World War II and Immigration After the Second World War, a great number of people faced massive
destruction of their homes in major towns and cities all over Europe.
After 1945, the cold war began between communist Eastern Europe, and
capitalist countries of Western Europe and USA. Many people did not
want to live under harsh regimes; therefore, they became refugees and
fled to the west. The largest numbers of refugees to settle in England
were Polish.
After the War came to halt, Britain needed help to rebuild and the
only way they could do this by gathering people to come and help them.
This was a major economic problem, which needed to be sorted. A loss
of men made the country short of labourers; posters were put up all
over the common wealth including countries like India and the
Caribbean. Such slogans as 'Come to your mother country' was used;
over a quarter of the worlds population at that time had a free right
to be in this small island known as Britain. At this time, the
Caribbean had a high unemployment rate, they were offered transport
and accommodation paid for (if they came to their 'Mother Country'),
so many came.
Most of the passengers who arrived in Britain in the post war period
knew very little about the country. Many had never seen images of
Britain and were surprised by the cold, dirt, the smoke and the large
numbers of chimneys that they associated, not with houses, but with
factories. Most people in many ways felt bizarre and frigh...
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Ø Dwayne Brooks was treated bad and with no respect.
Ø The parents of Stephen were treated thoughtlessly and tactlessly.
They were patronised, insulted and not kept informed about what was
going on.
Ø Police failed to give Stephen first aid at the time.
Ø Arrests of suspects and house searches were delayed until 7 may for
no good reason at all.
So many errors the report concluded which could not be explained by
incompetence alone but by racism as well. In other words if the victim
had been white, and the suspect’s black, the police would have behaved
in a very different manner.
Conclusion
==========
In conclusion Immigrants mostly flied there country of origin in
search of a better life. The Jews migrated to escape persecution in
Eastern Europe, thinking they will have a safe good life.
Between the years of 1840 and 1914, about forty million people immigrated to the United States from foreign countries. Many of them came to find work and earn money to have a better life for their families. Others immigrated because they wanted to escape the corrupt political power of their homelands, such as the revolution in Mexico after 1911. Whatever the case, many found it difficult to begin again in a new country. Most immigrants lived in slums with very poor living conditions. They had a hard time finding work that paid enough to support a family. Not only was it difficult for immigrant men, but for women as well. Immigrant women faced many challenges including lack of education and social life as well as low wages and poor working conditions.
Immigration has existed around the world for centuries, decades, and included hundreds of cultures. Tired of poverty, a lack of opportunities, unequal treatment, political corruption, and lacking any choice, many decided to emigrate from their country of birth to seek new opportunities and a new and better life in another country, to settle a future for their families, to work hard and earn a place in life. As the nation of the opportunities, land of the dreams, and because of its foundation of a better, more equal world for all, the United States of America has been a point of hope for many of those people. A lot of nationals around the world have ended their research for a place to call home in the United States of America. By analyzing primary sources and the secondary sources to back up the information, one could find out about what Chinese, Italians, Swedish, and Vietnamese immigrants have experienced in the United States in different time periods from 1865 to 1990.
During the time of World War II, there was a dramatic change in the society of America and its way of life. Men were needed at war and the women were left at home. People were mistrusted and were falsely accused of something they didn’t do. Some people were even pushed away because they were different. These people were the minorities of America. Some of the minorities it affected the most were the African Americans, women, Japanese Americans, and even young adults. What is a minority? A minority, in this case, is a person or group of people who are discriminated against because there is something about them that makes them different. Some of these reasons why they are different are things like race, gender, and even age. However, the real question is how were the roles of American minorities change after World War II?
American minorities made up a significant amount of America’s population in the 1920s and 1930s, estimated to be around 11.9 million people, according to . However, even with all those people, there still was harsh segregation going on. Caucasians made African-Americans work for them as slaves, farmers, babysitters, and many other things in that line. Then when World War II came, “World War II required the reunification and mobilization of Americans as never before” (Module2). They needed to cooperate on many things, even if they didn’t want to. These minorities mainly refer to African, Asian, and Mexican-Americans. They all suffered much pain as they were treated as if they weren’t even human beings. They were separated, looked down upon, and wasn’t given much respect because they had a different culture or their skin color was different. However, the lives of American minorities changed forever as World War 2 impacted them significantly with segregation problems, socially, and in their working lives, both at that time and for generations after.
Foreign policy and Immigration since 1945”. Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration Policy. Eds. Michael Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner. New York: Columbia University, 1995. p.123-124.
Immigration, the act of coming to live permanently in a foreign country. Throughout the United States’ history, immigrants faced various challenges and especially after 1880. Most immigrants moved to achieve the American dream of having a better life and pursuing their dreams. But, this experience as they moved, was different for every immigrant. Some lives improved while others did not. Immigrants such as Catholics, Italians, and the Chinese were not welcomed into America in the late 19th century and early 20th century because of their differences in beliefs and cultures.
The spark in the number of immigrants entering the United States began in the late nineteen sixties to the early nineteen seventies. People came to the United States because the United Farm Workers movement got jobs to provided higher salaries, improved working conditions, health benefits, minimizing segregation within the work environment, retirement plans, and even formed a credit union specifically for farm workers and immigrants. These were all factors which contributed to the increase in immigrants in the United States. (As life began to improve for immigrants within the United States, others thought the same could happen to them). Many immigrants thought of this as an opportunity to form a new and improved lifestyle. To this day the number of immigrants continue to grow, and their lives increasingly improve.
Coming from a life of poverty and despair would cause anyone to search for a better life; a life in which there is the belief that all of your dreams can come true. This is the belief that many Mexican immigrants had about “El Norte,” they believed that the north would provide them with the opportunity that their life in Mexico had not. Many Immigrants believed that the United States was “the land of opportunity,” a place to find a successful job and live out the life that one only dreamt about living. The North was an open paradise for the immigrants. They were told by the people who had already ventured to the north that the United States was a “simple life, in which one could live like a king or queen, but in reality immigrants were treated like slaves in the new country that promised them their dreams.
Immediately following the turn of the century, immigration into the United States began to increase, which led to the creation of many laws restricting the individuals who could be permitted into the country. “The Immigration Act of 1917 was a law passed by Congress on February 5, 1917 that restricted the immigration of 'undesirables’ and required eight-dollar entrance fee and a literacy test for those under the age of sixteen” (Tucker 1). This act created limitations on who would be permitted to enter the United States, making it more difficult for individuals to come start new lives. “Those who were uneducated, poor, or disabled were discriminated against, for the sake of keeping America “pure”. The Immigration Act of 1917 also excluded immigrants from many Asian countries (the “Asiatic Barred Zone”), and was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, which added Japan to the zone, and limited the number of immigrants permitted in a given year to 2% of the number of residents from that same country residing in the United States” (“Milestones: 1921-1936” 2; Marcus 1). Those within the Asiatic Barred Zone were not permitted to immigrate into the United States, while those in other countries faced quota limitations that restricted the number of persons who could immigrate each year. This two percent quota caused a great decrease in ...
American was a prosperous country with incredible economic growth between the end of Reconstruction and the Great Depression. It was during this time that "industrial expansion went into high gear because increasing manufacturing efficiencies enabled American firms to cut prices and yet earn profits for financing still better equipment (Henretta 488)." During this era, the manufacturing of steel, the construction of railroads, factories, and warehouses, and the growing demand for technological advancements, increased greatly. Philanthropists, such as Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller, took advantage of the situation they were in by investing large sums of capital into the growing economy. Carnegie constructed an enormous steel mill outside of Pittsburgh that became one of the worlds' largest. Mellon started the Union Trust Fund in Pittsburgh, which developed in its later years to one of the largest financial institutions in the country. Rockefeller, who was involved in the petroleum industry, built the Standard Oil Company. Philanthropists were not the only group of people funding the growth of Corporate America. "The federal government, mainly interested in encouraging interregional development, provided financial credit and land grants (Henretta 490)." As a whole, the American economy was growing at an incredible rate. It was due to this growth that countless immigrants from Europe made their way over the Atlantic, as well as African Americans migrating from the South, both with hopes of improving their own standards of life.
Immigration has always been a major part of America. In fact, without immigration the creation of America would not have been possible. The majority of immigrants came to America for religious freedom and economic opportunities. However, for the most part before the 1870’s most immigrants were Protestants from northern and western Europe. These immigrants often migrated to the United States as families and usually lived on farms with family or friends who had already migrated beforehand. A lot of immigrants came to America with a plan or goal in mind. They often had saved up money for the long immigration overseas, were skilled in a certain trade, or had already been educated at a high level. Sadly, this would not last. Immigration became so prominent in America between 1870 and 1900 that the foreign-born population of the United States had almost doubled. A lot of German and Irish Catholics had immigrated in the 1840’s and 1850’s, and more decided to immigrate after the Civil War. A portion of Americans were biased against Catholics. Thankfully, the Irish spoke English and the German Catholics reputation was improved because of their Protestant countrymen’s good reputation. However, their children often lacked any skill or education, but they were able to blend in quite well with the American society. More and more immigrants would migrate to the United States without any skill or education and on top of that they were usually poor. These immigrants were called “new” immigrants and they came from all over the world including Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. However, you cannot blame immigrants for migrating to America. Many immigrants faced religious persecution in their home countries which pushed them away, otherwi...
During the years of the war, America’s immigration policy and the restriction of Jewish immigrants was very apparent. The January 1943 Telegram Confirming Reports of Mass Executions of Jews in Poland talks about the Immigration Reform Act of 1924 and how it passed tight quotas on immigration. In 1924, the Unites States passed the Immigration Reform act. This act granted as little as two percent of the immigrating population a visa they needed to enter the U.S. Getting a visa could mean life or death for many immigrants. Instead of America helping the Jews escape Germany and Hitler, they blocked them out with more strict immigration policies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other officials warned that stricter controls on immigration were needed to prevent foreign threats from invading our nation. But innocent Jews trying to escape death don’t seem that harmful to most people. They also refused to, “ raise their immigration quotas in order to accept large numbers of refugees” (Lichtheim and Riegne 1). Because of this, many European Jews were not expected into America and in return harshly affected by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Some even died a horrible deaths in concentration camps just because America was afraid of giving out too many visas. Because of actions like these, the Jews were turned down in their time of need, especially when they
An outburst in growth of America’s big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprise, and industrial worker and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic tensions were created. Religion, labor, and race relations were questioned; populist and progressive thoughts were developed; social Darwinism and nativism movements were launched.
Before the 1920’s Americans had an ‘open door’ policy and many people from around the world travelled there to fight poverty and experience the American dream. However, then America introduced two immigration laws in 1921 and 1924, which restricted immigrants from Southern, Central and Western European countries such as Italy and Russia. Fear of communism explains the changes in American policy toward immigration in the 1920’s to a certain extent. However factors such as Isolationism, Prejudice and Racism, Social Fears, the Effects of WW1 and Economic fears were also important. In 1917, the Russian revolution took place.
In Europe, immigration has always been a part of its history, but large-scale migration has been in more recent years. In a 13-year span from 1960 to 1973 there was a major increase in the number of foreign workers in the work force. The percent doubled from 3 percent to six percent of workers in the