IMMIGRATION

TO THE
UNITED STATES

Pedro J. Ortiz
trinityfilms9@gmail.com

Table of Contents
Immigrants Background ....................................................................................................................................... II
Reasons for Immigration ..................................................................................................................................... III
Immigration's impact in the United States ......................................................................................................... III
Industrial Revolution ........................................................................................................................................... IV
Irish and German Immigrants ............................................................................................................................. IV

Immigration to the United

States
In The Nineteenth Century

Immigrants Background
The United States is sometimes called the "Nation of Immigrants" because it has received more
immigrants than any other country in history. During the first one hundred years of US history, the
nation had no immigration laws. Immigration began to climb during the 1830s. "Between 1830-1840,
44% of the immigrants came from Ireland, 30% came from Germany, 15% came from Great Britain, and
the remainder came from other European countries."
The movement to America of millions of immigrants in the century after the 1820s was not
simply a flight of impoverished peasants abandoning underdeveloped, backward regions for the riches
and unlimited opportunities offered by the American economy. People did not move randomly to
America but emanated from very specific regions at specific times in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. "It is impossible to understand even the nature of American immigrant communities without
appreciating the nature of the world these newcomers left."
The rate of people leaving Ireland was extremely high in the late 1840s and early 1850s due to
overpopulation and to the potato famine of 1846. "By 1850, there were almost one million Irish
Catholics in the United States, especially clustered in New York and Massachusetts."

II

Germans left their homeland due to severe depression, unemployment, political unrest, and the
failure of the liberal revolutionary movement. It was not only the poor people who left their countries,
but those in the middle and lower-middle levels of their social structures also left. "Those too poor
could seldom afford to go, and the very wealthy had too much of a stake in the homelands to depart."

Reasons for Immigration

Many immigrants came to America as a result of the lure of new land, in part, the result of the
attraction of the frontier. America was in a very real sense the last frontier--a land of diverse peoples
that, even under the worst conditions, maintained a way of life that permitted more freedom of belief
and action than was held abroad. "While this perception was not entirely based in reality, it was the
conviction that was often held in Europe and that became part of the ever-present American Dream."

Immigration's impact in the United States

The opportunity to directly transfer a skill into the American economy was great for
newcomers prior to the 1880s. "Coal-mining and steel-producing companies in the East,
railroads, gold- and silver-mining interests in the West, and textile mills in New England all
sought a variety of ethnic groups as potential sources of inexpensive labor." Because
immigrants were eager to work, they contributed to the wealth of the growing nation. During
the 1830s, American textile mills welcomed hand-loom weavers from England and North
Ireland whose jobs had been displaced by power looms. It was this migration that established
the fine-cotton-goods trade of Philadelphia. "Nearly the entire English silk industry migrated to
America after the Civil War, when high American tariffs allowed the industry to prosper on this
side of the Atlantic."

III

Whether immigrants were recruited directly for their abilities or followed existing
networks into unskilled jobs, they inevitably moved within groups of friends and relatives and
worked and lived in clusters.

Industrial Revolution
As the Industrial Revolution progressed, immigrants were enticed to come to the United
States through the mills and factories that sent representatives overseas to secure cheap labor.
An example was the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, located along the banks of the
Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire. In the 1870s, the Amoskeag Company
recruited women from Scotland who were expert gingham weavers. Agreements were set
specifying a fixed period of time during which employees would guarantee to work for the
company.

Irish and German Immigrants

In the 1820s, Irish immigrants did most of the hard work in building the canals in the
United States. In fact, Irish immigrants played a large role in building the Erie Canal. American
contractors encouraged Irish immigrants to come to the United States to work on the roads,
canals, and railroads, and manufacturers lured them into the new mills and factories.
"Most German immigrants settled in the middle western states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin and Missouri." With encouragement to move west from the Homestead Act of 1862,
which offered public land free to immigrants who intended to become citizens, German
immigrants comprised a large portion of the pioneers moving west. "They were masterful
farmers and they built prosperous farms."

IV