Immigration (social science)

“ One thing, meanwhile, must be remembered—the problem will not solve itself. If there are evils connected with immigration, there is no prospect that in the natural course of events they will disappear of themselves. The history of immigration has been a history of successive waves of population, from sources ever lower in the economic, if not in the social, scale. ”

“ On the whole, it is probably true that if industrial arguments alone are to be taken into consideration upon the immigration problem, the weight of the argument would be on the side of unrestricted immigration. ”

“ In the period of years from 1820 to 1912 a total of 29,611,052 immigrants came to the United States. [347] No population movement of equal social significance, and comparable in volume, has ever taken place within the recorded history of the human race. And never again, so far as the human eye can see, can it be repeated, when the heyday of immigration to the United States is over. It is inconceivable that such a phenomenon should not have important and far-reaching effects upon every country concerned in the movement. There is, then, an immigration problem. ”

“ NEWSHOLME, Vital Statistics.
CHAPTER IX THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM In new countries population may increase by immigration as well as by the surplus of births over deaths. Immigration is, therefore, a secondary means of increasing the population of a country, and in new countries is often of great importance.
Immigration, or the migration of a people into a country, along with its correlative emigration, or the migration of a people out of a country, constitutes a most important social phenomenon. All peoples seem more or less migratory in their habits. ”

“ In the case of the old immigration there are, to be sure, certain immediate and superficial effects which may be postulated with a fair degree of certainty. As an example, we may be reasonably sure that the old immigration has increased the proportion of Irish, German, and Scandinavian blood in the composite American people. But as to the ultimate effects of this movement upon the social, religious, moral, and economic aspects of our national life, we can, at best, hazard only a forecast. ”

“ The first is that the vacuum left in any country by emigration is rapidly filled up through a rise in the birth-rate.... The second fact is that immigration to any country of a given stratum of population tends to sterilize all strata of higher social and economic levels already in that country. ”

“ Thus we find that, in this respect also, moral as well as physical causes control emigration. The first are as powerful, if not more powerful than the latter. In the United States, both are at work in attracting emigrants, and hence why there is a larger European immigration to this country than to any other on the face of the globe. ”

“ In the advance of a community a point is sooner or later reached at which any further addition to population does not increase the proportional amount of wealth, and then immigration may justly take the place which emigration used to occupy in the minds of the statesmen of older countries, viz., as a danger to the welfare of society. ”

“ Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants will not solve the Immigration Problem.—But few of those who are now urging the necessity of relieving the city slum burden by distributing the slum population realize that such distribution will not, and can not, of itself, lead to any relief, as long as the tide of new immigration flows on unchecked. ”

“ Undoubtedly the strongest arguments in favor of further restriction upon immigration into the United States are of a biological nature. The peoples that are coming to us at present belong to a different race from ours. ”

“ If he is diseased, crippled, dishonest or indolent, he may be a direct loss to the community instead of a gain. So, too, the immigrant is worth his future net ieagnings to the community only if there is a demand for his labour.
Social and Political Ejects of Immigration.—The influx of millions of persons of different nationality, often of a foreign language and generally of the lower classes, would seem to be a danger to the homogeneity of a community. The United States, for instance, has felt some inconvenience from the constant addition of foreigners to its electorate and its population. ”

“ MANY of the evils resulting from the enormous immigration of aliens into this country during recent years have been much aggravated by the congestion of these aliens in the slums of our large northern cities. For this reason, most of those who have studied the immigration problem seriously have come to the conclusion that if these immigrants could be removed from the slums, and distributed over the agricultural districts of the west and south, all the difficulties which are now met with in educating and Americanizing these foreigners could easily be disposed of. ”

“ From all these sources a body of information has been gathered that throws light on the causes and effects of immigration.
236. Causes and Effects.—The primary cause is industrial. The desire of the people to improve their economic and social condition is the compelling motive that drives them, in spite of homesickness and ignorance, to venture into an unknown country and to face dangers and difficulties that could not be foreseen. Three out of four who come are males, pioneers oftentimes of a family that looks forward to a larger migration later on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Migration has been one of the mighty forces that have been reshaping society. The American people are being altered by it, and it is a question whether America will maintain its national characteristics if the volume of immigration continues unchecked. Europe has been deeply affected, and the people who constitute the migrating mass have been changed most of all. And the end is not yet.
The immigrant constitutes one of the problems of society. Never has there been in history such a race movement as that which has added to one nation a population of more than twenty million in a half century. ”

“ Reasons: high wages, cheap land, social and political freedomHowever equal such inducements to emigrants as fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, security of property, and facility of communication may be in different countries, the emigrant prefers the country where labor is best remunerated, where land is cheap, where government does not interfere with him, where no class privileges exist, and where, from the day of his landing, he stands on a footing of absolute equality with the natives. ”

“ The Distribution of Immigrants. If immigrants would distribute themselves evenly over the United States, the immigration problem would be quite different from what it is. Instead of this, there is a massing of immigrants in some states and communities, and very little evidence to show that these immigrants ever distribute themselves normally over the whole country. In 1906, for example, the Commissioner of Immigration reported that 68.3 per cent of the 1,100,000 immigrants who came that year went to the North Atlantic states ”

“ It is true that under the influence of mercantilist ideas it was once universally held that emigration exhausted a population; but it need hardly be said that theory and experience alike show that where social conditions are even moderately well adjusted, the number of inhabitants will rapidly grow up to the limits of comfortable subsistence, or even beyond them, and that so long as a livelihood is easily obtained there need be no fear as to a decline of population. Immigration, on the other hand, has generally been welcomed. ”

“ In regard to national prosperity and welfare, moreover, it must ever be remembered that the effects of immigration upon all countries concerned, particularly upon the receiving country, are scarcely more than in the embryo. Such a tremendous movement as this must inevitably have significant and far-reaching results. ”

“ We can not have too much immigration of the right kind, and we should have none at all of the wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country. At present some districts which need immigrants have none; and in others, where the population is already congested, immigrants come in such numbers as to depress the conditions of life for those already there. This brings us to the question of what constitutes a desirable immigrant. ”

“ And a large part of the immigrants assimilate rapidly.
In addition, the new stock from southern and central Europe brings to this country qualities of mind and of temperament that may in time greatly enrich the more severe and practical-minded races of northern Europe.
But it is not the purpose of this article to discuss the question of immigration restriction or the kinds of tests that should be applied to the incoming alien. It is rather to consider the internal or domestic policy we have thus far adopted after the immigrant has landed on our shores. And this policy has been wholly negative. ”

“ It may be pointed out however that the admission of immigrants does not necessarily imply the granting of citizenship; also that it would be possible to exclude the kind of immigrants who are undesirable and admit freely those who would serve useful purposes. The other thought in the restriction of immigration is economic, reflecting the wish to limit the supply of labor. ”

“ But heavy emigration is a phenomenon, 352and accordingly we hear much about how acceptably our alien population serves to accommodate the supply of labor to the demand. But if we stop to add up the monthly figures, we find that for the entire period after the crisis of 1907, when emigration exceeded immigration, the total decrease in alien population was only 124,124—scarcely equal to the immigration of a single month during a fairly busy season. ”

“ Most problems in applied sociology have to do with interests; certainly the problem of immigration does. Having answered the first part of our query in the affirmative, the problem now expresses itself thus: how shall the movement of aliens from foreign countries to the United States be so controlled as to further the best interests of somebody? ”

“ Domestic causes influencing immigration But the numerical strength of immigration to this country is not governed by material and moral disturbances in Europe, only. While bad crops, commercial and industrial crises, and unfavorable turns in political affairs in the Old World tend to increase immigration, the appearance of the same phenomena in the United States as certainly tends to decrease it. ”

“ Great railway systems and land companies in the South and West have their agricultural and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible settlers. All of the Southern states have established bureaus of immigration, and they are advertising the North and Europe for desirable immigrants. But these agencies seek mainly those immigrants who have resided in the country for a time, and have learned the language and American practices, and, in the case of the railroad and land companies, those who have accumulated some property. ”

“ The question of the effects of immigration upon the immigrants is perhaps the most difficult of all to determine. It is manifest that it must affect all of their life interests, in their own generation and for many generations to come. ”

“ There remains by far the greatest and most universal argument for immigration—the economic one. The one plea for the free admission of aliens, that has weight to-day, is that our industrial organization demands it. ”

“ The inclination of the immigrants themselves to stick so closely to the great centers of population must be overcome. If the great crowds of foreigners that inundate these shores every year could be distributed in a sensible and logical way over all the vast uncultivated territory in which this [Pg 103] nation is so rich, we should never hear any complaint of too much immigration. No better farmers can be found anywhere than among the foreign peoples who seek America. ”

“ I for one do not complain of this system;—but on the contrary, believe it will be beneficial to society in the end, and wait its progress. Hence the necessity for immigration to fill up the blank occasioned by the independence and comfort of our former servants. ”

“ This is the real kernel of the immigration problem for the statesman and the practical sociologist.
One of the great difficulties with which sincere social workers have to contend in almost every field of their 433efforts is that practical economics has advanced so much more rapidly than practical sociology. Our knowledge of the technique of production and transportation, and of the industrial arts, has made phenomenal strides in the past century. ”

“ To cut off, therefore, or to discourage its influx, will be to check the current from which our very life is drawn. The better course is evidently to welcome and provide for this tide of immigration, rather than to oppose and turn it away; to cherish the good influence it brings, and regulate the bad, rather than to trample them both under foot. What, though the population which is annually cast upon American shores is all of the filthiest and most degraded kind! ”

“ Probably the most satisfactory is the familiar one of Economic, Political, Social, and Religious. The economic causes of migrations are the earliest and by far the most important. They arise in connection with man’s efforts to make his living, and concern all interests which are connected with his productive efforts. They are disabilities or handicaps which affect his pursuit of food, clothing, and shelter, as well as the less necessary comforts of life. These are vital interests, and any dissatisfaction connected with them is of great weight with men. ”