Three New Theoretical Approaches

1. New Perspectives on Nineteenth/Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Professor Colin Fisher University of San Diego

2. Three New Theoretical Approaches • Immigration and “whiteness.” • Immigration and transnationalism. • Americanization from the bottom up.

3. Immigration Timeline, to 1790 • 12,000 years ago: Bering Straight Crossing • 1492: Columbus arrives • 1565: St. Augustine founded by the Spanish in Florida • 1598: Juan de Onate founds New Mexico. • 1607: English found Jamestown • 1608: Champlain establishes New France in Quebec • 1619: first Africans arrive in Virginia • 1620: English establish Plymouth Plantation • 1626: New Amsterdam established by the Dutch • 1638: New Sweden Established in New Jersey • 1654: first Jews arrive in America. • 1683: first Germans settle in Pennsylvania • 1718: French establish New Orleans • 1769: Spanish settle in California

4. 1790 Census - Ancestry • African 750,000 • English 1,900,000 • Scotch-Irish 320,000 • Germany 280,000 • Scottish 160,000 • Irish 200,000 • Dutch 100,000 • Welsh 120,000 • French 80,000 • Swedish 20,000 • Native American 50,000

5. Immigration Timeline, to 1790 -1856 • 1790:  U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character.” Indentured servants, slaves, Africans, and Asians were ineligible for citizenship. • 1808: The importation of slaves into the United States is prohibited.  • 1831: Pennsylvania permits bilingual instruction in English and German in its public schools.  • 1846: Irish Potato Famine prompts hundreds of thousands of Irish to immigrate to the United States. By 1850, Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia are 25% Irish. • 1848: Failed Liberal Revolution of 1848, as well as crop failures, spur German migration to the United States. • 1848:  Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extends citizenship to approximately 80,000 Mexican residents of the Southwest.  • 1849:   California Gold Rush spurs immigration from China.  • 1854-1856: Peak of the Know Nothing Movement. Anglo-American Protestants, concerned about the arrival of German and Irish Catholics, unsuccessfully pushed for immigration restriction. • 1854:  Chinese immigrants are prohibited from testifying against whites in California courts. 

6. Immigration Timeline, to 1856-1900 • 1868 14th Amendment – insures that all people born in the United States are citizens of the United States. • 1870: Following passage of the 14th Amendment, Congress passes the Naturalization Act of 1870, which limits American citizenship to "white persons and persons of African descent.” By default, Asians and Native Americans are barred from U.S. citizenship. • 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act. Following economic decline in the 1870s and falling prices for labor, workers demand an end to cheap Chinese labor. • 1882: Immigration Act of 1882 levied a tax of 50 cents per immigrant and makes several categories of immigrants ineligible to enter the United States, including "lunatics" and people likely to be burdens on the state or charity. • 1891:  The Immigration and Naturalization Service was created to administer the federal laws relating to the admission, exclusion and deportation of aliens. Congress bans the following people from immigrating: polygamists, "persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease," and those convicted of "a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude." • 1892: Ellis Island opens – 12 million immigrants (principally from southern and eastern Europe) are processed over next 30 years. Unlike previous waves of immigrants, the vast majority head to cities where they become industrial laborers. • 1894: Prominent Bostonians, concerned about the dilution of the Anglo-American population, form the Immigration Restriction League.

7. Immigration Timeline, to 1900-1924 • 1901: After President William McKinley is assassinated by a Polish anarchist, Congress enacts the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which allows immigrants to be excluded on the basis of their political opinions.  • 1907: Expatriation Act declares that an American woman who marries a foreign national loses her citizenship.    • 1907: Under the Gentleman's Agreement with Japan, the United States agrees not to restrict Japanese immigration in exchange for Japan's promise not to issue passports to Japanese laborers for travel to the continental United States. Japanese laborer are permitted to go to Hawaii. • 1910:  The Mexican Revolution sends thousands to the United States. • 1913:  California's Alien Land Law prohibits Asians from becoming citizens or owning property in the state. It provides the model for similar acts in other states.  • 1914-8:  World War I dramatically slows immigration to the United States – it even reverses immigration as some immigrants return home to fight.  American employers, desperate for industrial laborers, turn increasing to African Americans, Mexican immigrants, and some Filipinos (who are American citizens because of US colonization of the Philippines). • 1921:  Quota Act limits annual European immigration to 3 percent of the number of a nationality group in the United States in 1910.  Immigration drops off. • 1922:  Cable Act partially repeals the Expatriation Act, but declares that an American woman who marries an Asian still loses her citizenship.  • 1924:  The Johnson-Reed Act limits annual European immigration to 2 percent of the number of nationality group in the United States in 1890. Asian immigration ended. The 1924 Act was based on the premise that “Nordics” were a superior white race than “Mediterraneans,” “Slavs,” “Celts,” and “Semites,” and all Europeans were superior to “Asiatics.” Immigration drops even more. • 1924: to stop increasing Mexican migration northward, the U.S. government established the Border Patrol.

9. Immigration Timeline, to 1929-1965 • 1929: Great Depression and widespread unemployment. Mexican Repatriation. One million people of Mexican descent are deported or pressured to leave. Historians estimate that 60% of those sent back to Mexico are American citizens. • 1940: The Alien Registration Act requires the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens in the United States over the age of 14. • 1942:  Executive Order 9066 authorizes the military to evacuate 112,000 Japanese Americans from the Pacific coast and place them in internment camps.  Japanese-American labor is desperately needed in Hawaii, so the order does not apply there. • 1943: The Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed. By the end of the 1940s, all restrictions on Asians acquiring U.S. citizenship are abolished.    • 1943: Desperate for farm workers during WWII, big growers in California and elsewhere pressure Congress into creating the Bracero Program, a guest worker program bringing temporary agricultural workers into the United States from Mexico. The program ended in 1964.  • 1944:  In the case of United States v. Korematsu, the Supreme Court upholds the internment of Japanese Americans as constitutional.   • 1950:  The Internal Security Act bars admission to any foreigner who is a Communist or who might engage in activities "which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States."  • 1954:  “Operation Wetback” forces the return of one million illegal Mexican immigrants.  Border Patrol agents made sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and made random stops of “Mexican-looking people.” In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their U.S.-born children. • 1965:  Immigration and Nationality Act repeals the national origins quota system and gives priority to family members of U.S. citizens, those possessing needed skills, and refugees.  The total number of visas awarded was 300,000 per year. The effect of the act was to shift the immigrant stream away from Europe and to Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In subsequent years this would dramatically alter the ethnic composition of the United States.

10. Number of Foreign Born in the United States in 1990 • European-born: 4,350,403 • Asian-born: 4,979,037 • African-born: 363,819 • Latin American-born: 8,407,837

12. “All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.” - Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries” (1751)

13. “The labor force has been cleft into two great divisions. The upper stratum includes what is known in mill parlance as the ‘English-speaking’ men; the lower contain the ‘Hunkies’ or ‘Ginnies.’ Or if you please, the former are the ‘white men,’ the later the ‘foreigners.’ - John Fitch, The Steel Workers (1911)

14. African Calling Cards – continents bridged through new communication technology

15. American poster commemorating those killed in the Iranian Green Revolution, 2009

16. Celebrating Mexican Independence Day in Colorado, 2008

17. Norwegian Independence Day in Chicago - 1907

18. Polish Guard in Chicago 1908 – some of these men will return to fight for Poland in World War I

19. The majority of Italian immigrants had no intention of staying in the United States. Between 20-30% of Italian immigrants returned to Italy. Italians called these return immigrants “birds of passage.”

20. Americanization ceremony at a Ford Plant in Michigan. Foreign workers from 52 nations wearing Old World clothing step into the melting pot. The emerge with an American flag and a new American suit.

21. Chicago baseball game 1910 – baseball played a major role in integrating and “Americanizing” Chicago’s multiethnic industrial working-class