This document summarizes immigration to America from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. It describes how immigrants came for both "push" factors like economic hardship and political unrest abroad, as well as "pull" factors like job opportunities and freedom in America. However, immigrants faced labor segmentation and discrimination. The Chinese immigrant experience is discussed in depth to show restrictions imposed through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Subsequent laws further restricted immigration based on evolving ideas of whiteness and citizenship. Individual and group strategies for inclusion are also reviewed.

1. America as
Nation of
Immigrants
! “Give me your tired, your poor,
! Your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free,
! The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore,
Immigration and ! Send these, the homeless, the tempest-
tost to me,
American Identity ! I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
! Emma Lazarus
A gift from France, the
Statue of Liberty was
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erected in 1886.
Welcoming the
Reevaluating Immigration
Uprooted
! Land of Freedom - ! Economic Opportunity vs. Stratification
politics
! Political Freedom vs. Discrimination
! Melting Pot - culture
! Upward Mobility - ! Cultural Assimilation vs. Diversity
economics ! Individual vs. family/kinship/community
! Immigration as networks
modernization process -
tradition-bound peasant
to modern capitalist
individuals
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Why did they immigrate?
Who are the Immigrants?
Push Factors
! 24 mill. From 1860-1920 ! economic motivations
! Old Immigrants ! global expansion of capitalism
! pre-1880, 85% from ! “The capitalist form of
Western and Northern production, under which
Europe goods are produced for
sale in order to make the
! New Immigrants largest profit possible and
! post-1880 80% from workers receive wages for
Eastern and Southern selling their labor.”
Europe " Sucheng Chan
! More New Immigrants ! disruption of agricultural
economy
! approx. 1 million ! “After 1850 the spread of
immigrants from Asia industrialization and
1850-1934 commercialized agriculture
! approx. 1 million from let to further declines in the
Latin America, mostly number of landholdings
after 1910 that could support families.”
! John Bodnar, The
5 Transplanted 6
! core-periphery movement
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2. Political Upheaval and Persecution Family Decision
! Pogroms in the Pale ! Male migratory wage-earners
! Jewish family migration - settlement ! Return migration approx. 50%
! only 3% return rate ! Chain migration
! 1.4 million in NYC’s Lower East Side by 1915 ! Extended kinship network
! Mexican Revolution 1910-11 ! Adopted/fictive kin
! 1900-1930 Mexican American population in ! Family reunification
Southwest grew from 375,000 to 1,160,000 ! Esp. women
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Pull Factors:
Looking for Gold Mountain
! “‘America’ was in everybody’s mouth. Businessmen talked of it
over their accounts; the market women made up their quarrels
that they might discuss it from stall to stall; people who had
relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for
the enlightenment of less fortunate folks….all talked of it, but
scarcely anybody knew one true fact about this magic land.”
! Mary Antin, Russian Immigrant
! “Heroes were sitting right there in the room and telling what creatures
they met on the road, what customs the non-Chinese follow….Nuggets
cobbled the streets in California, the loose stones to be had for the
stopping over and picking them up….In their hunger the men forgot
that the gold streets had not been there when they’d gone to look for
themselves.”
! From Chinamen, by Maxine Hong Kingston
! Labor recruiters
! Incorporation of America and the demand for labor 9 10
Implications of
Economic Opportunities? labor stratification
! Labor Market Segmentation ! Economic benefits for
employers
! Primary vs. Secondary Labor Market
! Protectionism on behalf of labor
! Differences in jobs, working conditions, benefits, security, to protect wage scale and
wages, etc. privileges
! Dual Wage Economy ! anti-Immigration
! KOL
! “cheap labor” = same work, less pay
! AFL
! transnational industrial reserve army ! Jobs for “Americans”
! “to weigh down white workers during periods of economic ! But who are “Americans” and
expansion and to hold white labor in check during periods who deserves the better jobs?
of overproduction” ! Family wage for men not
necessarily higher wages
! Old immigrants and native-born vs. New Immigrants for women
! Men vs. Women ! Race = nationality
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! Whites vs. non-whites
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3. Race and
Chinese Immigrants as Case Study
Citizenship
! right of naturalization
! 322,000
and citizenship
! Naturalization law of
immigrated
1790 specified that between 1852-
naturalized citizenship 1882
reserved for whites
! played a key role
! Revisions instituted for
African Americans; in developing the
Mexican Americans; economic and
and Native Americans transportation
! political parties and infrastructure of
labor unions the American West
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Mining
! “The Gold Rush”
! 2/3 of Chinese American
Railroad
population were involved construction
in mining in 1860s
! Foreign Miners’ Tax
(1852)
! $3 monthly tax for every
foreign miner who did ! 12,000 Chinese employed by Central Pacific Railroad (90%
not desire to become a of work force in mid-1860s)
citizen ! Paid $31/month without board or lodgings (savings of 1/3)
! Collected $5 million
from Chinese, 25%-50% ! 5,000 Chinese workers strike in 1870 for higher wages and
of California state 8-hour day
revenue by 1870 15 16
Domestic Service and “women’s
Manufacturing
work”
! 46% of labor force in ! 72% of all laundry workers in California in
San Francisco in four 1870 were Chinese
key industries
! boots and shoes
! woolens
! cigars and tobacco
! sewing
! Consumer boycott and
union labels
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3

4. class hostility channeled into racial antagonism The Anti-Chinese Movement:
“The Chinese Must Go!”
! Political Disfranchisement
and Physical Violence
! People v. Hall (1854 Ca.)
! Chinese ineligible to
testify in court against
whites
! Racial Segregation and Social
Harassment
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Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Why support from upper and middle classes?
! Social Darwinism
! 1st group to be
designated for ! “Scientific”
basis for
exclusion based on justifying
nationality and class racial
! Chinese laborers hierarchy
targeted for ! Eugenics
immigration exclusion ! Cultural/social vs.
economic
! all Chinese motivations
immigrants denied ! easier to racially
right to become scapegoat than to
naturalized citizens reform economic
system
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Implications for future immigrants: Ambiguously Raced:
Who else is not white? Social Construction of Race
! Mexican Americans
! Definitely not white ! Spanish or Indigenous peoples?
! African Americans and Jim Crow ! South Asian “Indians”
! Bhagat Singh Thind case (1923)
! Most Asian immigrants ! “Caucasian” but not white
! Irish, Eastern and Southern Europeans
! aliens ineligible for citizenship
! ethnic and religious differences viewed as racial
! Immigration differences
! Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1906-1907 ! Anglo-Saxon race
! “No intelligent patriot…[can observe] the entrance…of
! Land ownership such vast masses of peasantry, degraded below our
! Alien Land Laws utmost concepts…without the gravest apprehension and
alarm.” M.I.T. President Francis A. Walker
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! I.Q. Testing and Progressive Education
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5. Gradations of non-white identity 1924 Immigration Act
! Ellis Island (1900) vs. ! Nationality Quota System (in place until 1965)
Angel Island (1910) ! 2% of 1890 census
! 2% rejection vs. 25% ! 164,000 total/year
rejection rate ! Targeted towards reducing Southern and Eastern
! Ellis Island processing European Immigration
rate – 5,000/day ! Cut of all immigration of “aliens ineligible for
! Angel Island - citizenship” i.e. Asian immigration
detention up to ! Exception of Filipinos – American “nationals”
months ! Immigration within Western Hemisphere
exempted (e.g. Mexico, Canada)
! 29 vs. 200-1,000
! labor needs
questions
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Individual strategies for Group Strategies
achieving acceptance
! Political and Labor Advocacy
! Assimilation ! Cross-Group Cooperation
! education !Industrial Workers of the
! popular culture World (1905)
! upward mobility ! NAACP
! What are the benefits, costs, and limitations of this strategy?
! Political Machines
! Options available only for particular groups
! Progressivism
! 1922 Ozawa case - assimilated but not white
! Reinforce Social Stratification
! Biculturalism
! AFL
! Transnationalism
! continuing political, cultural, and financial connections with the ! Political machines
homeland ! Progressivism
! Gender
! Is assimilation and wage force participation inherently liberating?
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Reevaluating Immigration
! Transplanted versus uprooted cultures
! Family and kinship networks
! Unequal incorporation into U.S. labor
market
! Unequal access to political rights
! Social construction of race
! Biculturalism and Transnationalism
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