What was the most common reason immigrants came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century

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Causes of European emigration to the United States. A humanistic approach

S Oishi. J UOEH. 1983.

Abstract

During the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century around thirty million people emigrated from Europe to the United States. Causes of these vast movements of people are explained in this paper. The three main causes were a rapid increase in population, class rule and economic modernization. Personal reasons are mentioned and discrimination against religious and ethnic minority groups are touched upon. Two inventions, the steamship and the railroad are referred to insofar as they helped the emigrants and were a cause of hardship for the poor people of Europe. Although causes of emigration fall under the heading of historical facts, they are considered in this paper as causes of suffering for the destitute of Europe who made up the largest number of emigrants to the United States.

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MeSH terms

Between 1900 and 1930, political turmoil in Mexico combined with the rise of agribusiness in the American Southwest to prompt a large-scale migration of Mexicans to the U.S. There were reasons on both sides of the border. Transformations in the Mexican economy under President Porfirio Díaz left many peasants landless and desperate; when he was overthrown in 1911, ten percent of Mexico’s population departed for the U.S. There they found work in mining and agribusiness, which were transforming the economy of the Southwest from a region of small, entrepreneurial landholders into one dominated by large enterprises employing wage labor.

The documents in this collection explore the social, political, and economic dimensions of the first mass migration of Mexicans to the United States. Migrants found themselves in a strange position—desired as workers by large business concerns but facing intense legal, political, and social discrimination. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the phenomenon of Mexican migration, including the accounts of scholars, journalists, employers, and migrants themselves.

This collection is designed to demonstrate the following historical understandings:

• To escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), tens of thousands of Mexicans immigrated to the southwest United States, where U.S. corporate investment in agriculture created many new labor opportunities.
• Diverse and often contradictory stereotypes of Mexican immigrants reveal both the complexity and diversity of this period of immigration, as well as American over-simplification of it.
• Mexican immigrants advanced their station by participating, both independently and in collaboration with other marginalized workers, in strikes for higher wages and better working conditions.

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