M.S.

67

Shirley Lin

827

12/15/10
DBQ Essay

A huge wave of immigrants relocated to the United States from the early 1800s to
the early 1900s. There were immigrants from different ethnicities all moving to the U.S.
There were many different reasons that immigrants relocated to United States. Some
reasons people immigrated to the U.S. were political, religious, or economical reasons.
Other people immigrated because of poor conditions in their home countries. When
immigrants arrived, many of them faced different hardships. One hardship is the bad
working conditions and low pay. Another hardship was that immigrants had really
terrible living conditions, and discrimination once they arrived in the United States.
Economical problems in their homeland was one of the reasons immigrants came
to America. A worker in Greece made about five dollars a day, when a workers pay in
the United States was about thirty dollars a day. This shows the huge difference in pay
from a worker in Greece and a worker in the United States. (Document 3)
Another reasons that people immigrated to America was the poor conditions in
their home countries. We had to pay every cent we possibly could produce to taxes.
Every war England had she had you pay her part... we had to work, and give the cream of
the milk to England... if the year was bad, and the stuff didnt grow, we suffered on that.
This statement from document 2 shows the terrible conditions of an immigrants
homeland.

Immigrants had many hardships once they reached America. One of them was the
low pay, and bad working conditions. Immigrants had long work days, and fought for an
8 hour work day. (shown in document 6). Immigrants also had very low pay. Some of
them only earned $5 or $6 in a week, as stated in Document 7.
Another hardships Immigrants had was bad living conditions. Many immigrants
were homeless or living in a cramped tenement with other people. As shown in document
5, there are 7 people living in one tiny room. There was also a lot of discrimination
against immigrants. Shown in document 4, many nativists wanted to Restrict Immigration
because they were afraid of competition in business.
In conclusion, immigrants had many reasons for immigrating to United States.
Some of them are economical reasons, and poor conditions in their homelands. Once
they got to America, they faced many hardships such as bad working and living
conditions, and discrimination. But they managed.