Immigration

Hey everyone!
How are you doing? I’m doing very well, and today I travelled from Miami to Key West. I hired a car and drove in about two hours, so the trip wasn’t very long. I arrived the hotel a couple of hours ago, but as you know – the Caribbean climate in this southern part of Florida often brings thunderstorms. Therefore I’m in my hotel room, drinking tea and reading a book while the rain and wind is banging at my room window. The book I’m reading is based on facts about Immigration in the United States. This is actually pretty exciting to read about, and here is some of the things I learned:

Many immigrants has moved to the United States through the centuries. This has led to a big population growth and cultural change. Millions of Europeans and people from other parts of the world immigrated to the USA in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, most of them came from Europe and Asia. There were mainly two reasons that people immigrated to the United States. First, it was due to problems in their own country. It was difficult to get work, and not much soil so everyone could produce their own food. That meant that they had to look out their own country, to make good lives for themselves. In the USA there were a lot of land that could be used for agriculture and new settlements. The government welcomed emigrant so they could develop their country. So they offered the emigrants free land if they promised to develop it into agricultural areas and new societies. That meant that millions of people got a new chance in their lives to make themselves a fortune and build a new future. This is called “The American Dream”.

Today, most of immigrants come from Latin America, they are called Hispanics because they speak Spanish. It’s harder for them to get working permit, because that the US don’t need more people to move there, especially not people with low education. Therefor the government has built high walls and fences along the Mexican border. The coastguards control the sea, so people can’t come into the country illegally. This leads to small opportunities for people to live out “The American Dream”.

From Europe compared to its population, most immigrants came from Ireland and Norway. From my country, Norway, more than 700 000 people emigrated between 1850 and 1930. When we know that the total population in Norway in that period was approximately 2,5 million, it means that almost 1/3 emigrated. People from Norway immigrated to the USA because of the same reasons I told you about earlier. Many Norwegians were also tempted to leave to the US after they achieved letters from relatives who had been in the United States, and told about how fantastic the country was. Today few Norwegians immigrates to the United States, because we have a great society and job opportunities here in Norway. But there are still many Norwegians that have relatives in the USA. There are also small original Norwegian societies who tries to take care of the Norwegian traditions by celebrating the 17^th of May, while eating “lutefisk”, “brunost” and “vaffler” and dress up in “bunad”.

 

Ellis Island was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation’s busiest immigrant station from 1892 to 1954. The immigrants who travelled in first and second class was left of in Manhattan, but the third class-people was left of on the Ellis Island. When the gateway closed in November 1954, 20 millions of immigrants had crossed the Ellis Island. Only 2% of them were denied access to the USA and sent back to their home country, this could for instance be people with chronic diseases. Most of the people that got through, settled in New York or the north parts of New Jersey. Today is Ellis Island a museum. It has a database that includes all immigrants from 1892 to 1954.

Ellis Island in 1990.      

 

Ellis Island in 2008.

This is just some of all the exciting things I read about. Tomorrow I’m going on a museum about slavery, so maybe I will write a blog post about that? I hope you learned something new.

Lots of love, Synne