Seth Benson

Mr. Widenhoffer
AP US History
1/17/2017
Midterm Essay
Immigrants always had a difficult time when first coming to our

country. The reason for difficulty fluctuated throughout our history. In the

early 1800s people faced the tough Alien and Sedition Acts. Later on the

immigrants faced hate groups such as the Know Nothings. I believe the

experience of the immigrants got more difficult as they got later into the

century. The reasoning for this is that living conditions for immigrants grew

worse, they were more heavily discriminated for religion, and they were

hated for stealing jobs.

Late in the 19th century, living in cities was becoming much more

popular for immigrants. They began to move into very cheap apartments

with entire families living in one room. It was an easy way of spreading

disease, because it was very unsanitary. Before the late 1800s immigrants

did not always go to cities to live in. They would often go west and try to

start a small farm to feed their family. Now that city life was becoming more

popular, immigrants were forced to live in terribly small housing facilities

with completely unsanitary conditions.

As factories became more popular that seemed to be the job that

immigrants chose to take up. They were often used as strike breakers. This
is when factories would ire immigrants straight off the boat and pay them

worse than they paid previous workers. This only happened when the

previous workers were on strike. Another area that immigrants stole jobs in

was the railroad business. This was mainly the Chinese, although some Irish

did get into railroads. This eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. This

act prevented all Chinese immigrants from entering the US. It is comparable

to the Alien and Sedition Act made it difficult for immigrants to become

citizens, but the Chinese Exclusion Act made it impossible for one group.

Anti Immigrant groups were a problem before the late 19th century, but

continued to grow as the century progressed. It started with the Know

Nothings in the late 1850s. They were anti immigrant for political reasons.

As the century progressed and more Irish and German Catholics showed up,

the APA began to form. This Anti Catholic hate group always voted against

Catholics. The APA did everything it could to keep the Catholics from

prospering in America. Before the Catholics, and some Jews, started showing

up our country was mainly protestant.

Immigrants have always had a hard time, but it got worse as the 19th

century progressed. Extreme poverty and ow wages made it different to ever

get off the ground. Being hated by everyone but themselves for stealing jobs

made it hard to build relationships. Being hated for religion made it hard for

them to ever gain ground politically. All together the experience got more

difficult as more people came.