The Melting Pot
...wer to expel any immigrant who was deemed dangerous. Later, during the 1840’s, immigration started to sky- rocket. This period of mass immigration was the result of the Irish potato famine, failure of crops in Germany, and the beginning of an industrialization age. Hispanic citizenship shot up by the thousands in 1848 due to the conclusion of the Mexican War. Immigration from China rose during the late 1840’s as a result of the Gold Rush in California. Asian immigrants were excluded from citizenship in 1870 when the Naturalization Act limited citizenship to only white persons and people of African descent. One of the major milestones in our immigration history is the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. During the following decades, Ellis Island provided a center through which 12 million immigrants would come. 1907 brought about the Expatriation Act which proclaimed that any woman who married a foreign national would lose her citizenship status. In 1940 the Alien Registration Act came into effect which meant that any incoming foreigners must have his fingerprints on file if over the age of 14. The Internal Security Act was passed in 1950, meaning that immigration status could not be extended to communists. More recently, the Immigration Act of 1990 allowed 700,000 immigrants to come into the country per year. These provisions are just a small part of the immigration history in America. 1886 was the year of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. That year some 334,203 immigrants came into our United States. These “new immigrants” came mostly from Europe and were generally of the Catholic or Jewish faith. Many came here to escape religious persecution while others came for the endless opportunities available to them. During the mid to late 1800’s, China went through a period of religious intolerance, which left many dead. Although the US had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring the Chinese from citizenship, many Chinese migrated to America to work in the ever growing businesses and factories on the west coast. These people had to be smuggled into the country in hopes of finding a better life. One thing that these immigrants brought to the United States was disease. Disease has always been a product of migration and so it continued in America. For instance, in 1892, a steamboat loaded with 1,200 Russian immigrants pulled into the New York Harbor with 200 cases of typhus on board. Because of this incident, the government imposed a mandatory twenty day quarantine for any immigrants traveling in steerage. Immigration has also given us the first tr...