Stellen Sie sich vor, die Freiheitsstatue weint – nicht aus Freude über die Ankunft neuer Hoffnungsträger, sondern aus Sorge um die Zukunft einer Nation, die sich in einem Strudel der Einwanderungspolitik und kulturellen Identitätskrisen befindet. Dieses Buch nimmt Sie mit auf eine fesselnde Reise durch die Geschichte der Einwanderung in die Vereinigten Staaten, von den ersten Kolonisten bis zu den aktuellen Debatten über illegale Einwanderung und die Angst vor dem Verlust der amerikanischen Identität. Es beleuchtet die Träume und Entbehrungen der Einwanderer, die das Land geprägt haben, und analysiert die sich wandelnden Einstellungen der amerikanischen Bevölkerung zur Einwanderung im Laufe der Zeit. Von den religiös motivierten Siedlern Neuenglands über die chinesischen Eisenbahnarbeiter bis hin zu den irischen Flüchtlingen vor der Hungersnot – jede Gruppe trug auf ihre Weise zur Vielfalt und zum Wachstum der USA bei. Doch die Geschichte ist nicht ohne Schattenseiten: Diskriminierung, Ausgrenzung und der Kampf um Integration prägen das Bild ebenso. Das Buch untersucht die verschiedenen Theorien zur Integration von Einwanderern, vom "Melting Pot" bis zur "Salad Bowl", und zeigt, wie die amerikanische Gesellschaft versucht, mit ihrer zunehmenden Vielfalt umzugehen. Es wirft einen schonungslosen Blick auf die sozialen und politischen Folgen der Einwanderung, einschliesslich der Entstehung rechtsextremer Gruppierungen und der wachsenden kulturellen Spannungen. Es werden die aktuellen Herausforderungen der illegalen Einwanderung, die Debatten um Grenzkontrollen und die Auswirkungen auf den Arbeitsmarkt analysiert. Abschliessend werden Prognosen für die Zukunft der amerikanischen Bevölkerung gewagt, einschliesslich des Aufstiegs einer bikulturellen Gesellschaft und der möglichen Einführung neuer Amnestieregelungen. Dieses Buch ist ein Muss für alle, die die komplexe und oft widersprüchliche Geschichte der Einwanderung in den USA verstehen und die aktuellen Debatten um Identität, Kultur und Zukunft des Landes einordnen wollen. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem American Dream und seinen Schattenseiten, die zum Nachdenken anregt und neue Perspektiven eröffnet. Es analysiert die historischen Gesetze, wie den "Chinese Exclusion Act" und den "Immigration Act" von 1924, und deren Auswirkungen auf die Zusammensetzung der Bevölkerung. Es zeigt auf, wie Einwanderungspolitik die soziale Struktur und kulturelle Vielfalt der USA beeinflusst hat. Die Rolle der WASP-Kultur und der Widerstand gegen die Integration neuer Bevölkerungsgruppen werden ebenso thematisiert wie die Entstehung von Subkulturen und die Herausforderungen der Mehrsprachigkeit.
I think from these caricatures you can see two things.
On the one hand the Statue of Liberty is a symbol for Immigration to all of the Americans. For settlers coming by ship, the Statue was one of the first things they saw of their „promised land“. The inscription on the basement shows how important the role of immigration was in former times. I’m going to quote:
[original inscription]
[German translation]
But on the other hand you can see that immigration today isn’t as welcome and positively seen as it was some hundred years ago. Many Americans feel threatend by the never ending flood of Mexicans, Europeans, Asians or whatever may come. But in the end, nearly every American, apart from the relatively small percentage of native Americans, is an immigrant.
So now I will come to the history of immigration. Many Americans distinguish between Colonists, settlers coming to America during the colonial period, and Immigrants, settlers coming after the nation had declared its independence.
The stream of colonists owards the newly discovered land started even before the Pilgrims of the Mayflower arrived, although many people think they were the first ones. In fact, the first permanent settlement was founded in Jamestown, Virginia in1607. Nearly all of the settlers were coming from England because of religious reasons or for economical opportunities and the few ones coming from other countries were mostly members of the same religious groups or even distant relatives of the English pilgrims. Many of them settled on the coastal plains and so most of the settlements founded in the following years were in th region of what is today New England. Examples for that are the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in1629 and Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn, a rich Quaker, in 1681. [map] In the next few years America more and more got a refuge for several persecuted sects.
Nearly all of the settlers had the same cultural background, they had the same physical features, the same origin and the same religion. Thus a special ethnic group developed which is still one of the most important ones in the US today: The White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture, also called the WASP-culture.
In the first years after the nation‘s independence only few settlers came. But it was in those times that about half a million Blacks were shipped in to be slaves until slave trade was prohibited by provision of the Constitution in 1808. Today the Blacks are seen as a non-voluntary kind of immigrants.
As time went by more and more settlers were coming. The main sources were England, Germany, Sweden, Norway and France. Many of the newcomers were working in northern industrial towns. Employers preferred immigrant labour because it was much cheaper and because most of the settlers didn’t have the courage and the knowledge to defend themselves against exploitation.
In the first half of the 19th century terretorial expansion began. With more and more settlers coming the young nations need for land grew. More and more settlers left the east coast to find new, unsettled and fertile land in the west. The US bought more and more land, the most famous example for this is the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 until the whole area known as the USA today, got complete with the Gadsen Purchase in 1853. The expression „frontier movement“ was born, the frontier was the imaginary line that divided settled land from unsettled. Of course a negative consequence of the settlement were the constant fights with the Indians who tried desperately to keep their land. But the white settlers firmly believed in their manifest destiny and the opening up of the west was unstopable, so that the west coast was soon settled, too. [pictures]
But at once two new problems emerged. The first one had to do with the terretorial expansion. As economy and industry throughout the wohle nation and especially on both of the coasts grew the need for a good transportation system got bigger and bigger. So two railroad companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific started to put down the tracks for a transcontinental railroad. For this work 7 000 Chinese immigrants were employed and sometimes even specially imported to do this job and they came, although their living conditions were almost unbearable. But the old immigrants didn’t like the newcomers. The Chinese were too different concerning outward apperance, religion, habits and culture to be simply assimilated to the WASP culture. They seperated themselves from the rest of the population and the population didn’t want to accept them. They always remained something particular.
Thus they were the first ones to be concerned, when the government decided to restrict immigration. In the 1870s unemployment increased and the Europeans began to accept low paid jobs - like the ones the Chinese had done before, especially railway constructions. Suddenly the Chinese were not necessary anymore, they were even accused of taking away the jobs of American railway constructors. The Chinese, even those who had been living in the US for years and those who had never seen China because they were just ancestors of the original immigrants were discriminated against. In 1882, the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese immigration completely for almost a century. The second problem were the Irish. In 1845 and 1846 Ireland had to suffer from two potato famines. In these two years nearly a million Irish people died of starvation. So it was quite understandable, that those who had the money tried to escape to America. Their arrival in such large numbers caused fear and hatred among the Americans. They were Protestants and the Irish were Catholics - a mixture that didn’t combine very well in the US. In the 1890s the American Protective Association, an anti - Catholic organisation got bigger and bigger. The members e.g. had to promise not to employ an Irishman if they also had the possibility of employing a Protestant. Even in the 20th century the dislike between Catholics and Protestants remained. Thus the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president of Irish origin was a very important event. [picture]
In the last years of the 19th century the main sources of immigration changed once more. Until then most of the immigrants had been coming from northwestern Europe, but now more and more settlers from southern and eastern Europe arrived. They were generally poorer and less well-educated than most of the former immigrants and like the Chinese workers they were very hard to assimilate to the WASP culture. More and more people demanded the restriction of Immigration. But the government hesitated. America had always been an opportunity and sometimes a refuge for those who needed one and the government had always remained neutral with regard to immigration.
But at last the politicians agreed that something had to be done. Again the ones to be excluded were people from an Asian country. In addition to the Chinese Exclution Act the Gentlemen’s agreement stopped Japanese Immigration.
In 1917 a literacy test, where future immigrants had to show that they could read and write was passed. But even this measure didn’t satisfy opponents of mass immigration. So in 1924 an Immigration Act was passed. According to it, the number of immigrants per year was reduced to a very small percentage of the people of this origin already living in the US. The maximum of immigrants was to be some 150 000 per year. The result of this legislation was that old immigration countries like Germany and especially Britain had large quotas and others had small ones. This system was called the national- origins system. [picture]
During and after World War II many newcomers arrived. Jews, displaced persons, orphans and war brides were fleeing first Hitler and later the regimes of Cuba, Hungary, Russia and other communist countries. Special quotas were established and arrangements were made to take at least most if not all of them. In 1952 the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed. It maintained the national- origins system, but it established quotas for Asia and other previously excluded areas. In the 1960s Amendmends to this Act replaced the national- origins system with one quota for the Western and one for the Eastern Hemisphere. As a result many people from Asian countries who had been nearly excluded before immigrated. In 1985 the Immigration Reform Act, concerning illegal Immigration was passed, but I’ll tell you more about it later.
In 1991 another new immigration law came into being. The number of immigrants allowed to come was increased up to 700 000 for 1992 - 1994 and to 675 000 in the following years. The reason for this was that the small quota before had limited the number of highly skilled or educated people coming to the US. But the government needs them for industrial, technological and economical progress. Immigration was also not limited for relatives of native-born or naturalised citizens any longer. [picture]
Now I want to talk about illegal immigration. Scientists are not quite sure how many illegal immigrants live in the US today and so the numbers differ from 6 million to 12 million people. The majority of the illegal immigrants are Hispanics coming from Mexico and entering Texas or California. Their amount is about 60 %. Aside from coming over the Mexican or the Canadian border they arrive by plane with false papers, or stay after their tourist or student visas have expired. Many Americans are concerned about illegal immigration. They are afraid of the immigrants taking away their jobs, or, a nicer suspicion, of being badly exploited by their employers. Members of the WASP culture feel especially threatened by the large number of Hispanics coming, because they have a strong sense of their own culture. Today over 100 organisations exist that fight for their demands, support bilingual education and so on.
For these reasons the so called Immigration and Naturalization Service makes great effords to stop the illigeal flows right at the borders and to deport groups already living in the US if they can catch them.
In addition the government passed the Immigration Control and Reform Act in 1986. It should „keep the front door open“ to legal immigrants while „closing the back door“ to illegal ones.
But this measures don’t solve the problem completely and especially illegal immigration causes a lot of difficulties about which I’m going to talk later. In the 20th century scientists developed theories for the American population. The most famous theory ist the so called melting pot theory. This means that all the people coming to Ameria give up their individual nationalities and customs to become a part of, to „melt into“, the WASP culture. But this theory only functioned until the middle of the 19th century. Up to then nearly all of the settlers were coming from northwestern Europe. Of course, they didn’t have exactly the same cultural background, but they had the same physical features, they were all Christians although of different confessions and they had some other things in common. So it was easy for them to assimilate. After about 1950 a lot of non European settlers started flowing into the US e.g. the Chinese and they didn’t want to adapt and become a part of the WASP culture.
Thus it came to the second theory, the salad bowl notion (also known as vegetable soup or rainbow). According to this theory the individual elements come together and mix, but they do not melt and each element is a particular part of the whole being. The disadvantage of this theory is that in a salad bowl the single ingredients are not combined but completely seperated and this is not true because some ethnic groups in the USA are combined and mixed.
So yet another theory had to be developed, the pizza concept. The base is the Anglo-Saxon culture. The single ingredients are added later and then some elements combine, others do not combine at all, but they are all together part of the same thing, or in the case of the US part of the same nation.
I told you I was going to tell you some results of mass immigration, especially of illegal and thus uncontrolled immigration
The first one is in fact not something that might happen in the future but something that is already going on. In some areas the Spanish speaking population has grown so strong that many people don’t care to learn English any more. They can easily lead a good and rather wealthy life without a new language. Many schools and even authorities have to publish their announcements in two languages. Laws and official documents have to be in Spanish as well. This developement is to get stronger during the next years. The American WASP society is to become a bicultural society of Hispanic and WASP origin, like Canada already is one. [picture]
The next thing is something also concerning the Spanish- speaking immigrants. The Immigration Reform and Control Act, about which I already talked also included an amnesty for illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been working in the USA since 1981, and scientists expect a similar amnesty to come in the future.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Statue of Liberty a symbol of?
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of immigration to the United States, particularly for settlers arriving by ship who saw it as one of the first signs of their "promised land."
What does the inscription on the Statue of Liberty's basement signify?
The inscription highlights the important role immigration played in the past.
How has the view of immigration changed over time in the US?
Immigration is not as universally welcomed and positively viewed today as it was in the past, with some Americans feeling threatened by the influx of immigrants from various countries.
What is the distinction between colonists and immigrants in American history?
Many Americans differentiate between colonists, who arrived during the colonial period, and immigrants, who came after the nation's independence.
Where was the first permanent English settlement in America?
The first permanent settlement was founded in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
What is the WASP culture?
WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and it refers to a dominant ethnic group that developed in the early years of American settlement, sharing similar cultural backgrounds, physical features, origin, and religion.
How were Black people considered in terms of immigration history?
Blacks who were brought to America as slaves are seen as a non-voluntary kind of immigrants.
Why did employers in northern industrial towns prefer immigrant labor?
Immigrant labor was cheaper, and the settlers often lacked the courage and knowledge to defend themselves against exploitation.
What was the "frontier movement"?
The "frontier movement" was the westward expansion of settlers seeking new, unsettled, and fertile land, leading to the acquisition of territories that now comprise the USA.
What role did Chinese immigrants play in building the transcontinental railroad?
7,000 Chinese immigrants were employed, sometimes specially imported, to build the transcontinental railroad, often facing unbearable living conditions.
Why were the Chinese targeted for immigration restriction?
The Chinese were seen as too different in appearance, religion, habits, and culture to be easily assimilated into the WASP culture, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
What led to the influx of Irish immigrants?
Potato famines in Ireland in 1845 and 1846 led to mass starvation, prompting many Irish people to emigrate to America.
Why did the arrival of Irish immigrants cause fear and hatred?
The Irish were predominantly Catholic, and the existing population was largely Protestant, leading to religious tension and discrimination.
How did the sources of immigration change in the late 19th century?
Immigration shifted from northwestern Europe to southern and eastern Europe, with newcomers generally being poorer, less educated, and harder to assimilate.
What was the Gentlemen's Agreement?
In addition to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Gentlemen's Agreement stopped Japanese Immigration.
What did the Immigration Act of 1924 do?
The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the number of immigrants per year and established the national-origins system, favoring immigrants from countries with large existing populations in the US.
What were the immigration patterns during and after World War II?
Many newcomers arrived, including Jews, displaced persons, orphans, and war brides fleeing Hitler and later communist regimes.
What was the Immigration Reform Act of 1985 about?
The Immigration Reform Act of 1985 concerned illegal Immigration.
How did the 1991 immigration law change things?
The 1991 immigration law increased the number of immigrants allowed, especially those with high skills and education, and removed limits for relatives of citizens.
What are some concerns about illegal immigration?
Concerns include illegal immigrants taking jobs, being exploited by employers, and the perceived threat to the WASP culture from the growing Hispanic population.
What is the Immigration Control and Reform Act?
It attempts to "keep the front door open" to legal immigrants while "closing the back door" to illegal ones.
What is the "melting pot" theory?
The "melting pot" theory suggests that immigrants give up their individual nationalities and customs to assimilate into the WASP culture.
What is the "salad bowl" notion?
The "salad bowl" notion proposes that individual elements come together and mix, but do not melt, with each element remaining distinct while contributing to the whole.
What is the "pizza concept"?
The "pizza concept" uses the Anglo-Saxon culture as the base, with added ingredients that may combine or remain separate, all being part of the same nation.
What are some potential consequences of mass immigration?
These include the growth of Spanish-speaking populations leading to bicultural societies, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a rise in right-wing extremism due to perceived threats to the existing population.
What is the prediction for the future American society?
The American WASP society may evolve into a bicultural society of Hispanic and WASP origin.
How are lawsuits used against right-wing extremist groups?
The government and private individuals use lawsuits against right-wing extremist groups, hoping that the judgements bankrupt them, but the success of this is controversial.
- Citar trabajo
- Katrin Reil (Autor), 2000, Immigration USA, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/103283
