religious persecution, or denial of political
rights.
Pull Factors: Factors that attract migrants to move, including the attraction of higher
wages, job opportunities, and political or religious liberty.
Uneven Development: Disparities in income, standards of living, and the availability
of jobs within and across societies.
Who Migrates?
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Digital History ID 3306
Even in societies with high rates of emigration, not everyone migrates. Who chooses to stay
and who goes?
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Migrants are rarely a random cross-section of the population. Rather, migrants usually share
certain social characteristics, including age, sex, marital status, occupation, and ethnic
background. Thus, for example, many early 20th century Italian migrants were unmarried
men in their teens or twenties; most early-20th century Russian migrants were Jews.
Migration often takes place during a particular stage of the life cycle. It is particularly
common for individuals to migrate during adolescence or early adulthood or at the time of
marriage.
Many studies of migration have emphasized the idea that migrants have a different
psychology than those who decide to remain behind. Some speculate that migrants are less
tradition-bound, more restless, or more aspiring than non-migrants. Many scholars
distinguish between the true "innovators," the first individuals in a particular society to
migrate to a new area, and those who follow in their footsteps.
In some instances, it seems clear that migrants are traditionalists who seek to preserve an
older way of life. During the mid-19th century, many German emigrants to the United States
were motivated by a desire to maintain pre-industrial crafts in the face of disruptive social
and economic changes linked to the rise of industry. Many migrated to rural areas in the U.S.
Midwest, where they set up farms or engaged in crafts.
What, then, are the effects of migration on their community of origin? Migration often entails
the loss of people with certain characteristics--age, sex, social attitudes, education, religion,
ethnicity, and income. Because migrants often consist of a disproportionate number of
young men, migration tends to reduce a community's population growth rate. Recently,
many economically underdeveloped societies have expressed a fear that migration has
resulted in a "brain drain"--a loss of the society's most educated and highly skilled
members--to wealthier countries.
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Innovators: The first individuals in a society to migrate to a new area.
Traditionalists: Immigrants who seek to preserve an earlier way of life.
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