THEME 2: THE PEOPLE.

“America is not merely a nation, it is a nation of nations.”

First thought: Why do people migrate or immigrate?
- Refugee/asylum (religious, political, disaster, etc.)
- Economic difficulty at home.
- Family
- Professional development ( Germany, Japan,... - usl countries with
ageing population)
⇒ Much immigrants occurs for economic reasons.
1. The first Americans:
- At least 14.000 years ago, the first American immigrants were Asian
hunters getting to America across a land bridge where Bering Strait
is today.
- About 1.5 million Native Americans lived in America before 1492.
- Native Americans got the name “Indians” because Christoper
Columbus named the discovered land the “West Indies”, which means
“India in the West”.
- We call these people the “indigenous people of the Americas”, or
native American Indians.
2. The first European explorers and early settlers:

3. European immigrants:
a) 1st wave ( 16th - 18th centuries): mostly settlers from the British Isles
attracted by economic opportunity and religious freedom.
- A mix of wealthy individuals and servants.
- Mostly Puritans ( English Protestants).
b) 2nd wave ( 1840s - 1850s): Irish, German, and Scandinavian
immigrants.
- Fled famine, religious persecution, and political conflicts.
- Mostly Catholics.
c) Timeline:
- 1790: Naturalisation Act allowing any free white person of “good
character” living in the U.S. for two years or longer to apply for
citizenship.
- 1815: Immigrant influx from Western Europe.
- 1819: Many newcomers arrive sick or dying from their long
journey across the Atlantic. The immigrants overwhelmed major
port cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Charleston. In response, the U.S. passed the Steerage Act of
1819 requiring better conditions on ships carrying immigrants.
- 1849: America’s first anti-immigrant political party -
Know-nothing Party - formed as a backlash to the increasing
number of German and Irish immigrants.
- 1875: Following the Civil War ( 1861 - 1865), some states passed
their own immigration laws. In 1875, the Supreme Court declared
that it was the responsibility of the federal government to make
and enforce immigration laws.
4. The enslaved Africans - unwilling immigrants:
- Slavery in America assumedly started in 1619, when 20 African slaves
seized from a Portuguese slave ship were brought ashore in the
British colony of Jamestown, Virginia.
- Throughout the 17th century, the forced migration, called the Middle
Passage, brought enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful
labour source for European settlers.
 - The years 1830 to 1860 were the worst in the history of
African-American enslavement.
→ American Civil War ( 1861 - 1865): brought freedom to black slaves.
- The Underground Railroad ( late 18th century to the Civil War)

+ A vast network of individual people - many whites but predominantly

black - who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada.
+ Effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year.
+ The South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.
The Underground Railroad (nationalgeographic.org)
+ grassroots: ordinary people in society or in an organisation, rather than
the leaders or people who make decisions.
+ a vast network of individual people - many whites but predominantly
black - who help …

- National Underground Railroad Freedom Centre ( Cincinnati, Ohio)

- Cotton: Tears of Native Indians and African Slaves

+ Cotton was highly profitable but extremely labour-intensive
⇒ Native Indians driven out of their land and African slaves brought
in.
+ The Trail of Tears ( 1838) removed the native Indians from the South,
resettling them to “Indian Territory” to give the richest cotton soil to
the white. This removal, following the Louisiana Purchase, created
vast lands for cotton.
+ The number of slaves needed in the new cotton states of Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana demanded slave labour traded at more
than tripled price ( rising from $500 in New Orleans in 1800 to $1,800
 by 1860, the equivalent of $30,000 data in 2005)
+ The dominant motto of the era: “Cotton is King!”
→ One of the greatest periods in economic expansion and
profitability in American history.
→ Also took a costly Civil War and the loss of more than 600,000 lives
to end it.
5. Willing immigrants around the world:

- Up to the present time, more and more immigrants from any part of
the world have been immigrating into America.

6. Pattern of U.S. immigrants: past and future.

7. DACA ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) & Dreamers:
- June 15, 2012: Homeland Security announced that certain people who
illegally came to the U.S. as children and meet several guidelines may
request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years,
subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorisation.
DACA does not provide lawful status. About 800,000 applicants made
their dreams in the U.S.
- September, 2017: Trump moved to terminate this Obama-era policy.
- January 20, 2021: President Biden issued a memorandum directing
the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the
Attorney General, to take appropriate action to preserve and fortify
DACA, consistent with applicable law.
- Go West ( idiom): to become useless, to be destroyed.
- Go West: From a call for colonisation to a pop song.
- In the song Village People ( 1979): Go West means going to San
Francisco, where life was more welcoming to the Gay community.
- In the song “Go West” (1993): Go West means going to the U.S., where
the political atmosphere is more open.
8. Central American migrant caravans:
- Migrants travelling from central America to the Mexico-United States
border to seek asylum.
- The largest and best known of these is organised by Pueblo Sin
Fronteras ( Village Without Borders) that set off during Holy Week in
early 2017 and 2018 from the Northern Triangle of Central America
(NTCA).
- In early 2021, first migrant caravans departed for the U.S. from
Honduras.
- International Committee for the Red Cross: “The combination of
COVID-19, social exclusion, violence and climate-related disasters
that occur at the same time with a magnitude seldom seen before in
Central America raises new humanitarian challenges.”
9. U.S. Racial Profile - Past and Future:
From your perspective, is the U.S. “a promised land”?