Immigrants (Unit Three)

Visa

Official permission from a country that allows a person from another country to enter, live, or work their for a certain amount of years

Push factor

Factors making people want to leave their home

• War

• Famine

• Persecution

Pull factor

Factors that make people want to come to America

• Economic opportunity

• Religious freedom

“New Immigrant”

Immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and more likely to be Jewish or Catholic. Came from Italy, Greece, Russia, Poland.

Old immigrant

Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.

Steerage

A very dirty, unsanitary class on a ship where most passengers traveled

Ellis Island

A harbor immigration station in New York

Immigration and Naturalization Service

Agency responsible for organizing immigration laws

Angel Island

A processing center for Chinese immigrants in San Francisco

“Melting pot”

White people of all different nationalities blended to create a single culture

Nativism

To prefer Native born white Americans over New immigrants

Chinese exclusion act

Prohibited immigration for Chinese laborers, limited the rights of Chinese immigrants already in the U.S. and forbade the naturalization of Chinese residents

1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement

Limited the amount and type of Japanese immigrants allowed in the U.S. they only allowed the educated and business class

Urbanization

The number of cities and people in them increase dramatically

Rural-to-Urban migrant

Immigrants who moved from the country to the city in the 1890’s

Skyscraper

A tall building with many stories

Elisha Otis

An inventor who developed a safety elevator

Mass transit

Public system that could carry large amounts of people inexpensively

• Subways

Suburb

Cleaner, quieter areas in a town

Fredrick Law Olmsted

A landscape engineer who designed fair mount park

Tenement

Low cost, multi family housing which were very cheap, unsanitary, and tight

Cholera

A dangerous illness that reached epidemic proportions several times in the U.S.