The United States became a leading industrial power in the early 20th century, attracting millions of immigrants from around the world for economic opportunities & the lure of the American Dream. Read to find out more about the third wave of immigration, from 1881-1920.
Immigration to the US
The United States attracts the largest number of immigrants in the world, who join the fabric of U.S. society through avenues such as citizenship, becoming legal permanent residents (LPRs), or by seeking humanitarian protection. This chart tracks the number of people who annually are granted legal permanent residence (also known as getting a green card).
***1990 &1991 figures includes undocumented workers legalized under 1986 amnesty (officially pardoned for committing a crime) law.
Arriving in the America
Each photo was taken at Ellis Island, where nearly 12 million immigrants entered the US from 1892 to 1954.
Nativism
"Americanism" or Nativism, the belief that native-born Americans, especially if of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, have superior rights to the "foreign-born," intensified during the Red Scare of 1919-1920. Nativist emotions were compounded by the association of immigrants with anarchists (rebels/radicals), Socialists and Communists, and figured prominently in the notorious 1920s trial of the foreign-born Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Also during the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared for the first time since Reconstruction, targeting Catholics and Jews -- who were among the largest groups of ethnic immigrants -- as well as blacks.
Nationalist sentiment resulted in the passage of highly restrictive immigration laws that imposed quotas (limited to a small amount of people) by national origin, stemming the flood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe seeking to enter the United States in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Emergency Quota Act, passed in 1921, was signed by President Harding. The National Origins Act, passed in 1924, also penalized Japanese would-be immigrants in addition to southern and eastern Europeans. One result of the restrictions was the emergence of a national labor force largely without foreign-born workers beyond those who already were here, a turn of events that ultimately favored African-American workers.
Immigrants who already were in the country were subjected to a barrage of "messages" from society and government "educating" them in how to become assimilated, aiming, in effect, to "Americanize" them.
Nationalist sentiment resulted in the passage of highly restrictive immigration laws that imposed quotas (limited to a small amount of people) by national origin, stemming the flood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe seeking to enter the United States in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Emergency Quota Act, passed in 1921, was signed by President Harding. The National Origins Act, passed in 1924, also penalized Japanese would-be immigrants in addition to southern and eastern Europeans. One result of the restrictions was the emergence of a national labor force largely without foreign-born workers beyond those who already were here, a turn of events that ultimately favored African-American workers.
Immigrants who already were in the country were subjected to a barrage of "messages" from society and government "educating" them in how to become assimilated, aiming, in effect, to "Americanize" them.