Was it really for those reasons we were taught in elementary school?
[ul]
[li]Freedom[/li][li]Liberty[/li][li]Religious persecution[/li][li]Oppressive governments[/li][/ul]
Or was it something less dramatic. Economically, they weren’t making a go of it back home, so they’d give America a try.
There’s a commercial on the radio saying how they emigrated to America because they could shot for speaking up, couldn’t practice religion, etc…
Yet nearly all the immigrants I talk to out here (heavy Asian community) is because there weren’t any jobs where they were.
All of the above? Different people came to America for different reasons. Some, like the economic migrants you mentioned, came to try to get better jobs. Some, like the Cubans in Miami and the Vietnamese refugees who came here after the Vietnam war, were fleeing dictatorial governments. Some, like the Amish and the Jews of Eastern Europe, came so they could practice their religion freely. Some, like the Germans who came after the revolution of 1848, were failed revoultionaries who faced prison at home. Some, like the black slaves, didn’t have a choice.
Well, a bunch of my ancestors came over from Ireland (in the late 19th century, so it wasn’t because of the famine. Heck, one of them went to America because the ship going to Australia was full!), a few came on the Mayflower, and at least one did it to dodge the Prussian draft.
Kinda gives me hope for America’s future in space exploration—we’re largely decended from people who once said “Aw, screw this, I’ll take my chances in the new world!”
Why the past tense? People are still coming to America, for mostly the same reasons they always have. Probably, economic opportunity is the most common one, then and now, but the others were and still are a factor.
Another one you might add, by the way, is land. Even a moderately well-off person in the Old World might not be able to own much land, while large parts of the US are still only thinly populated. This was especially significant during the settling of the Great Plains (the Oklahoma Land Rush, and the like).
I think it would depend on the individual. In my family’s case, life was quite fine in England, but investment in the Americas, and in many instances actual emigration from England to the Americas, offered tremendous economic opportunity. In short, my family was a very old established one, so it came into a lot of massive holdings in the Americas, particularly during the Restoration. These holdings and related businesses (plantations and trading companies) required people to monitor or conduct them in the New World, so members of my family crossed the pond.
The USA did not exist then, and was only considered to be a collection of colonies, no different than others in the Americas. Thus some of my family went to places like Virginia, others went to places like Barbados, and others went to places like British Guiana – all plantation based economies where the Crown had pretty much let my family have at it.
Over a few hundred years, it turns out that the ones that went to what is now the USA were fortunate, for the USA has moved on economically now that the slave based plantation economy finished, whereas the ones who went to the Caribbean and South America for the most part eventually had to move on as the local economies failed once the slave based plantation economies ended. Some moved to the USA, some to South Africa, and a handful to other places of the British Empire, including New Zealand, Australia, and Canada (where I am a citizen).
Bottom line: economic opportunity, both back then and more recently, in terms of being able to improve an already good economic position.
Most folks who came here did it for money; either they had some and wanted to make a fortune or they had none and were desperate to make a living somehow.
Some, of course, came for the reasons that people still flee their homelands.
I’m one step ahead of the police.
Bridget’s starting to show, and I have to get out of here before her daddy finds me.
I’ve pissed off somebody powerful, and nobody will hire me.
If I stay here, I’ll be drafted.
I’ve cheated 40 people on phony dope deals, and if I don’t blow this pop stand, I’ll be dead
next week.
I owe Big Messer five large, and he’s gonna break my legs if I don’t pay up by Monday.
Well of course there was also slavery and indentured servitude. IIRC Georgia was founded as a penal colony.
Aside from that, economic opportunity played a part for a lot of people. It’s interesting to note the number of people that worked in the US for some time, saved up some money, and moved back home. My great grandparents & grandmother made a go of it here for a while, returned to Poland, and came back to the US permanently just ahead of WWII presumably for that reason in conjunction with the collapse of the local economy.
I imagine many families planned to do this & either ended up liking it here and/or got “stuck.”
As far as I can see very few people come here for the straightforward reason that their government is oppressive; people come when their government is oppressive and their ethnic or socioeconomic group is on the receiving end of that. Not too many immigrants are standing on principle; on the whole most peiople would rather remain home if viable. Miami Cubans for example (not to pick just on them but someone already cited the group as an example) didn’t seem to have any problem with oppressive government when they owned the sugar plantations. Multiply by 100 countries or so and you’ve got a lot of immigrants right there.
Very few immigrants as a % to the US have been outright refugees. Ecomonic opportunities (comparative mind you; we’ve got doctors and lawyers driving taxis and frying chicken here…) continue to drive most immigration.
Yeah, that’s what I kind of figured, even in the 19th century. While I’m sure freedom and liberty are nice, I’ll bet most immigrants had that back in Europe, etc. They just wanted better jobs.
One of my Aunts showed me some genealogical charts that she had constructed, showing some of our German ancestors. Every family on the chart had a large number of children. According to her, the eldest son got the land, the daughters got married, and the younger sons were on their own. Many of them emigrated to the United States.
The Irish potato famine spurred massive immigration to NYC. In 1847 a relief program was enacted in Ireland that made landlords pay a much larger chunk of the famine relief costs. It became more economical to simply pay for a one way ticket for anyone who wanted to go. Many availed themselves of the offer eventually winding up in Five Points in New York.
