Roman authors mentioned a number of tribes they called Germani—the tribes did not themselves use the term. Germani (for the people) and Germania (for the area where they lived) became the common Latin words for Germans and Germany. Germans call themselves Deutsche (living in Deutschland).
A few Germans were among the first European immigrants to arrive in the New World, joining the English at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608. German-Americans contributed to the development of the United States in numerous and profound ways.
The majority of immigrants in Germany are from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the Middle East. The German Government has been keen to encourage immigration over the past 50 years, to address the low birth rate in the country.
Germans introduced physical education and vocational education into the public schools, and were responsible for the inclusion of gymnasiums in school buildings. More important, they were leaders in the call for universal education, a notion not common in the U.S. at the time.
The available evidence suggests that immigration leads to more innovation, a better educated workforce, greater occupational specialization, better matching of skills with jobs, and higher overall economic productivity. Immigration also has a net positive effect on combined federal, state, and local budgets.
Immigration in the Colonial EraBy the 1500s, the first Europeans, led by the Spanish and French, had begun establishing settlements in what would become the United States. In 1607, the English founded their first permanent settlement in present-day America at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
In Brief. For decades archaeologists thought the first Americans were the Clovis people, who were said to have reached the New World some 13,000 years ago from northern Asia. But fresh archaeological finds have established that humans reached the Americas thousands of years before that.
Therefore, many Chinese immigrated to the US from Canton after news of the gold discovery in California. Immigrants undertook a Pacific Ocean journey of three weeks by ship. Many passengers could barely afford steerage class travel. Most had to borrow money from their relatives and neighbors.
Italian emigration was fueled by dire poverty. Life in Southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, offered landless peasants little more than hardship, exploitation, and violence. Even the soil was poor, yielding little, while malnutrition and disease were widespread.
Items that families were able to pack often consisted of clothes, tools needed for a skilled trade, possibly a family Bible and a picture of their parents, family heirlooms, and necessary provisions for the trip.
Japanese immigrants began their journey to the United States in search of peace and prosperity, leaving an unstable homeland for a life of hard work and the chance to provide a better future for their children.
There were many reasons for the desire of the Palatines to emigrate to the New World: oppressive taxation, religious bickering, hunger for more and better land, the advertising of the English colonies in America and the favourable attitude of the British government toward settlement in the North American colonies.
Irish and German immigrants began coming to America in colonial times, but the early Irish were mostly Protestants from the north of Ireland who settled on the frontier, while the Germans were mainly religious refugees who clus- tered in Pennsylvania.
The German ethnicity emerged among early Germanic peoples of Central Europe, particularly the Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringii, Alemanni and Baiuvarii.
An army of skilled German workers rolled into American cities during the 19th century, bringing with them the trades they had plied in their homeland. German Americans were employed in many urban craft trades, especially baking, carpentry, and the needle trades.
German-language books were burned, and Americans who spoke German were threatened with violence or boycotts. German-language classes, until then a common part of the public-school curriculum, were discontinued and, in many areas, outlawed entirely.
To apply for an immigrant visa, a foreign citizen seeking to immigrate generally must be sponsored by a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident immediate relative(s), or prospective U.S. employer, and have an approved petition before applying for an immigrant visa.
The Irish immigrants who entered the United States from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries were changed by America, and also changed this nation. They and their descendants made incalculable contributions in politics, industry, organized labor, religion, literature, music, and art.
The Germans and Irish were frequently subjected to anti-foreign prejudice and discrimination. Ultimately, the Germans and Irish assimilated into US culture and society and became two of the most successful immigrant groups in the country.
Between 1870 and 1900, the largest number of immigrants continued to come from northern and western Europe including Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia. But "new" immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were becoming one of the most important forces in American life.
The 1924 act supplanted earlier acts to effectively ban all
immigration from Asia and set a total
immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere, an 80% reduction from the average before World War I.
Immigration Act of 1924.
| Citations |
|---|
| Statutes at Large | 43 Stat. 153 |
| Legislative history |
After long constituting the bulk of migration to the United States, European immigration has largely declined since 1960. Most Southern European immigrants were motivated by economic opportunity in the United States, while Eastern Europeans (primarily Jews) fled religious persecution.
2013 UN data
| Country | Number of immigrants | Percentage of total number of immigrants in the world |
|---|
| Russia | 11,048,064 | 4.8 |
| Germany | 9,845,244 | 4.3 |
| United Kingdom | 7,824,131 | 3.4 |
| France | 7,439,086 | 3.2 |
Between 1880 and 1890, almost 40 percent of the townships in the United States lost population because of migration. Industrial expansion and population growth radically changed the face of the nation's cities. Noise, traffic jams, slums, air pollution, and sanitation and health problems became commonplace.
