Stories
This term was coined to contrast the immigrants of old from Western Europe with those who arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe.
What are "the new immigrants."
This term describes a belief that white European immigrants would blend together over time into a single white culture.
What is a "melting pot?"
At the foot of this "New Colossus" is a message of welcome, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I life my lamp beside the Golden Door."
What is the Statue of Liberty?
This Canadian immigrant invented the sport of basketball.
Who is James Niasmith?
It is estimated that 100,000,000 living Americans have an ancestor who arrived in the United States via which immigration center?
What is Ellis Island?
A "factor" that leads to immigration. Examples include fleeing war, famine, or religious persecution.
What is a "Push" factor?
This term refers to poorly built and overcrowded apartment buildings constructed in cities to house newly arriving immigrants.
What are "tenements?"
Between 1892 and 1924, 12 million immigrants would enter the U.S. through this "Golden Door," the main immigration station near New York City.
What is Ellis Island?
This "Robber Baron" and immigrant from Scotland made his fortune in steel. He opened 3,000 libraries, a major university, and a famous music hall in New York City. He believed that rich men should use their fortune to benefit society.
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
What is "asylum?"
A "factor" that leads to immigration. Examples include economic opportunity and religious freedom.
What is a "Pull" factor?
Many organizations, including schools, were created to help "new immigrants" learn English and American customs. This term describes the goal of this, a process or project of assimilation...
What is "Americanization?"
This term referred to the poorest people traveling on a steamship - often immigrants - because those people were confined to areas of the ship that had the ship's steering equipment.
What is "steerage?"
This immigrant from Scotland became known as the "miner's angel" for her labor activism across the entire United States. She was once called "the most dangerous woman in America."
Who is Mother Jones?
What is "undocumented?"
A 17 year old Russian immigrant named Rose Cohen (born in 1880) decided to seek independence from her traditional family after she journeyed beyond her neighborhood to...
What is a hospital?
This term refers to a prejudice against immigrants as lesser than native Americans and, as a result, a call to limit immigration, especially by people of color.
What is "nativism?"
This immigration station in San Francisco, California, was created to enforce the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Chinese immigrants who arrived were detained here, often for months or even years, in cruel and inhumane conditions.
What is Angel Island?
This immigrant from Scotland invented the telephone.
Who is Alexander Graham Bell?
This legal document allows a person to immigrate to the United States in order to study at a college or university.
What is a student visa?
Mazin Sidahmed's family fled the Sudan to seek asylum from the dictator Omar al-Bashir. This is the means through which they stay in contact despite being scattered across the globe.
What is "WhatsApp?"
We often here the United States described as a "nation of immigrants," but these groups are excluded by this phrase.
Who are Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and other peoples of color?
Alfred Stieglitz's famous 1907 photo "The Steerage" revealed that many immigrants who came to United States to work eventually did this.
What is "return home?"
This escaped slave and leader of the U.S. movement to abolish slavery argued that human rights - including migration to better one's life - should apply to everyone regardless of race or nationality.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
What is... well... what do YOU think? ;)