Immigration



Kelsey Hawbaker Mr. Sontheimer Mod 2 September 29, 2009

  Dear Jomee,

It's your little sister Meeshaw and I am writing you where you are in China from America where I am at. I had left China because of the poverty we were facing. Coming to America I traveled in ship. When I got to China I settled in California, a place very different from China and this is where my new adventure in America began.

Getting to California we started to search for gold. This gold would be how we would support ourselves. Quickly we found though that there wasn't any gold and that we were searching in a place where gold was either scarce or not even there at all and this was a big disappointment to us. Once the job for gold wasn't working for us we started working on the railroads which proved to not be much better. Pay was low and it was very hard work and many people were being killed at a very high rate. This job though gave us an opportunity to finally get our foot in the door of the work force. After railroad jobs were complete we moved on to other jobs such as making shoes, sewing clothes, and rolling cigars. Soon after this, most businesses that started up were operated by Chinese and life in America started getting better than we had even expected.

Life in America is better because we have more opportunities to make a better future for ourselves and our families. I think America is better than living in China because we're actually making a future for ourselves here and having money too. We're even creating our own businesses which is something I never thought would happen.

Even though not everyone wanted us in America we still stayed around. We built our own communities in North America and these places that we built gave us freedom. We still had stuff from China in this community even though we were not in China but still in America. We called this place Chinatown and in Chinatown we had things such as familiar food, temples, and news from our old country. All of these things made us not miss home so much and made us happier to be where we were.

So really Jomee, I think you and Ma and Pa need to come to America too with me so we can all have this opportunity. I miss you all terribly but I have made a good life for us here and it can always be better. Especially, if my families here with me along the way.

[|The Huddled Masses], The statue of liberty is the tallest metal statue ever constructed. The statue of liberty represented freedom in the new world for the immigrants. The statue was originally built in France and given to America as a gift. [|The New Immigrants], Most immigrants came from eastern and southern Europe. European immigration greatly increases after the civil war. In 1900, 14 percent of the population was born in a different country. [|The Chinese Exclusion Act], from 1882 until 1943 most Chinese immigrant were barred from entering America. The Chinese exclusion act was the first law to ban a nationality from entering the United States. The only exceptions were travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those who were born in the United States. [|Contract Agreement], in the 19th century the demand for manual labor grew. The laborers worked under contracts for a period of time. In exchange for working nine hours a day six days a week they received a small salary along with clothing, shelter, food, and medical care. [|Immigration Restriction] during the early 20th century the United States imposed additional restrictions on immigration. Under the Gentlemen’s agreement of 1907-1908, the government agreed to limit passports issued to Japanese in order to permit wives to enter the United States. In 1917, the United States barred all Asian immigrants except for Filipinos, who were U.S. nationals. __ United States's Changing Face __ 10 million legal and undocumented immigrants entered the country during the 1980s which was an unpredicted wave of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The face of the United States changed the space of 20 years. In 1996 nearly one in ten of the residents in the U.S. were born in another country, that’s twice as many as in 1970.