1870 To 1900 Immigration Research Paper

Words: 500
Pages: 2

Did you know that from 1870 to 1900, over 12 million people immigrated to the United States? Immigration is the term used when a family or person leaves their country of origin to live in a different, better country. In the late 1800s, many people moved from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States. Immigrants often struggled in their old lives and had even more troubles adapting to their new ones. Living in Europe back in the 1800s consisted of many challenges and hardships, including overpopulation and not enough jobs. America is a new place with lots of land and space to live. According to Discovering Our Past, “Many people emigrated or left their homelands, because of economic hardship. In Italy and Hungary, people faced overcrowding …show more content…
These things encouraged the immigrants to move to America, for a new life without the troubles. Another struggle of immigrants is trying to adjust to life in their new home. Many people had trouble with other immigrants, and they couldn’t decide whether to try to become like the Americans, or to preserve their old culture. The textbook states that, “Immigrants tried to preserve their cultures. Yet most also wanted to assimilate, or become part of, the larger American culture. These two wishes sometimes clashed.New lifestyles sometimes conflicted with traditional ways.” (580) These two different types of immigrants had strong beliefs, and those who weren’t quite sure were torn between the two. These new changes troubled immigrants, and forced them to make tough choices which made it difficult to adapt to their new lives. There was one group of people who saw immigrants as people who should have stayed in Europe. These were called Navists, who had been in America for a long time, and tried to ban immigration. As seen in Discovering our past “The nativist movement, which had opposed immigration since the 1830s, grew in the late 1800s. Calls for restrictions on immigration