Immigration to the United States: Factors, History, and Settlement Patterns

1. Immigration EQ: Why did people immigrate to the United States?

2. Immigration factors • Push factors: things that drive people away from one location to find a new place to live and work • Pull factors: things that attract people to a new location

3. Why do people emigrate? Are these push or pull factors? • Hope for better opportunity • Religious freedom • Escape from cruel orunfairgovernment • Adventure

4. 65 million??? • Since the US began keeping records in 1820, more than 65 million people have come to live in this country • Why did so many come here in the 19th century? • Rapid growth of industry • What area in the US did most of the factories exist? So most immigrants lived where?

5. Experience in the land of opportunity • Immigrants were not always welcomed with open arms • Ethnic and religious tensions were common among immigrant groups • Earlier immigrants were afraid the new immigrants would take their jobs away • Immigrants from all over experienced discrimination in the work place

6. Where did they come from? • The first group of immigrants came before 1890, people emigrated from northern and western Europe. • Most of these immigrants came from countries including Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Norway, & Sweden

7. Where else? • From about 1890 - early 1900s, many people came from southern and eastern Europe. • They emigrated from countries such as Italy, Greece, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, & Russia

8. Where did they settle? • Many immigrants were so poor that they settled near the place where they came into the United States, like New York City or Boston • Others moved south or west as the country’s population grew

9. Immigrants often established close-knit communities in big cities such as • Cincinnati, Ohio • Milwaukee, Wisconsin • Chicago, Illinois • Cleveland, Ohio