EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION

Old Immigrants•Time Period

• 1800-1880

•Nationalities, numbers• Northern and Western Europe

• Ireland, Germany, Sweden

• Mostly Protestant Christians

• 10 million immigrants total

•Reasons for Leaving• Economic Opportunity

• Irish Potato Famine

• Farmland in America

• Political and Religious Freedom

• German Revolution of 1848

New Immigrants•Time Period

• 1880-1910

•Nationalities, numbers• Eastern European: Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian

• Roman Catholic and Jewish

• 18 million

•Reasons for Leaving• Economic, Religious, Political

Coming to America• The Land of Opportunity

• Immigrants left everything behind for

new lives in America• Crowded, dirty steamships for months

• Ellis Island, 1892• Medical Examination• Identification Papers

• Drastic Changes in

American Population• 1910: 1 in 12 Americans

were born in a foreign

country

Life in America• Urbanization

• 80% of immigrants settled in cities• New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago• Many connected with relatives and friends,

creating immigrant neighborhoods

• Conditions in Cities• Overcrowding, Tenements, Poverty• Poor Working Conditions in factories and

shipyards• Increase in gangs

Life in America• Nativism

• Americans’ negative response to mass numbers of immigrants• Threat to society• Increase in crime and violence

• Discrimination

• Coming to America