Sveučilište u Rijeci

Učiteljski fakultet u Rijeci

Učiteljski studij u Gospiću

THE PEOPLE IN US: SETTLEMENT AND IMMIGRATION

Seminarski rad iz kolegija Anglosaksonski svijet

Gospić, 2006.
 SVEUČILIŠTE U RIJECI
UČITELJSKI FAKULTET U RIJECI
UČITELJSKI STUDIJ U GOSPIĆU

THE PEOPLE IN US: SETTLEMENT AND IMMIGRATION

Seminarski rad iz kolegija Anglosaksonski svijet

Gospić, listopad, 2006.

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1. Contents Page

2. Introduction ……………………………………………………………… 4
3. A nation of nations ………………………………………………………. 5
4. Early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans ……... 5, 6
5. The founders …………………………………………………………… 6, 7
6. The first wave: colonial immigration, 1680-1776 …………………... 7, 8
7. The second wave: the old immigrants, 1820-1890 ……………………... 9
8. The third wave: 1890-1930 ………………………………………………. 10
9. Wartime policies: displaced persons and refugees ………………... 10, 11
10. The fourth wave: 1965 to the present ……………………………... 11, 12
11. Patterns of internal migration in the American mosaic ……………... 12
12. Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 13
12. Literature …………………………………………………………….. 14

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2. Introduction

The United States has been characterized as a "melting pot" in which each ingredient
blends into a single dish. Likewise, the United States has been characterized as a "salad bowl"
in which each ingredient reserves its own flavor and texture while contributing to the
aggregate salad. Perhaps, President Jimmy Carter characterized the nature of the United States
best ...
“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people,
different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”
So who is an “American”? How do YOU define an "American"?
Ever since its founding in 1776, and even before then, the United States has attracted
immigrants from around the world. For well over two centuries, people have flocked under
this nation's protective wings as opportunists, sojourners, missionaries, refugees, and even
illegal aliens. With the Statue of Liberty greeting Europeans entering Ellis Island, and The
Golden Gate Bridge greeting Chinese and other Asians into San Francisco, the U.S. has long
since been a refuge of the world, with opportunities abound and freedom for all. Over time,
millions around the world have found emigrating to the U.S. as the only alternative to
starvation, death, or a life full of hardship and suffering. With thousands from nations
spanning the globe, America has become a mosaic of people, culture, and hope.

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3. A nation of nations

Immigration is the most important aspect of US history. Immigration to the United

States of America is the movement of non-residents to the United States, and has been a major
source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the American history
even though the foreign born have never been more than 15% of the population since about
1675. The economic, social and political aspects of immigration has caused controversy
regarding race, ethnicity, religion, economic benefits, job growth, settlement patterns, impact
on upward social mobility, levels of criminality, nationalities, political loyalties, moral values,
and work habits. Given the distance of North America from Eurasia, most historical U.S.
immigration was a riskful venture, which inspired myths and dreams of prosperity and
opportunity not found in the Old World. Since the advent of international jet travel in the
1960s, travel to the United States has been made easy by air, but remains difficult, expensive
and dangerous for some illegally crossing the Mexican border at unauthorized points.
For the most people in Europe and worldwide, the US were the best opportunity for
making a better life over their situation in the 'old country'. This is well-known as the
American Dream. The conflict and mixing of cultures contributed to making discrimination,
economic exploitation, anti-foreign movements, and debates over equality, opportunity, and
social identity. There has never been a single national culture. So we can say that the US are a
nation of nations. A melting-pot (a mosaic with many discrete pieces) is the best metaphor for
understanding the American society.

4. Early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans

European explorers and settlers encountered in the late 1400s. Europeans and Native
Americans caught diseases from each other. Over half Europeans died during the 17th century
in adjusting to the new environment. North America's pre-Columbian population of 10
million shrank to between 2 and 3 million. The exchange of Native Americans plants
(tobacco, patatoes, maize) and European's animals (cows, donkeys, sheep. pigs, horses) had
Native American Territories
At the time of the first European contact,
an estimated 2 million to 18 million
people inhabited North America north of
present-day Mexico. Much of the Native
American population in the present-day
the US was decimated by war, famine,
and disease as non-Indians took over
their lands.
effects that were as far-
reaching. The potato played a key
role in the great population
growth that brought millions of
European immigrants to the US in
the 1800s.
Why were they in conflict? It is very important to find out the characters of Native
Americans and Europeans. Native Americans believed that the divine was in all things, not
only in human beings. So they did not want to buy and sell land ie. the divine. A communal
life in which material goods as well as individual talents belonged to the group. The
perservation of nature for Native Americans was in the first place. Europeans viewed man as
the highest creation of a God who made all things fit a system called the Great chain of
Being. In it only angels and human beings had souls and rational intelligence; whites were

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more highly favoured by God than brown, red or black people; man ranked higher than
women; and every person had a place in a social class. It was natural that time and land were
viewed as goods to be measured, bought and sold as part of the individual's persuit of success.
The main reason for conflicts has been land ownership from the first European settlement
until today.

5. The founders

The people who established the colonies are considered founders rather than
immigrants because they created the customs, laws and institutions. The first successful
English colony in what is now the United States was established as a barely successful
business enterprise, after much loss of life, in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. Once tobacco was
found to be a profitable crop many plantations were establish along the Chesapeake Bay and
along the Southern rivers and coast. These constituted the southern colonies. English Pilgrims
established a small settlement near Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620; much larger numbers of
English Puritans came to Boston, Massachusetts and adjacent areas from about 1628 to 1640.
Basque, French, Englsh and Portuguese fishermen had been fishing off the New England and
Newfoundland coast since about 1520 and some small summer fishing settlements/camps
long pre-dated Jamestown. Permanent small English fishing settlements from mostly fishing
communities in England were established along the Maine New Hampshire coast starting
roughly in 1621. The colonies from Maine to the New York border were the New England
colonies. The Dutch established settlements along the Hudson River in New York starting
about 1626. Some of the early Dutch settlers set up
large landed estates along the Hudson River and
brought in farmers who became renters. Others
established rich trading posts for trading with the
Indians and started cities such as New Amsterdam
(now New York City, New York) and Albany, New
York. Starting in about 1680 Pennsylvania was
settled by Quakers and other English and German
Protestant sects settling initially around
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Delaware River
valley. Along with New York, New Jersey and
Baltimore, Maryland this is normally considered the
core of the middle colonies. The fourth main
colonial center of settlement is what's called the
western "frontier" in the western parts of
Pennsylvania and the South which was settled in the
early 1700s to late 1700s by mostly Scotch-Irish,
Scots and others mostly from northern England
border lands.
Native Americans
The mostly agricultural Southern colonies initially had very high death rates for new
settlers from malaria, yellow fever and other diseases as well as Indian wars.
Despite this, a steady flow of new settlers mostly from central England and the
London area kept the population growing. The large plantations were mostly owned by
friends (mostly minor aristocrats) of the British appointed Governors (Sir William Berkeley
initially) Many settlers arrived as indentured servants who had to work off their passage with
5-7 years of work for room and board, clothing etc. only. Their wages they earned going to

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pay for their passage. The same deal was initially offered to some black slaves but gradually
the term of servitude became accepted in the south as life for them--one of America's shames.
After their terms of indentures many of these settlers settled small farms on the frontier or
started small businesses in the towns.
The initial areas of New England settlement had been largely cleared of Indians by
major out breaks of measles, small pox, and plaque etc. among them starting in about 1618
(believed to have been transmitted by visiting fishing fleets from Europe). The peak New
England settlement occurred in 1629 to about 1641 when about 20,000 Puritan settlers arrived
mostly from the East Anglian parts of England (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and East
Sussex) [2]. In the next 150 years, their "Yankee" descendants largely filled in the New
England states. The New England colonists were the most urban and educated of all the
colonists and had many skilled farmers as well as tradesmen and skilled craftsmen among
them. They started the first English colonial University in the Americas, Harvard, in 1635 to
train their ministers.
They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all had their own
militias) and common religious activity. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture and fisheries
were their main income sources. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed the
mosquitos), small wide spread villages (minimized spread of disease) and abundant food
supply resulted in the lowest death rate and highest birth rate (marriage was expected and
birth control was not and a much higher than average number of children and mothers
survived) of any of the colonies. The eastern and northern frontier around the initial New
England settlements was mainly settled by the descendants of the original New Englanders.
Immigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and the start of the English Civil War
decreased to less than 1% (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all years prior to 1845.
The Middle colonies settlements were scattered west of New York City, New York
(est. 1626, taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (est. 1682). The
Dutch started colony of New York had the most eclectic collection of residents from many
different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700.
The Pennsylvania colonial center was dominated by the Quakers for decades after they
emigrated, mainly from the North Midlands of England, from about 1680 to 1725. The main
commercial center of Philadelphia was run mostly by prosperous Quakers supplemented by
many small farming and trading communities with a strong German contingent located in
several small towns in the Delaware river valley.

6. The first wave: colonial immigration, 1680-1776

Many more immigrants arrived in the middle colonies starting in about 1680 when
Pennsylvania was founded and many Protestant sects were encouraged to immigrate there for
freedom of religion and good land--cheap. They came by the thousands as immigrants from
German provinces, Ulster Ireland, Wales, Scotland, north Midlands of England and migrants
from New England. By 1790 Pennsylvania was about 60% British and 33% of German
extraction. By 1780 in New York about 17% of the population were descendents of Dutch
settlers and the rest were mostly English with a wide mixture of other Europeans with about
6% Blacks. New Jersey and Delaware had a majority of British and with a 7-11% German
descendants colonists and with about a 6% black population, and a small contingent of
Swedish descendants of New Sweden. Nearly all were at least third generation natives.
The colonial western frontier was mainly settled from about 1717 to 1775 by mostly
Presbyterian settlers from northern England border lands, Scotland and Northern Ireland
fleeing bad times and persecution in those areas. After the American Revolution these same
areas in Britian were the first to resume significant immigration. Most initially landed in

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family groups in Philadelphia or Baltimore but soon migrated to the western frontier where
land was cheaper and restrictions less onerous.
All these settlements, while different in detail, had many things in common. Nearly all
were settled and financed by privately organized groups of English settlers or families using
private free enterprise without any significant English Royal or Parliamentary government
support or input. Nearly all commercial activity was run in small privately owned businesses
with good credit both at home and in England being essential since they were often cash poor.
Most settlements were nearly independent of trade with Britain as most grew or made nearly
everything they needed--the average cost of imports per most households was only about 5-15
English pounds per year. Most settlements were done by complete family groups with several
generations often present in each settlement. Probably close to 80% of the families owned the
land they lived and farmed on. They nearly all used English Common Law as their basic code
of law and except initially for the Dutch, Swedes and Germans, spoke some dialect of
English. They nearly all established their own popularly elected governments and courts on as
many levels as they could and were nearly all, within a few years, mostly armed, self
governing, self supporting and self replicating.
This self ruling pattern became so engrained that almost all new settlements by one or
more groups of settlers would have their own government up and running shortly after they
settled down for the next 200 years. Nearly all, after a hundred years plus of living together,
had learned to tolerate other religions than their own. This was a major improvement from the
often very bloody Reformation and Counter-Reformation wars going on in Europe in this
period.

British troops up until the French and Indian War in the 1760s were a great rarity in
the colonies as the colonists provided nearly all their own law enforcement and militia forces
they wanted or needed from their own ranks. The American Revolution was in many ways a
fight to maintain the government (minus the mostly unwanted British governors), property
and independence they already had as the British tried, belatedly, to exploit them for the
benefit of friends of the crown and Parliament. Nearly all colonies and states in the United
States were settled by migration from another colony or state as immigration usually only
played a minor role after the initial settlements were started.

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7. The second wave: the old immigrants, 1820-1890

Between 1776 and the late 1820s, immigration slowed to a trickle. A range of factors
pushed Europeans from their homelands. Religious persecution drove many German Jews to
emigrate, and political unrest forced out a few thousand European intelectuals and political
activists. Economic factors were decisive for most of the northern and western Europeans.
The industrial revolution and an international trade boom spread from Britain to the Continent
and the US during this period, but reached different regions at different times.
The largest immigrant groups, in order of size, were Germans, Irish, Britons, and
Scandinavians but many other peoples, including French Canadians, Chinese, Swiss and
Dutch also came in large numbers. The factor that pulled most people to the US was an
apparently unlimited supply of land. The US needed both skilled and unskilled labour. News
of boom times in the US, land giveaways such as the Homestead Act of 1862, or gold in
California brought peaks in the rising immigration.
After potato ruined the crop that supported Ireland‘s rural population, huge numbers of
Irish immigrants arrived in the 1850s and 1880s.
The newcomers were most numerous in the urban Northeast and the recently settled
farmlands and frontier cities of the Midwest and Pacific coast. The old immigrants found
many economic niches, supplying much of the market for domestic servants, mill and factory
workers, miners, loggers, sailors, fishermen and construction workers.
British immigrants seemed nearly invisible because they spoke English and had a
culture much like Anglo-Americans. They also won the gratitude of American businessmen
up to the 1850s because they brought knowledge of Britain’s most recent machines and
industrial organization in their heads.
The Irish suffered many forms of discrimination and were often stereotyped as dirty,
lazy and drunken. The most serious opposition they faced, however, came from anti-catholic
bigots, who burned convents and churches as early as 1830s. all the large immigrant groups
found themselves involved in controversies over the control and content of the public schools.
Anti-foreign agitation reached its first peak in the 1850s, when the Know Nothing or
American Party proposed tripling the length of time needed to gain US citizenship and
restricting immigrants voting rights.

Ferries Docked at Ellis Island

These ferries, docked outside the main building at Ellis Island in New York harbor, New York, brought the new
immigrants to the mainland. The immigration station on the island funneled an estimated 12 million new arrivals
into the country between 1892 and 1954, when the station closed.

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8. The third wave: new immigrants and immigration restriction, 1890-1930

Almost 9 million immigrants entered the United States in the first decade of the 20th
century, close to 6 million in the 1910s, and about 4 million in the 1920s. In the early 20th
century, Japanese Americans constituted the largest group of Asian immigrants. They
primarily engaged in agricultural pursuits in California, Oregon, and Washington. In 1907 the
United States and Japan signed a so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement, in which the Japanese
government promised to deny passports to Japanese laborers intending to enter the US.
Mexican Immigrants
A majority of immigrants to the southwestern United
States arrive from Mexico. Because Texas borders
Mexico, many thousands of Mexican citizens have
entered and settled in the state. A unique Texan-
Mexican culture arose in the state in the late 19th
century that mixed elements from the Mexican,
Texan, and southern United States cultures. This
Mexican family was photographed in 1912 as they
prepared to cross the Texas border.

In return, the
U.S. government
refrained from enacting laws officially excluding Japanese immigrants. The
Immigration Act of 1917 expanded the classes of foreigners excluded from the United States.
It imposed a literacy test and designated an Asiatic Barred Zone, a geographic region
encompassing much of eastern Asia and the Pacific islands from which immigrants would not
be admitted to the United States. Aliens unable to meet minimum mental, moral, physical, and
economic standards were excluded, as were anarchists and other so-called subversives (see
Anarchism). Most of the basic provisions of the Immigration Act of 1917 were retained in
subsequent revisions of the immigration law.

9. Wartime policies: displaced persons and refugees

After World War I (1914-1918) a marked increase in racism and isolationism in the
United States led to demands for further restrictions on immigration. In 1921 Congress
established a quota system for immigrants. The number of immigrants of any nationality
admitted to the United States each year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of foreign-
born residents of that nationality living in
the United States in 1910. The law applied
to all immigrants from Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and
certain islands in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Immigration patterns of the 1930s is
dominated by the Great Depression, which
hit the U.S. hard and lasted over ten years
there. More people left the U.S. than arrived
in some years in the 1930s. In the last
prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678
immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only
23,068 came to the U.S. People waiting for documents

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 In 1938, the immigration that never happened is one of the great tragedies of the 20th
century as shown in the Evian Conference of 1938 the immigration of the oppressed from
Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitlers policies was limited to only a small fraction of those who
wanted to leave Germany. Hitler would have been more than happy to allow emigration of the
Jews etc. he had started rounding up, but there were no governments willing to take more than
a very few of them. How many people could have been saved by a more far sighted
immigration policy from the subsequent Holocaust will never be known very precisely, but it
probably numbers in the millions. Due in part to anti-Semitism, isolationism, the Depression,
and xenophobia; the immigration policy of the Roosevelt Administration made it very
difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas.
At the end of World War II, "regular" immigration almost immediately increased under
the official national origins quota system as refugees from war torn Europe and United
Kingdom started immigrating to the U.S. After the war, there were jobs for nearly everyone
who wanted one, including immigrants [while women were pushed back into the home]. From
1941 to 1950, 1,035,000 people immigrated to the U.S. including 226,000 from Germany,
139,000 from UK, 171,000 from Canada and 60,000 from Mexico and 57,000 from Italy.
The Displaced Persons (DP) Act of 1948 finally allowed displaced people of World
War II to start immigrating. Some 200,000 Europeans and 17,000 orphans displaced by World
War II were allowed to immigrate to the United States outside of immigration quotas. Truman
signed the first DP act on June 25, 1948, allowing entry by 200,000 DPs; and then followed
by the more accommodating second DP act on 16 June, 1950, allowing entry for another
200,000. This quota, included acceptance of 55,000 Volksdeutschen, required sponsorship of
all immigrants. The American program was the most notoriously bureaucratic of all the DP
programs and much of the humanitarian effort was undertaken by charitable organizations,
such as the Lutheran World Federation and other ethnic groups.

10. The fourth wave: 1965 to the present

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act),
passed by a Democratic controlled Congress, abolished the system of national-origin quotas.
Over 28,000,000 have legally immigrated since 1965 under its provisions. Total immigration
for the decade totaled 3,321,000 immigrants including about 200,000 each from Germany,
Italy and the UK as well as 400,000 from Canada and 453,000 from Mexico.
The U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and the subsequent armed Communist takeover of
South Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia in 1975 brought
a new wave of refugees,
Immigration to the United
States
The United States has become
the home of immigrants from all
over the world. Some immigrants
journey to the United States in
search of a place to practice their
religion freely, while others seek
asylum from political or economic
persecution. Still others arrive in
hopes of building a better life for
themselves and their families.
This map shows the numbers of people (in thousands) who immigrated to the United States between 1820 and
1990.

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 many of whom spent years in Asian camps waiting to get into the U.S.. By 1990,
543,000 Vietnamese family members were settled in the U.S. and 863,000 by 2000.
Significant Philippines immigration started with 501,000 family members in 1980, 913,000 in
1990 and 1,222,000 by 2000. South Korean immigration started in 1980 with 290,000 family
members in 1980, 568,000 in 1990 and 701,000 in 2000. In 2000, turmoil and war in Central
America brought 692,000 family members from the Dominican Republic and 765,000 from
El Salvador by 2000. The Cuban American family continues to grow with 608,000 family
members in 1980, 737,000 in 1990 and 952,000 in 2000.
In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating for the
first time, in theory at least, penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants. IRCA, as
proposed in Congress, was projected to give amnesty to about 1,000,000 undocumented
workers. In practice, amnesty for about 3,000,000 immigrants already in the United States
was granted. Most were from Mexico. Legal Mexican immigrant family numbers were
2,198,000 in 1980, 4,289,000 in 1990 (includes IRCA) and 7,841,000 in 2000. Adding in
another 12,000,000 illegals of which about 80% are thought to be Mexicans would bring the
Mexican family total to over 16,000,000 -- about 16% of the Mexican population.

11. Patterns of internal migration in the American mosaic

The US has always had a mobile population, not only because of the many millions
who have immigrated, but because of internal migration, population shifts within the country.
The best-known of these shifts is the frontier movement to the west.
From the 1830s until the late 1940s, millions of people also left the countryside for the
cities. Old-stock Americans and the descendants of immigrants abandoned farms as
mechanization enabled fewer people to produce more food and industrialization created more
urban jobs.
Until the late 1920s, this process concentrated the nation’s population in its urban,
industrial core, from Boston to Milwaukee in the North. The population of the core began to
decline. So many whites moved to the South and West. Jobs in defence industries during the
World and Cold Wars attracted even more blacks to the North. The trend continued over the
next decades. The American population today shows many signs of internal migration. The
2000 census revealed a still strong movement of people from the Northeast and Midwest to
the South and Southwest.

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12. Conclusion

Although the United States is a nation built upon immigration, Americans have long
debated whether it is good for the country. This contentious issue inevitably leads various
policy advocates, officials, and scholars to examine the impact of immigration on the nation?s
economic, social, cultural, and political life. There is little question that new immigration is
making the United States into a more multiethnic and multiracial nation, that it is making the
country more religiously and linguistically diverse, or that it has altered the age demographics
of the U.S. population (slowing so-called ?graying? trends).
Yet the influence of immigration on the economy, politics, health care, education,
welfare programs, the environment, crime, national security, and culture is a subject that
produces more cacophony than symphony, as immigration defenders and critics present rival
portraits of how newcomers are recasting American life. Sorting through these arguments will
not only help you better understand and situate yourself within a heated and important
national debate, but it also will help you better distinguish between polemics, on the one side,
and sound evidence and analysis, on the other.

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12. Literature

1. Mauk, D. & J. Oakland (2002), American Civilization, New York: Routledge

2. Cincotta H. (1994), An Outline of American history, US Department of State
3. Clack G. (2003.), Portrait of the USA, US Department of State
4. http://www.bergen.org/AAST/projects/Immigration/#statistics

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