Title: Immigration | Boundless US History
Headings: Immigration
Immigration
Immigration to the United States
Key Points
Key Terms
Immigration in the Nineteenth Century
Immigration from Europe
The California Gold Rush
Immigration and Worker Exploitation
Irish Immigration
Key Points
Key Terms
Early Irish Immigrants
The Potato Famine
Discrimination and Assimilation
Effects on American Culture
German Immigration
Key Points
Key Terms
Immigration from Germany
Location of German Communities
German population in America, 1872
Politics and Role in Society
Nativism
Key Points
Key Terms
Anti-Immigration Sentiments
The Know-Nothings
The American Party
Immigrant Labor
Key Points
Key Terms
Immigrant Labor
The California Gold Rush
Exploitation and Discrimination

Content: Those Chinese who remained in the face of the growing hostility were often beaten and killed, and some Westerners made a sport of cutting off Chinese men’s queues, the long braids of hair worn down their backs. In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese. Chinese gold miners in California: One impetus for immigration was the gold rush of 1849, which brought to California thousands of immigrants from Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe. Immigration and Worker Exploitation
As German and Irish immigrants poured into the United States in the decades preceding the Civil War, native-born laborers found themselves competing for jobs with new arrivals who were more likely to work longer hours for less pay. As a result, many wage workers in the North were largely hostile to immigration. In Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, the daughters of New England farmers encountered competition from the daughters of Irish farmers suffering the effects of the potato famine; these immigrant women were more likely to be exploited by employers, working for far less money and enduring worse conditions than native-born women. Male German and Irish immigrants also competed with native-born men. Germans, many of whom were skilled workers, took jobs in furniture making.