Migrant

“ Under external migration are comprised emigration and immigration, denoting simply direction from and to. The emigrants are at the same time the immigrants; that is, the material of the movement is the same, but the effect upon the country giving up and the country receiving the migrant requires separate treatment. Hence it is proper to separate emigration from immigration. Temporary migration, or travel for purposes of business, enterprise or pleasure, will be considered only incidentally, and because in some cases it is difficult to distinguish between such movements and permanent migration. ”

“ That part of the report on constructive efforts toward adjustment of the migrant population in the North gives much information as to how the leading citizens of both races have coöperated in trying to solve the problems resulting from this sudden shifting of large groups of people. ”

“ We have learnt much in recent years with regard to migration. With one single exception, we know where every one of the summer migrants goes to rear its brood. The haunt of one only—the curlew-sandpiper—still defies discovery. ”

“ Main Immigration Building. It is a busy island. Yet in all the rushing hurry and seeming confusion of a full day, in all the babel of language, the excitement and fright and wonder of the thousands of newly-landed, and in all the manifold and endless details that make up the immigration plant, there is system, silent, watchful, swift, efficient. Five thousand immigrants in a day is no uncommon figure. ”

“ The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?—But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. ”

“ Emigrants, being for the most part drawn from among dry-land-living populations, are apt to be daunted by the idea of a long voyage. People would be more ready, perhaps, to contemplate becoming colonists, were it not for that dreaded crossing of the sea which must necessarily be their first step. Their terrors may be natural enough, but they are more fanciful than real; and once overcome, the emigrant smiles at his former self. ”

“ In the compact colony of his fellow-countrymen, he may be sure of companionship, encouragement, and assistance when needed. It is the most natural thing in the world for an immigrant to want to settle where there are numbers of others of his immediate kind. ”

“ The only way of filling up the gaps in the population of the ravaged land was to invite foreign immigrants of a superior class, chapmen and handicrafts men, not only given to peaceful pursuits and accustomed to law and Foreign Immigrants. ”

“ It appears that more than seventy-five percent of the Southern migrants are between the ages of eighteen and forty. Only ten percent of the 506 people questioned were under eighteen or past fifty years of age. ”

“ Let unsuspecting emigrants beware, or they will deeply bewail their credulity after having been set down with exhausted means in some accursed region where no water can be had, no timber in sight, no friendly cloud to shield them from the intense heat by day, and where they will shiver by night from cold, and where they will be in constant danger of being scalped by roving bands of merciless savages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great westward tide of immigration has again begun to rise. Annually to the ports of entry and to the great inland centers of distribution come thousands of immigrant families, strange men and women with young children, unattached girls, and vigorous, simple lads. ”

“ East, West, North, and South sent types of those worthy citizens who upheld local social structures; the brilliant migrants were there also—samples of the gay, wealthy, over-accented floating population of great cities—the rich and homeless and restless—those who lived and had their social being in the gorgeous and expensive hotels ”

“ The returned immigrants scatter into thousands of villages, rousing them from their commonplaceness by stories of adventure, boasts of mighty deeds of valor and praise or criticism of our strange customs. ”

“ Turning into the barrack-yard, round which are the various buildings where the immigrants are temporarily housed, we find an animated scene [Pg 50] before us. Here are assembled most of our immigrant shipmates, some few of whom have already got engagements and gone off. A considerable party of settlers and agents are now busily at work trying to hire the people they severally want; while the poor bewildered immigrants find themselves treated as though they were goods in an auction-room, and scarcely know whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. ”

“ New countries, more especially, have kept an open door for all arrivals. The increase of population has been taken as the great test of advance, and every immigrant was looked on as additional evidence of progress. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, the United States and our Australian and American colonies, looking at the same set of facts from an opposite stand-point, have been engaged in an examination of the influence which various classes of immigrants must necessarily exercise on their earlier inhabitants, and have even in some degree proposed to deal in a practical manner with the problem. ”

“ This would indicate that the long lines of eastward and westward migration were open and favorable to the arrival in western Europe of new migrants from the far east, including perhaps the most primitive races of man. ”

“ The classes in which we are particularly interested are naturally the immigrant and emigrant aliens, for they are the only participants in true immigration movements, according to our definition. The others are merely travelers. Yet they are important and interesting travelers, and the modern problems of immigration cannot be thoroughly understood without taking some consideration of them. As for the aliens in transit, they can be quickly disposed of. ”

“ What has been described, of course, can not be construed to apply to every one who left. There were those of the business and professional classes who were promoted by other motives than those which impelled the masses of migrants. ”

“ The immigration problem, which I have been discussing in previous numbers of The Arena, cannot be unravelled without considering one important thread which adds to the entanglement. I shall apply to it the term "Inter-migration," a word not found in the dictionary, because it is freshly coined for the purpose. Let me try to define its meaning.
A person is said to migrate when he leaves his native land, seeking a new home in some other country. Around the word emigrant or immigrant hovers always the idea of an exchange of habits, customs, and language of one country with those of another. ”

“ If these families come, many others will come after them, and thus spontaneous emigration will be developed for our country. In the disposition with which they are now proposing to emigrate, it is natural that they should flow into the same place, and the country which has the happiness to receive well the first emigrants will receive all. ”

“ The immigrant, when he arrives at the place which he has chosen for his new settlement, appears by his dress, his language, his manners, yea, even by his features, a stranger; one who has apparently no right to press himself upon the community; one who must not feel offended if he is mistrusted, until he has shown that his arrival will not prove dangerous to the old settlers. ”

“ The inhabitants of the country immediately surrounding a town of rapid growth flock into it; the gaps thus left in the rural population are filled up by migrants from more remote districts, until the attractive force of one of the rapidly-growing cities makes its influence felt, step by step, to the most remote corner of the land. Migrants enumerated in a certain centre of absorption will consequently grow less with the distance, proportionately to the native population which furnishes them. ”

“ Such a movement may assume, from the point of view of the migrants themselves, the character of an emancipation, opening to them new economic and cultural opportunities, but it is none the less disorganizing to the communities they have left behind and to the communities into which they are now moving. ”

“ Many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the cities of America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left their country through apprehension of the future—from attachment to the persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might deem it a disgrace to abandon.—Those whom I think may with truth be styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people, irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands, Camille Desmoulins, &c. ”

“ Filled with dreams of gain and possessions, with hopes of decent housing and schooling for their children, they leave their distant communities and troop to the mills. These immigrants are picturesque, touching to see. They come with all they own in the world on their backs or in their hands ”

“ At the same time, we must ensure that every illegal immigrant we catch crossing our southern border is returned home. More than 85 percent of the illegal immigrants we catch crossing the southern border are Mexicans, and most are sent back home within 24 hours. ”

“ In the next place, the third type of migrants consisted of a rather small group of skilled artisans, business and professional men who shared the dissatisfaction and restlessness of the common laborers. ”

“ Then take the very considerable number of the four million emigrants who have been entirely non-producers, being either paupers, or criminals, or diseased, or who have, as neglected children, fallen into the hands of the public authorities, or whose labor, as destitute women, has not supported themselves. ”

“ THE EXPLOITATION OF IMMIGRANTS. RELIGION. BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS. RECREATION There is a group of peculiar economic institutions which have been developed by the immigrants in this country, and which are especially characteristic of the new immigration. This group includes the padrone system, the contract labor system, the immigrant bank, and two or three similar institutions, particularly the sweating system, which is now practically dependent on immigrants.
The word “padrone” is adopted from the Italian, and signifies master or “boss.” ”

“ These immigrants, and the migrants from the Eastern States, have profited enormously by their change of residence. Their material well-being has already been admitted, and, with rare exceptions, they have displayed no overt symptoms of agrarian discontent. ”

“ To such a family no tidings ought to be more welcome than of the arrival of ship-load after ship-load of immigrants at the ports, some [Pg 342] few of whom may wander hitherwards, and by entering into a combination of labour to obtain means of living, open a way to the attainment of the ends. Sixty thousand immigrants a-year! ”

“ The importance of immigration and emigration is firstly, the addition or subtraction thereby made to or from the supply of labor, and, secondly, the influence of the immigrants upon those habits of the community, which in turn affect the supply of labor. ”

“ Such people are not able to make a success of farming and should be avoided. These classes of applicants are found among immigrants as well as among natives, soldiers, and civilians.
How important the selection of settlers is for the success of colonization and settlement on land is shown by the close scrutiny of prospective settlers made by the agents of modern private colonization companies and also by certain state immigration officials. ”

“ 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. ”