Immigration

1. What major areas or countries of the world were immigrants coming from?
Immigrants were coming from China, Japan, Mexico, the West Indies, and parts of Europe.  The countries in Europe that immigrants came from were Ireland, Italy, England, Scandinavia, Austria-Hungry, Germany, Poland, and Russia.

2. What were the two major immigration processing stations in the United States?
The two major immigration processing station in the United States were Ellis Island, in the East, and Angel Island, in the West.

3. Define Melting Pot.
A Melting Pot is a mixture of many different races and cultures in one area, or country.  The United States of America is a Melting Pot.

4. Define Nativism.
Nativism is to favor the culture or race that was first born in an area or culture.  In America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, nativism applied to favoring white Angelo-Saxons over other races because, even thought the Native Americans were the real natives, those in the U.S. considered white Angelo-Saxons to be the natives.

5. According to the Immigration Restriction League, list the desirable immigrants.
According to the Immigration Restriction League, desirable immigrants:

• were British, German, or Scandinavian
• were "historically free"
• were energetic
• were progressive
• could read English
• 
  

6. According to the Immigration Restriction League, list the “wrong” immigrants.

According to the Immigration Restriction League, "wrong immigrants" were

• Slav, Asiatic, or Latin
• stagnant
• "historically down-trodden"

7. Why did nativists’ sometimes object to an immigrant’s religious background?
Nativists' sometimes objected to an immigrant's religious background because most Americans who were native-born were Protestants and the Founding Fathers had been Protestants.  The nativists were worried that the Catholic and Jewish immigrants would wreck the democratic institutions because they were not Protestants like the Founding Fathers had been.  The fear of losing their freedom made nativists object to immigrants' religious backgrounds if the immigrants were not Protestants.

8. Why was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed?

The Chinese Exclusion Act was an act banning Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. unless they were teachers, tourists, merchants, students, or government officials.  This act was passed because Americans were worried that they would lose their jobs in the West to the Chinese because the Chinese would work for less money.  This created an anti-asian sentiment that would be the cause of the Chinese Exclusion Act being passed.