page_title: History of immigration to the United States
section_title: New Immigration
hierarchical_section_title: History of immigration to the United States / 1850 to 1930 / New Immigration
caption_attribution_description: A cover from the "World on Sunday" the magazine section of the New York World; a 1906 poster re immigration, illustrated by an artist now unknown. Other information See Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano, eds. The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898 - 1911) (2005) p 85 for large copy.
context_page_description: The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States starting with the arrival of Filipinos in California in 1587 and first European settlements from around 1600. Beginning around this time, British and other Europeans settled primarily on the east coast. In 1619, Africans began being imported as slaves. The United States experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe. Immigrants sometimes paid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants after their arrival in the New World. Later, immigration rules became more restrictive; the ending of numerical restrictions occurred in 1965. Recently, cheap air travel has increased immigration from Asia and Latin America.
  Attitudes towards new immigrants have cycled between favorable and hostile since the 1790s.
context_section_description: "New immigration" was a term from the late 1880s that came from the influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (areas that previously sent few immigrants). Though the majority of immigrants came through Ellis Island in New York, thus making the Northeast a major target of settlement, there were various efforts, such as the Galveston Movement, to redirect immigrants to other ports and disperse some of the settlement to other areas of the country.
  Nativists feared the new arrivals lacked the political, social, and occupational skills needed to successfully assimilate into American culture. This raised the issue of whether the U.S. was still a "melting pot," or if it had just become a "dumping ground," and many old-stock Americans worried about negative effects on the economy, politics, and culture.  A major proposal was to impose a literacy test, whereby applicants had to be able to read and write in their own language before they were admitted.
caption: The Sunday magazine of the New York World appealed to Immigrants with this 1906 cover page celebrating their arrival at Ellis Island.
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