The Lot Of Immigrants

Jason Sharkey

Ms. Satter

English #5

May 15 06

The lot of the immigrant past present and future

America has since its founding as a nation, been a nation composed of immigrants and decedents of immigrants. Throughout our history it has been a blessing for us. Our country had the diversity of culture that so many other countries lacked, and it was this diversity that allowed us to develop so quickly because the fertile mix of cultural values and outlooks provided good soil for the seeds of new ideas that could not have been born anywhere else. Still America has a pattern of mistreatment to the flow of new ideas represented by those immigrants. In fact using current law and popular opinion it is visible that the status of an immigrant has changed little over the decades.

Immigrants have always held a low position in society. Of course when the colonies were first established the social order was more forgiving. But even some research into the first European settlers to the east coast will reveal that most had low positions in society. Many were paying off debts or starting colonies in hopes of turning a profit and returning home. This helped to establish from the beginning the feeling that anyone who came to America was not so much someone seeking opportunity but rather someone that was undesirable in their own country. This bias would remain a source of hardship for immigrants even today.

Because they were seen as undesirables and because they were not as acclimated to the lifestyle, immigrants would remain in the lower rungs of society even when the immigrants of past generations had instituted their own culture. This bias is not the only thing that kept immigrants down for generations.

Racism was and is an influential factor in the civil liberties of immigrants. Belief in the inferiority of other races has lead to limitations and restrictions for incoming immigrants and countless hardships for those that make it into the country. Lee Chew was an immigrant from China. In his biography that was published in 1903 in Independent magazine Lee Chew discuses the abuses and prejudices he endured as a poor Chinese immigrant. He wrote about his experiences going into a laundry business along the path of railroad construction. He would often suffer from frauds that used the bias against Chinese immigrants to extort fees for lost shirts that never existed at all. He still managed to make a fine profit and travel enough of the country to have an educated opinion of prejudice on either coast.

"The men were rough and prejudiced against us, but not more so than in the big eastern cities" -Lee Chew, the Biography of a Chinaman

American Literature page 1318

Chew and many millions more immigrants would endure undue prejudice throughout American history. The late 1800s and early 1900s saw the immigrant problem from china and European countries like Ireland. In the 1920s groups like the KKK were in full swing and "defending" the United States from the flow of European immigrants that were more refugees of war than anything else. Even the president of the US got believed strongly that America was at risk. Here is a quote from him as he passed a quota bill for immigrants in 1924

"America must be kept American"

-President Coolidge

quote found at: http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Immigration/index.html

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