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Use the text titled 'Coming in Waves' to answer the question.
Coming in Waves
by Andrew Matthews
The deck of the
SS Amerika
is filled with
immigrants
headed to the
United States in
the early 1900s.
2
but it swelled again after that
conflict ended. A combination of
overpopulation and land shortages
in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
encouraged families from those
northern European nations to come
in greater numbers after the war.
By the end of the century, more than
2 million Scandinavians had arrived
in America. Many of them helped
settle the upper Midwest.
Another large group that came
during the mid-1800s traveled across
the Pacific Ocean. When news of
the discovery of gold in California
in 1849 reached China, the first of
more than 300,000 Chinese men
First Settlers
Remember learning about the
early Spanish settlements of
St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565
and New Mexico in 1598? What
about the English settlements of
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and
Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620?
Well, those places became the
first European sites in the “New
World.” In addition to Spain and
England, other early settlers came
from France, Sweden, and the
Netherlands. They built different
colonies, which became the roots
of our multicultural United States.
Not all people arrived on these
shores as free individuals. The first
Africans were brought here in 1619
as enslaved people. And indentured
servants worked for a certain
number of years in exchange for
having their passage to the Colonies
paid. By the time of the American
Revolutionary War (1775 –1783),
about 700,000 people were living
in the American Colonies. The
majority of these people were
of British or African ancestry.
Second Wave
In the 1800s, America became the
destination for large waves of immigrants. At the time, the country was
still a vast territory, and immigrants
were welcomed to help settle it. By
the mid-1800s, a potato famine in
Ireland and economic hard times
and a failed revolution in Germany
made for difficult living conditions
in those countries. Over the next
century, more than 4 million Irish
immigrants and about 6 million
German immigrants arrived on
the East Coast.
Immigration slowed during the
American Civil War (1861 –1865),
This cartoon puts an interesting spin on antiimmigration attitudes. What if the native inhabitants
of North America had refused to allow the original
foreigners—the first Europeans—to settle here?
I guess all
of us have
immigrant
roots.
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immigration from
that country.
The law was
renewed several
times. And a
1907 Gentleman’s
Agreement limited
immigration from
Japan. The Japanese
government agreed
to stop issuing
passports allowing
Japanese laborers
to enter the United
States, and the
U.S. government
agreed not to
enact any specific
anti-Japanese
immigration laws.
Immigration from Asia was
effectively curtailed.
Third Wave
The greatest number of immigrants
to the United States came in the
years between 1881 and 1924: an
estimated 23 million people. While
immigration from western and
northern Europe and Asia slowed,
new arrivals came from southern
and eastern Europe—places that
included Austria, Greece, Hungary,
Italy, Poland, and Russia. By this
time, the United States was settled
and no longer had huge expanses
of open land. Many of these immigrants settled in cities, creating
overcrowded conditions.
Again, some Americans viewed
the latest arrivals as racially inferior
and unable to assimilate. The newest immigrants also were willing to
work in the lowest-paying jobs. With
more people than jobs, employers
could pay workers less. By the 1920s,
the Chinese were not the only ones
traveled to the United States. They
hoped to make their fortune in gold
and then return to China, but few
succeeded in getting rich quickly.
Needing work, many Chinese men
became low-paid laborers on the
new transcontinental railroad. But
Americans viewed the Chinese as
racially and culturally inferior. This
attitude led to discrimination and
prejudice.
Closing the Doors
In the mid-1800s, the large numbers of Catholics from Ireland and
Germany alarmed the nation’s
mostly white Protestant citizenry.
These “nativists” formed a political party, the Know-Nothings, in
the 1850s. They worked to limit
immigration by supporting nativeborn Protestants for public office.
By 1860, the formal movement
disappeared, but anti-immigration
concerns remained.
Then, in 1882, Congress passed
the Chinese Exclusion Act to limit
Assimilate means
to absorb into the
local culture.
The quota systems
set limits on the
number of immigrants from each
country that could
enter the United
States each year.
Wars and military conflicts
historically have led to an
influx of displaced people to
the United States. Here, Uncle
Sam welcomes immigrants who
are fleeing “war” clouds.
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known as the Hart–Celler Act).
The new law overturned a system
that favored some nations and
discriminated against others.
Today, the United States is more
diverse and multicultural than ever.
One hundred years ago, nearly 90
percent of immigrants were from
Europe. In the last few years, immigration from Europe has dropped to
about 10 percent, while immigrants
from Asia (including China, India,
Korea, and Vietnam) make up more
than 25 percent and those from
Latin America (including Mexico,
Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti) have
grown to more than 50 percent.
At the same time, the issue of
undocumented immigrants has
become a hot topic. An estimated
11 million people are living in the
country illegally. The question for
the 21st century is: How does the
United States address this issue and
reform its immigration system? D
who were excluded. The United
States began to adopt policies that
shifted away from welcoming immigrants to restricting their numbers.
In 1921 and 1924, Congress
passed laws that established quota
systems. Immigration from certain
parts of the world was sharply limited, and racial discrimination was
built into law. The newly established
Border Patrol began to monitor the
nation’s borders, in part to prevent
the flow of immigrants. Until this
time, the nation’s shared borders
with Canada and Mexico were
open and unrestricted. (See the
time line on pages 6–7 for a closer
look at major immigration laws in
the last century.)
Fourth Wave
All of that changed on August 3,
1965, when President Lyndon B.
Johnson signed the Immigration
and Nationality Act of 1965 (also
Immigration supporters at a
march in 2010 use a quote from
the U.S. Constitution to remind
Americans of their shared
connection to the country
in 1-2 sentences, explain why the Chinese came to America during Second Wave.
(2 points)
Bot GPT 3.5
answered