Immigration

the act of moving into a country to live permanently. An emigrant, by way of distinction, is one who leaves a country. When an entire people move into another country it is said to migrate or invade. The early movements of the peoples of Europe were chiefly of this sort. Emigration and immigration, on the other hand, are individual acts. A person, a family, or a company leaves the fatherland and goes to another country to make a home. As a matter of fact, all the inhabitants of the two Americas, save the Indians, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The United States has received settlers from every known country of the globe, chiefly, however, from western Europe. The earliest immigrants, known as colonists, were English, Swedes, Dutch, French, and Spanish. Religious persecutions induced many Europeans to settle in the United States. The Huguenots of South Carolina, the Moravians and Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Puritans of New England were immigrants of this sort.

The population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution was of mixed blood, and it was good blood. One-third of the whole population in 1775 had been born in Europe. The colonies had been the refuge for decades of those who insisted on doing their own thinking, or, at least, of those who thought they were thinking for themselves. The independent Catholics of Protestant countries and the independent Protestants of Catholic countries--people who refused to be coerced--emigrated to America. The adventurers came to our shores. Criminals, too, fled from justice, and of them, it may be said that they were not lacking in ability. From 1766 to 1816, not until the Napoleonic wars in Europe and our war of 1812 were by, there was little immigration. The year 1840 and the years immediately following gave a new impetus to the movement. This was a period of European unrest and of revolution and of harsh governmental suppression. Carl Schurz and many another good citizen fled to this country to escape arrest. Others came to avoid military service. The Irish famine in the later forties caused the beginning of an immense Irish immigration.

In the earlier years of the republic, a liberal policy of selling lands and later of granting homesteads to those who would occupy them drew a very desirable class of immigrants, chiefly from northern Europe and the British Isles, who desired to cultivate the soil. This class of immigration reached its greatest height in 1882, when 788,992 aliens reached our shores. The more immigrants of this sort, the better for the country. Of late, however, the opportunity to obtain fertile public lands has diminished. Manufacturing has increased greatly. A less desirable class of people, attracted by the opportunity to earn wages, has flocked to our shores. The tide of immigration is now from southern Europe. About 1890 the change was very noticeable. Between 1820 and 1900 no less than 20,952,467 foreign passengers landed in our ports. A few of these were visitors who returned to their native homes. In 1903 we received 857,046 immigrants, rather more than three-fourths of them were from Russia, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Italy.

For decades anyone was allowed to come to this country who cared to do so. In 1882 the custom house authorities were instructed to bar out criminals, the infirm, and paupers. People of this class were to be returned at the expense of shipowners. In 1885 an act was passed forbidding the importation of any person under contract to work. This was designed to prevent railroad companies and manufacturers from contracting in Europe for help with which to supplant higher priced native labor. For all that, our railroad laborers are largely Italians. In 1903 it was deemed necessary to require our foreign consuls and immigration agents to inquire into the case of those who were about to set sail in order that all undesirable persons might be prevented from embarking. The natural anxiety of European countries to be rid of the pauper element, and the anxiety of ship-owners to earn passage money, are two factors that have combined to make European immigration an object of anxiety. See Aliens

The increase in the number of undesirable aliens who came to our shores led Congress in 1903 to establish strict regulations. Under the provisions of this act, the immigration officers are instructed to exclude: (1) Idiots; (2) insane persons; (3) epileptics; (4) prostitutes; (5) paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charges; (7) professional beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease; (9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or of all government or forms of laws, or the assassination of public officials); (12) those deported within a year from date of application for admission as being under offers, solicitation, promises or agreements to perform labor or service of some kind therein; (13) any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another, or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is shown that such person does not belong to one of the excluded classes; but any person in the United States may send for a relative or friend without thereby putting the burden of this proof upon the immigrant.

The care with which our customhouse officers enforce the immigration laws may be inferred from the fact that 7,994 alien immigrants were refused admission to the United States in the year 1904. Of these, 4,798 were paupers, or persons likely to become public charges; 1,560 were persons having loathsome or contagious diseases; 1,501 were contract laborers; thirty-three were insane; sixteen were idiots; thirty-five were convicts; and thirty-eight were paupers who had been assisted to leave their native countries.

At the beginning of the present century 10,341,276 of our total population were of foreign birth. The following table is interesting as showing the sources from which these people have been drawn, and the mixture of races which is taking place:

Total . . . . . 10,341,276

The following table shows the immigration into the United States by decades--the last figures being for five years:

Total, 1821 to 1905 . . . . . 22,948,297

Immigration from 1820 to 1905 may be classified as:

Admission of immigrants at the larger ports of entry for 1905 were:

Countries and immigrants from each in ports of entry of the United States for 1905 were:

Total Europe . . . . . 691,901

Total Asia . . . . . 28,365

Grand total . . . . . 782,870

As for immigrants, we cannot have too many of the right kind, and we should have none of the wrong kind. I will go as far as any in regard to restricting undesirable immigration. I do not think that any immigrant who will lower the standard of life among our people should be admitted. . . . The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country.--Roosevelt.

America is God's crucible--the great melting-pot--where all the races of Europe are fusing and reforming. Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island; here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and your histories and your fifty blood feuds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you have come to--these are the fires of God! A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians--into the crucible with you all! God is making the American!--Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot.

See the living stream pour into America through the raceway of Ellis Island. There is no such sight to be seen elsewhere on the planet. Suppose for the moment that all the immigrants of 1905 came in by that wide open way, as eight tenths of them actually did. If your station had been by that gateway, where you could watch the human tide flowing through, and if the stream had been steady, on every day of the 365 you would have seen more than 2,800 living beings--men, women, and children, of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or eminence--pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as high in a single day as 11,343.

Imagine an army of nearly 20,000 a week marching in upon an unprotected country. At the head come the motley and strange-looking migrants--largely refugee Jews--from the far Russian Empire and the regions of Hungary and Roumania. At the daily rate of 2,800 it would take this indescribable assortment more than 166 days to pass in single file. Then the Italians would consume about eighty days more. For over eight months you would have watched so large a proportion of illiteracy, incompetency, and insensibility to American ideals, that you would be tempted to despair of the Republic. Nor would you lose the sense of nightmare when the English and Irish were consuming forty-two days in passing, for the "green" of the Emerald Isle is vivid at Ellis Island, and the best class of the English stay at home. The flaxen-haired and open-faced Scandinavians would lighten the picture, but with the equally sturdy Germans they would get by in only a month and four days.

Gather these immigrants by nationality, and you would have in round numbers twenty-two Italian cities of 10,000 people, or massed together, a purely Italian city as large as Minneapolis with its 220,000. The various peoples of Austria-Hungary--Bohemians, Magyars, Jews, and Slavs--would fill twenty-seven and one-half towns; or a single city nearly as large as Detroit. The Jews, Poles, and other races fleeing from persecution in Russia, would people eighteen and one-half towns, or a city the size of Providence. For the remainder we should have four German cities of 10,000 people, six of Scandinavians, one of French, one of Greeks, one of Japanese, six and a half of English, five of Irish, and nearly two of Scotch and Welsh. Then we should have six towns of between 4,000 and 5,000 each, peopled respectively by Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese, Roumanians, Swiss, and European Turks; while Asian Turks would fill another town of 6,000. We should have a Servian, Bulgarian, and Montenegrin village of 2,000; a Spanish village of 2,600; a Chinese village of 2,100; and the other Asiatics would fill up a town of 5,000 with as motley an assortment as could be found under the sky.--Howard B. Gross.