European immigration

“ Not only have the religious and political motives almost wholly disappeared in favor of the economic in modern immigration, but the European immigrant of to-day is in no sense going to a new or unknown land, when he embarks for the United States. American life and conditions, particularly economic conditions, are well known in those sections of Europe which furnish our large contingents of immigration. ”

“ European immigration to North America has been so prolonged and abundant that it constitutes the particular phenomenon that most deserves attention. Other nations have fought wars to secure additional territory for their people; the immigrant occupation of America has been a peaceful conquest.
229. The Irish.—Although the early occupation of this continent was by immigration from Europe, after the Revolution the increase of population was almost entirely by natural growth. Large families were the rule and a hardy people was rapidly gaining the mastery of the eastern part of the continent. ”

“ Commercial activity, the development of communication by sea, the fertility of the soil, the climate—all contributed from the early days of emancipation to attract European immigration. This immigration, like that which peopled the America of the north, was composed of families who came to settle, to form new homes, to labour. ”

“ Italians, Slavs, Poles, Magyars, East European Hebrews, Finns, Portuguese, Greeks, Roumanians and representatives of many other small nationalities began to seek fortunes in America. The earlier immigration had been made up largely of those who sought escape from religious or political tyranny and came to settle permanent homes. The newer immigration was made up, on the whole, of those who frankly sought wealth. The difference in the reason for coming could not fail to mean a difference in selection of the immigrants, quite apart from the change in the races. ”

“ If transportation conditions and means of communication had remained as they were at the time of the Revolution, our present immigration situation could never have arisen. There would have been a natural barrier which would have prevented too large increments of European population from entering the new country while it was working out its problems and gradually finding itself. The problems of immigration which presented themselves would have been of sufficiently moderate dimensions so that they could have been dealt with as they arose. ”

“ The result was that the new immigration, while it still included many strong elements from the north of Europe, contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos. Our jails, insane asylums and almshouses are filled with this human flotsam and the whole tone of American 90life, social, moral and political has been lowered and vulgarized by them. ”

“ This need not disqualify aliens from travel in the United States.
The immigrant per se has no moral or social right to enter this country against the will of its citizens. An enduring commonwealth must of necessity guard rigidly the health of its citizens and protect itself against undesirable additions from without. There was a time when European immigration was free, and almost entirely of desirable classes. ”

“ Most of them exercise some control over emigration, and, in particular, endeavor to combat the activities of the emigration agents, which, however, they are as powerless to check as is the United States. Nevertheless, there is practically no effort to prohibit emigration altogether, as it is recognized as a natural and irresistible movement. Italy exercises the greatest care for the welfare of her immigrants of any European nation. ”

“ The obvious beneficial results are partially if not wholly offset by certain undesirable consequences, insidious and persistent in their nature, and likely to make themselves more manifest with the passage of years. The attitude of European governments serves as a verification of this conclusion. It is certain that the advantages of emigration do not sufficiently outweigh its drawbacks in the eyes of most of these governments to lead them to regard it otherwise than with disfavor, although none of them now practically forbid it. ”

“ History of Immigration into the United States.—The great economic opportunities offered by the settlement of the vast territory of the United States, together with a combination of causes in Europe, partly political, partly religious, and partly economic, have caused, during the last century, a flood of immigrants from practically all European countries, to invade the United States, greater in number of individuals than any recorded migration in history. ”

“ With the disappearance of the conditions which differentiate the countries which are now receiving immigrants from the older European countries, it seems probable that immigration will cease, for as far as the human eye can see, there will be no new lands to be opened up for the purpose. ”

“ Thus it is certain that the United States receives more immigration at the present time than all the other countries of the world combined, and, as we have said, there is as yet little or no evidence that the stream of European emigration will be diverted for some years to come to these other countries. ”

“ All attainable evidence shows that special trades, as sugar-bakers and tailors, may be largely supplied by immigrants, but that British labour in general is not appreciably affected by foreign competition. [10] This conclusion will be strengthened by a reference to Table XIV. where the number of foreigners in different European countries is shown. If any country has reason to dread immigration it is France, where the percentage of foreign born persons is greater, and where the increase of the native population is so slight. ”

“ This service might be made of incalculable benefit not only to the immigrants themselves, but to their adopted country, whose destiny hangs in the same balance as theirs. It is true that a group of ignorant, stolid, perhaps dirty, European peasants on the streets of one’s own city does not make the same appeal to his emotions and sympathies as the half-clad savages which he reads of in the missionary journals. ”

“ The earlier immigration was an influx of energetic people who wanted to come, and who had to put themselves to considerable exertion to get here; it was higher in character and in social quality than the present flood. The immigration of to-day is largely the result of energetic canvassing by the steamship companies; it is, in the main, an importation of laborers and not of economically independent settlers, and it is increasingly alien to the native tradition. The bulk of it is now Italian, Russian Jewish, Russian, Hungarian, Croatian, Roumanian, and eastern European generally. ”

“ The European peasant, who toils for his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and industrious labor. The tide of immigration may set strongly outward from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada to this new land of promise. ”

“ In the report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, for 1904, an official of the bureau who has been conducting extensive investigations in Europe, writes from there as follows: "The average immigrant of to-day is sadly lacking in that courage, intelligence and initiative which characterized the European people who settled in the western states during the eighties." ”

“ Sooner or later, there will be some who succeed from every region, and the example of a few successful ones is likely to far outweigh numerous failures. Something like this is going on in countless remote districts of the south European countries, and has gone on for decades in every country which has sent us numbers of immigrants. ”

“ Some observers see a great advantage accruing to European countries from the better habits of life, the more advanced knowledge of agricultural and other industrial methods, and the more independent and self-reliant spirit, which the returned immigrants bring back with them. ”

“ Where the immigrants have come from. In some years, during this period since 1865 the number of immigrants has been as low as 200,000; in other years it has run above a million. Nearly every European race has been represented in this influx, although some have come in much larger numbers than others. Down to about 1880 most of the newcomers were from Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and the other regions of Northern Europe. But since that date the source of immigration has been steadily shifting. ”

“ The Union shall develop a common immigration policy aimed at ensuring, at all stages, the efficient management of migration flows, fair treatment of third-country nationals residing legally in Member States, and the prevention of, and enhanced measures to combat, illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings. ”

“ One part of the subject has been as yet purposely left unnoticed—namely, the existence of immigration into European countries. The fact which we have heard so much of lately—that certain classes of foreigners find it to their advantage to settle in London, has possibly surprised many persons; but is capable of very simple explanation. It is evident that every city of any size will attract some special classes of foreigners, and there is no reason why London should prove an exception to the rule. ”

“ While formerly the overwhelming majority of the immigrants had come from Germany, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries, the tide was now running most strongly from Hungary, Russia, Poland, and Italy. ”

“ Greece, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Roumania contributed virtually all the remainder of our 1914 immigrants from Europe, given in the order of importance.
However, we should bear in mind always that the country of origin or nationality or jurisdiction (as determined by political boundaries) is not always identical with race. Immigration statistics have followed national or political boundaries. Take the immigrants from Russia. ”

“ But during the last twenty-five years the number of immigrants from those regions has steadily decreased and has now sunk to very small numbers, while the immigration from Italy, Hungary, Greece and Russia has increased from year to year during the same period of time, and, of late years, has assumed truly enormous proportions. ”

“ In considering the specific causes of the rise of the new immigration we will confine our attention primarily to the countries of Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia, which send us the great bulk of the immigrants, and in which conditions are sufficiently representative to give a satisfactory idea of the nature of the new movement in general. ”

“ More recent is the problem of the immigration of people representing all the nationalities of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. While until late in the 254second half of the nineteenth century the immigrants consisted almost entirely of people of northwestern Europe, natives of Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and France, the composition of the immigrant masses has changed completely since that time. With the economic development of Germany, German immigration has dwindled down ”

“ It may not, therefore, be out of place to consider some of the questions thus brought into notice, the more so as Ireland is surely as deeply interested in the policy pursued towards immigrants by foreign nations as any other country.
The first point which is evident on even the most cursory notice is the general extent of the movement. Almost every country in Europe is a region either of emigration or immigration. England, Germany, Italy, and the Scandinavian peninsula, each send out an annual stream, varying, it is true, in amount with the conditions of trade, but never wholly ceasing. ”

“ Instead of the Dutch and Flemish, English, French, German, Irish, Scandinavian, Scotch, and Welsh home seekers of yesterday, the tide of immigration now casts upon our shores Slavs, Magyars, Greeks, Russian Hebrews, north and south Italians, Syrians, Turks, and other people from southeast Europe who are emigrating to better their economic condition. ”

“ America's free land was gone, and ruder peoples, with lower standards of living, were crowding into her labor markets. In the meantime, Germany's extraordinary rise as a manufacturing country, her successes in foreign trade, and her wonderful system of protection and insurance for her labor population, had made her sons and daughters loath to migrate oversea. The immigration from Germany into the United States is virtually a closed chapter, and has been so for twenty years. Such Germans as now arrive hail chiefly from Austria and Russia. ”

“ Likewise in perhaps more than ninety-nine of every hundred cases the economic motive holds in the mind of the present day immigrant, or his protagonist. Escape from political tyranny or religious persecution, at least since the revolutionary period of 1848, has operated only as a secondary motive. The industrial impulse is all the more striking in the so-called “new immigration” from the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. ”

“ Great Britain, with a little less than four million, and Scandinavia, with something less than two million, have, together with Germany, contributed more than half of the total immigration to our shores since the beginning of the Revolutionary War. ”

“ It is not so much the overpopulation of Austria-Hungary that incites emigration as it is the poverty, ignorance, inequality, and helplessness that produce a seeming overpopulation. While these conditions continue, emigration will continue to increase, and the efforts of the Hungarian government to reduce it will not succeed.
Russia.—The Russian Empire is at the present time the third in the rank of contributors to American immigration. Russian immigration, like that of Italy and Austria-Hungary, is practically limited to the past two decades. ”