Question

HISTORY QUESTION

5-6 sentences

How did immigration patterns change in the nineteenth century and how did these changes affect the Western Hemisphere nations that received immigrants?

Answer 1

• The movement of people into and out of the country was frequently in response to shifting economic conditions and employment opportunities.The dramatic increase in the number of immigrants to the United States from southern and eastern Europe. The jobs created by the Second Industrial Revolution attracted many people. Armenians and Jews were escaping political and religious persecution. New immigrants brought cultural practices with them that were unfamiliar to many native-born Americans.
• The growth of the American population through immigration was primarily a result of the growth of the American economy, which provided new opportunities. That economy had been growing rapidly throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The U.S. CivilWar caused disruption, but it also stimulated production in the North, and it ultimately created a more politically and economically unified nation.
• The quickly developing industrial economy required workers, and the availability of jobs drew immigrants to American shores in unprecedented numbers.As a result of the flow of new workers into the country, the nation’s new industrial working class rapidly became disproportionately foreign born.
• The 1965 change in immigration policy helped produce the greatest immigration wave in U.S. history in terms of sheer numbers of immigrants reaching American shores. After decreasing since the 1920’s, the foreign-born population of the United States suddenly began to grow during the 1970’s.
• The places of origin of America’s immigrants also changed. While earlier immigrants had come primarily from Europe, those in the post-1965 immigration wave came mainly from Latin America and Asia.
• The heavy immigration from Mexico was a consequence of economic problems in that country, as well as a result of opportunities and relatively liberal immigration policies in the United States. More than 70 percent of Mexico’s export revenues came from oil at the beginning of the 1980’s. As the price of oil declined beginning about 1982, Mexico had less revenue coming in, provoking a debt crisis, and the country’s already existing problems of poverty became worse.
• The recruitment of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico led to an influx of Mexicans, and the repeal of Asian exclusion laws opened the door for Asian immigrants.
• As streams of newcomers arrived from the western hemisphere, Asia, and Africa, immigration from Europe declined, and many European nations also began to shift from sources of U.S. immigration to destinations of international migration. These changes have affected the American population and American society in profound ways.
• Today, European immigrants and their descendants represent less than two-thirds of the American population, as the growth of immigrants from the western hemisphere, Asia, and Africa and their U.S.-born descendants has continued.