20th Century Immigrants

Words: 445
Pages: 2

Immigrants have played a major role in the development of America. During the late 19th and early 20th century, people were leaving their countries to move to America for a better life and America took them in with open arms; however, it didn’t last long. When coming into the country and attempting to settle, they faced very harsh conditions and nativists were constantly ridiculing them. People migrated from many different areas, such as Asia and Southern/Eastern Europe. Many of them had saved up money and had high hopes for life in America, and were doing whatever they could manage to escape from the land they came from. Since the United States had massive amounts of land and many new jobs that kept popping up, the amount of people coming in was tremendous. The flow of people brought changes and new viewpoints, and America became a melting pot of people, religions, and cultures. Immigrants envisioned a vast land full of open opportunity and hope before arriving. Many attributes of America were inviting and positive towards the people who wished to seek refuge here, such as the Statue of Liberty, which …show more content…
The jobs that they worked were very demanding, and although most of them worked very hard, it was easy to slip up and get hurt or fired. Some jobs could even result in permanent injuries or death. The wages were below any standard that we have in place now, and it was barely enough to survive off of. Since such large amounts of people were coming in, nativists were very resilient to put them in their place, and tried to drive them back out of the country. A political cartoon entitled “Every Dog Has Its Day”, exposed the truth of how immigrants are being treated and how it continued to escalate. The Native Americans were driven out of their East Coast territories, and when the Chinese immigrated in, they were faced with the same attitudes and