Immigration In 1900 Essay

1216 Words3 Pages

Immigration during the early 1900’s was a large debate between many Americans during this time. Society had many problems including underemployment issues related to increases in machinery replacing the labor forces and accusations that immigrants were replacing jobs as well. This period in time was tough for immigrants and the average American, the industry was efficient in regards to the need for labor was low and the output stayed high, people resorted to believing the problem lies with the lack of control of immigration. Statistics both proved that immigrants were they problem, but at the same time they proved to be the main cause.
In the early 1900’s United States many people argued for immigration restriction to improve their …show more content…

Hall (1906) Journal of Social Science, these facts describe how bad the situation is due to immigration and that immigrants children are directly the most criminal. While immigrants are more likely to commit a crime their children are much more likely than native born and more likely than their parents. This argument is placing the blame directly on immigrants for having children that are committing crimes, this is likely due to situation such as poor living conditions and that the children do not have the same mentality as their parents who had the struggle to get to the United States. A racist superior view against immigrants from Professor Robert De C.Ward argues that in America we are a mixing pot in society and that only mixing the best of people will produce the best people for society and that certain inferior immigrants mixed in will only result in inferior people. He believed that immigration is not bad overall, just bad because who was actually coming to this country since that …show more content…

While immigrants are overall more likely to commit a crime, the statistics are one sided and do not take into account that immigrants are more likely to live in the city and in cities regardless of race people are more likely to commit a crime. (Reports of the Immigration Commission: Immigration and Crime. Washington D.C., Government Printing Office, 1911). This proves that the statistics do not directly prove that immigrants are to blame for increase crime and that only the environment the live in is the biggest factor. While Prescott Hall 's argument that children of immigrants are more likely to commit crime is true, it does not look deep into the reason why and separate the facts which is that the city in general is made up of more criminal activities and that regardless of immigrant or native the rate that people commit crimes is equal in the city. Professor Robert De C.Ward argument that immigration causes inferior people to enter society conflicts with Frank Warne’s belief that some of the most important people in American society are immigrants, such as Andrew Carnegie from Scotland that created the largest iron and steel company. Immigration has contributed so much to improvements in society and that inferior people from other countries in not a problem, but instead some the most important people were brought over

Open Document