Where did most immigrants that came to the US come from in the early 1900s?
 European Emigration Show
Between 1815 and 1915, some 30 million Europeans arrived in the United States. For many it was a long and arduous journey. In the early part of the century, just getting to a port of embarkation might mean days or weeks of travel on foot, by rivercraft, or in horse-drawn vehicles. Because regularly scheduled departures were rare in the age of sail, immigrants often had to wait in port for days or weeks before their ship departed. In Northern Europe, many immigrants departed from Dutch or German ports like Amsterdam and Bremen. Later, when immigration from Central and Eastern Europe was on the rise, immigrants often had to travel down the Danube River to Black Sea ports like Constanta and Varna. From there, they had to endure weeks or months at sea aboard sailing ships subject to the vagaries of wind and weather. The spread of the railroads across Europe in the mid-1800s greatly shortened travel time to embarkation ports, while the introduction of steamships cut passage time from weeks to days, in the case of the fastest ships. Ships also increased in size, some carrying more than 1,000 immigrants in steerage class. Except in places where immigration was restricted—like the Russian Empire—it was fairly easy to travel from an obscure European village to the United States by the late 19th century. A potential immigrant contracted with a shipping company agent, often a local cleric or teacher, who informed the head office at the departure port. The agent then received a departure date and ticket voucher, which he passed along to the immigrant, who boarded a train for the port city. If the port of embarkation was Bremen, immigrants could almost step directly from the train onto their ship—the city had railroad track leading right onto the docks. Between 1882 and 1917, the U.S. government introduced laws regulating immigration. In 1891, for example, Congress barred from admission those "suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease" and those "convicted [of] a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude" like anarchists and polygamists. As a result, steamship lines became increasingly careful about whom they let on board. Immigrants had to have their papers checked and their health inspected before departure. Sometimes immigrants had to spend several days awaiting boarding, during which they were lodged and fed by the steamship company. Source: Destination America by Charles A. Wills Background Essay on Late 19th and Early 20th Century ImmigrationThis summary of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigration describes the "new immigration" that originated from Southern and Eastern Europe. The essay also outlines American responses to the new wave of immigration, including some of the laws designed to restrict immigration that were adopted between 1880 and 1910. Between 1880 and 1910, almost fifteen million immigrants entered the United States, a number which dwarfed immigration figures for previous periods. Unlike earlier nineteenth century immigration, which consisted primarily of immigrants from Northern Europe, the bulk of the new arrivals hailed mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe. These included more than two and half million Italians and approximately two million Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as many Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Greeks, and others. The new immigrants’ ethnic, cultural, and religious differences from both earlier immigrants and the native-born population led to widespread assertions that they were unfit for either labor or American citizenship. A growing chorus of voices sought legislative restrictions on immigration. Often the most vocal proponents of such restrictions were labor groups (many of whose members were descended from previous generations of Irish and German immigrants), who feared competition from so-called “pauper labor.” After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration and made it nearly impossible for Chinese to become naturalized citizens, efforts to restrict European immigration increased. In the same year, the Immigration Act for the first time levied a “head tax” (initially fifty cents a person) intended to finance enforcement of federal immigration laws. The act also made several categories of immigrants ineligible to enter the United States, including convicts, "lunatics" (a catch-all term for those deemed mentally unfit) and those likely to become “public charges,” i.e., those who would place a financial burden on state institutions or charities. A second Immigration Act in 1891 expanded these categories to include polygamists and those sick with contagious diseases, and established a Bureau of Immigration to administer and enforce the new restrictions. In 1892, Ellis Island opened in New York Harbor, replacing Castle Garden as the main point of entry for millions of immigrants arriving on the East Coast. In accordance with the 1891 law, the federal immigration station at Ellis Island included facilities for medical inspections and a hospital. While business and financial interests occasionally defended unrestricted immigration, viewing a surplus of cheap labor as essential to industry and westward expansion, calls for measures restricting the flow of the new immigrants continued to grow. Although President Grover Cleveland vetoed an 1897 law proposing a literacy test for prospective immigrants, further restrictions on immigration continued to be added. Following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, xenophobia and hysteria about political radicalism led to the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which excluded would-be immigrants on the basis of their political beliefs. In 1907, immigration at Ellis Island reached its peak with 1,004,756 immigrants arriving. That same year, Congress authorized the Dillingham Commission to investigate the origins and consequences of contemporary immigration. The Commission concluded that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American society and recommended that it be greatly curtailed in the future, proposing as the most efficacious remedy a literacy test similar to the one President Cleveland had vetoed in 1897. Ultimately, the Commission’s findings provided a rationale for the sweeping immigration laws passed in the years after World War I. Source | American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2008. Where did many U.S. immigrants come from in the early 1900's?Between 1880 and 1920, a time of rapid industrialization and urbanization, America received more than 20 million immigrants. Beginning in the 1890s, the majority of arrivals were from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe.
What are two reasons why immigrants in the early 1900's came to the United States?Escaping religious, racial, and political persecution, or seeking relief from a lack of economic opportunity or famine still pushed many immigrants out of their homelands. Many were pulled here by contract labor agreements offered by recruiting agents, known as padrones to Italian and Greek laborers.
Where did most immigrants arriving in the United States during the early 1900s arrive through the West Coast?By the early 1900s, many of the immigrants to the United States from Europe entered the country through Ellis Island, an immigration center in New York. On the West Coast, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Asia, entered through another immigration center, Angel Island.
Where did most of the immigrants to the United States come from?The top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (24 percent of immigrants), India (6 percent), China (5 percent), the Philippines (4.5 percent), and El Salvador (3 percent).
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