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U.S. History 1877-Present 4: Closing the Open Immigration Policy 249 Views
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Description:
Today we'll learn about how the U.S. learned a valuable lesson in inviting literally everyone to a party. It never seems to work out well.
Transcript
- 00:04
Most Americans have probably heard at least a bit of the new
- 00:07
Colossus by Emma Lazarus it's that poem at the base of the Statue [Statue of liberty appears]
- 00:12
of Liberty that says give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning
- 00:18
to breathe free yeah the poem made a statement to all people
- 00:22
from other countries if you have a terrible life come to America it won't [Man looking at selection of food]
Full Transcript
- 00:25
be terrible at all here unfortunately when the huddled masses of immigrants
- 00:30
arrived Lady Liberty wasn't as welcoming as she
- 00:32
so it kind of sort of semi promised it would be like if our friend begged us to
- 00:37
come over and hang out then yell at us for taking her job making true American [Woman begging friends and turns angry]
- 00:41
workers poor and corrupting American culture in general this anti-immigrant
- 00:46
attitude is called nativism before 1882 immigration was free open and the
- 00:51
citizens were easily naturalized but in 1882 ironically the same year that Emma
- 00:57
Lazarus wrote the new Colossus everything changed
- 01:00
white laborers in California were building the railroad but Chinese
- 01:04
immigrants began doing it for less pay voters complained so Congress wrote the [Congress Chinese Exclusion Act appears]
- 01:09
Chinese Exclusion Act excluding all Chinese nationals from Immigration and
- 01:15
Citizenship this was a big deal because it was the first time ever that America
- 01:19
denied an entire race of immigrants the Chinese Exclusion Act established a
- 01:24
general printable undesireable classes of immigrants could and should be
- 01:28
prevented from entering the United States or gaining American citizenship [Man with white beard denied entry by officer]
- 01:32
this principle quickly spread far beyond California's Chinese community the Act
- 01:36
barred entry to any convict lunatic idiot or any person unable to take care
- 01:42
of himself or herself without becoming a public charge now basically like Eleanor
- 01:47
runs for Congress unmarried women were also seen as a problem because people [Woman appears]
- 01:52
thought they were sure to become prostitutes dude usually will make this up people
- 01:56
many non-white people were also rejected this includes anybody from Asia and also
- 02:01
Southern and Eastern European areas who may have been shocked to learn they [Chef holding a pizza]
- 02:06
weren't like the nativists didn't stop with the Chinese Exclusion Act and the
- 02:10
Immigration Act of 1882 anti-immigrant fervor
- 02:13
heated up again after the Russian Revolution when Americans started
- 02:17
worrying that Russian immigrants would bring a bunch of communist ideas along
- 02:21
with them this led to the emergency quota act of 1921 and the even stricter [Fire burning]
- 02:27
National Origins Act of 1924 both of these put a cap on the number of
- 02:32
immigrants from any one country but there was a feather in this cap for [A cap with a purple feather]
- 02:36
nativist Italy the quota for each country was set at two percent of the
- 02:39
number of people of that nationality living in the u.s. at the time of the
- 02:43
1890 census what made the 1890 census so great for nativist because it came [Sailer stood above a ship filled with people]
- 02:48
before all these people from places that Americans thought were scary had entered
- 02:52
the country meaning there weren't many of them here in the first place take 2%
- 02:55
out nativists were trying their best to rewind the immigrant population back to
- 02:59
the good old days of what was called old immigration well between 1882 and
- 03:04
1924 the government's built giant immigration station most famously on New
- 03:08
York Ellis Island to inspect all newcomers before granting them [Immigration stations on Ellis Island]
- 03:12
admittance to the country so in the shadow of Lady Liberty hundreds of
- 03:16
thousands were sent back from where they had come their one-way cruise to America [Ship sails across statue of liberty]
- 03:21
had suddenly turned into a round trip an extra time and see on this side cruise
- 03:25
was well definitely not a good thing it wasn't even a floor show well maybe that [Women dancing for men on ship]
- 03:29
was a plus
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