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Showing results 1 – 9 of 9
Essay
Why Immigration Matters
It is difficult today to recapture the iconoclasm signaled by Oscar Handlin’s opening words to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted more than fifty years ago: “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.”
Glossary Term – Event
Literacy test bill
Congress passed a bill sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, with support from the Immigration Restriction League, requiring a literacy test for immigrants, though President Grover Cleveland later vetoed the bill in 1897.
Glossary Term – Event
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 increased border security, granted amnesty to certain illegal aliens (including those present since 1982 and some agricultural workers), and imposed sanctions against employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens.
Glossary Term – Organization
Immigration Restriction League
The Immigration Restriction League (IRL) was an anti-immigration organization founded by a group of Harvard graduates in 1894. Members of the organization believed that immigration contributed to social problems such as urban crowding, poverty, crime, and labor unrest, and the IRL advocated a literacy requirement for immigrants as a way of limiting the entry of “new immigrants” from eastern Europe into the United States. In 1896, the IRL acheived passage of a Congressional literacy bill with the support of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of...
Glossary Term – Place
Ellis Island
Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was opened in 1892 as an immigration reception center. Between 1892 and 1924, about 17 million immigrants were processed at Ellis Island. In 1943, immigration processing was moved to the city of New York, and Ellis Island became a detention center. It later became part of the National Parks system and today houses the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
Teaching Resource
The United States Land of Immigrants
What study of America’s history could be more appropriate than an examination of who we are and where we came from? The history of immigrants in the United States proves that we are a unique and successful nation. In this unit we study the origins of our newcomers, their contributions to the building of the nation and the problems they faced and resolved. In addition, we join the debate on restrictive immigration, assimilation and cultural diversity. No understanding of American history is complete without a knowledge of this subject. Are...
Teaching Resource
The Language of Cultural Mixture and Persistence
The study of migration encourages us to think about the process of cultural adjustment and adaptation that takes place after migrants move from one environment to another. In the early twentieth century, Americans commonly thought of migration in terms of a "melting pot," in which immigrants shed their native culture and assimilated into the dominant culture. Today, we are more likely to speak of the persistence and blending of cultural values and practices.
Assimilation: Absorption into the cultural tradition of another group...