The quotas in the McCarran-Walter Act were set at one-sixth of one percent of each nationality’s population in the 1920 census. However, rather than simply restrict Mexican immigration, Americans recognized that their solution was right across the border. Americans encouraged relatively free and open immigration during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and rarely questioned that policy until the late 1800s. The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, John Whiteclay Chambers, 1992. The Act, therefore, was justified as something to protect American families and homes by eliminating coolie labor competition (thereby protecting an American standard of living) and preventing prostitutes from seducing American men and introducing foreign diseases to the nation. Throughout the colonial period, migration to the American continent was an open process. Moreover, they both shared a commonality: the word “white.”. With economic competition came dislike and even racial suspicion and hatred. This page was last edited on 5 July 2019, at 05:47. What impact did immigrants have on the United States economy?' Which are policies that remain to this day. The decision to retain immigration quotas was based on concerns about communist infiltration and the threat of communist immigrants to the foundations of American society. Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Rich “robber barons” or industrial giants paid the immigrants ridiculously low wages, knowing that they were forced to take the low-paying jobs or face starvation. While the United States was embroiled in conflict with Mexico, Dred Scott, a slave, sued for his freedom. A steady stream of people from rural America also migrated to the cities during this period. Never before had a nation been created from such a heterogeneous population. Economic opportunities and stability were there for the taking. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act. Under the terms of the treaty, Mexico ceded the territories of present-day New Mexico, Nevada, California, and part of Utah to the United States. Many immigrants wanted to move to communities established by previous settlers from their homelands. They were heavily Presbyterian, and largely self-sufficient. While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled. The Page Act prevented the immigration of anyone from “China, Japan, or any Oriental country” who was coming into the United States for contract labor. Which organizations formed exchanges to help farmers? This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century. They fear that newcomers with different languages, religions, and cultures are reluctant to assimilate into American society and to learn English. how big was the world's first skyscraper, built in 1885? President John Adams supported these laws because of concerns he had about French radicalism penetrating the United States. To find other documents in Loc.gov relating to this topic, use such key words as immigration or immigrants, or include the names of specific immigrant or ethnic groups, such as German, Irish, Scandinavian, Swedish, Norwegian, or Chinese. Fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine, many came to the U. S. because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical reaper in 1834. Otherwise, immigration was rather homogenous throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 19th Century Immigration. These Acts, which were passed under a Federalist administration, were designed to restrict free speech, and made it easier for the government to deport foreigners. Throughout the late 1800s, most immigrants arriving in New York entered at the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American war. An estimated 25 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. These immigration acts declared those with certain diseases inadmissible, and created an Asiatic Barred Zone (1917). After certain states passed immigration laws following the Civil War, the Supreme Court in 1875 declared regulation of immigration a federal responsibility. The result of this pressure was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. Some who arrived were wealthy, many were not. Others came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution, and nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. President Wilson opposed it, but President Harding passed it when he was elected. Under the assumption that foreigners brought radicalism and disquiet, these laws also made it harder for new immigrants to vote. Such feelings were accompanied by anti-Chinese riots and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The number of immigrants declined dramatically following the Civil War. The 19th century immigrants coming into America, came from many areas of the world. Immigration to the United States was moving full force during the 19th century. The earliest immigration and naturalization laws would reflect a desire to protect the relationship between whiteness and American identity. This was an explicit attempt to preserve U.S. racial homogeneity, as the 1890 census would have fewer individuals from Southern and Eastern Europe—the people of which most Americans considered members of distinct and inferior races. There is a strong base of support for continued immigration as a necessary ingredient for economic growth and as an essential element of a cosmopolitan society among many Americans. Cementing that the rights and privileges of citizenship were reserved for white Americans. In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Individuals like Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur described the “American” in 1782 as European or the descendant of a European, which resulted in a “strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country.” Crèvecoeur explained that it was common to find families where the “grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations… Here [in America] individuals of all nations are melted into a new race whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”[1] While Crèvecoeur may have been impressed by the sheer “heterogeneity” of the American family, it was clear that it was characterized by purely European ancestry.