My Future Is in America
My Future Is in America

Author: Jocelyn Cohen

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-04-05

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0814716954

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In 1942, YIVO held a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme “Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America.” Chosen from over two hundred entries, and translated from Yiddish, the nine life stories in My Future Is in America provide a compelling portrait of American Jewish life in the immigrant generation at the turn of the twentieth century. The writers arrived in America in every decade from the 1890s to the 1920s. They include manual workers, shopkeepers, housewives, communal activists, and professionals who came from all parts of Eastern Europe and ushered in a new era in American Jewish history. In their own words, the immigrant writers convey the complexities of the transition between the Old and New Worlds. An Introduction places the writings in historical and literary context, and annotations explain historical and cultural allusions made by the writers. This unique volume introduces readers to the complex world of Yiddish-speaking immigrants while at the same time elucidating important themes and topics of interest to those in immigration studies, ethnic studies, labor history, and literary studies. Published in conjunction with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World
The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World

Author: Tara Zahra

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-03-21

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0393285596

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"Zahra handles this immensely complicated and multidimensional history with remarkable clarity and feeling." —Robert Levgold, Foreign Affairs Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations of human history, emptying out villages and irrevocably changing both their new homes and the ones they left behind. With a keen historical perspective on the most consequential social phenomenon of the twentieth century, Tara Zahra shows how the policies that gave shape to this migration provided the precedent for future events such as the Holocaust, the closing of the Iron Curtain, and the tragedies of ethnic cleansing. In the epilogue, she places the current refugee crisis within the longer history of migration.

New Eastern European Immigrants in the United States
New Eastern European Immigrants in the United States

Author: Nina Michalikova

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1137570377

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This book deftly extends previous research on post-1965 immigration to the United States in order to examine the cultural, socioeconomic, structural, and political adaptation of Eastern European immigrants after 1991. Also, the book engages in a systematic examination of adaptation experiences through the lenses of existing theories of adaptation, and fills a gap in the literature on this understudied immigrant population. Using the latest quantitative data, Nina Michalikova contributes to the field of immigration studies by revealing the diverse adaptation experiences of contemporary American immigrants through cross-country and cross-group comparisons.

Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century
Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century

Author: Włodzimierz Borodziej

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-19

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 100003741X

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Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century challenges widespread conceptions of Central and Eastern European countries as merely countries of origin. It sheds light on their experience of immigration and the establishment of refugee regimes at different stages in the history of the region. The book brings together a variety of case studies on Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and the experiences of return migrants from the United States, displaced Hungarian Jews, desperate German social democrats, resettled Magyars, resourceful tourists, labour migrants, and Zionists. In doing so, it highlights and explores the variety of experience across different forms of immigration and discusses its broader social and political framework. Presenting the challenges within the history of immigration in Eastern Europe and considering both immigration to the region and emigration from it, Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century provides a new perspective on, and contribution to, this ongoing subject of debate.

A Nation of Immigrants
A Nation of Immigrants

Author: Susan F. Martin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 110890145X

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Immigration makes America what it is and is formative for what it will become. America was settled by three different models of immigration, all of which persist to the present. The Virginia Colony largely equated immigration with the arrival of laborers, who had few rights. Massachusetts welcomed those who shared the religious views of the founders but excluded those whose beliefs challenged prevailing orthodoxy. Pennsylvania valued pluralism, becoming the most diverse colony in religion, language, and culture. A fourth, anti-immigration model also emerged during the colonial period, and was often fueled by populist leaders who stoked fears about newcomers. Arguing that the Pennsylvania model has best served the country, this book makes key recommendations for future immigration reform. Given the highly controversial nature of immigration in the United States, this second edition – updated to analyze policy changes in the Obama and Trump administrations – provides valuable insights for academics and policymakers.

Coming to America (Second Edition)
Coming to America (Second Edition)

Author: Roger Daniels

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2002-10-22

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 006050577X

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With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing study of immigration to the United States from the colonial era to the present.

The Wall Around the West
The Wall Around the West

Author: Peter Andreas

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780742501782

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As economic and military walls have come down in the post-Cold War era, states have rapidly built new barriers to prevent a perceived invasion of undesirables. This work examines the practice, politics, and consequences of building these walls.

After They Closed the Gates
After They Closed the Gates

Author: Libby Garland

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-03-28

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 022612259X

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In 1921 and 1924, the United States passed laws to sharply reduce the influx of immigrants into the country. By allocating only small quotas to the nations of southern and eastern Europe, and banning almost all immigration from Asia, the new laws were supposed to stem the tide of foreigners considered especially inferior and dangerous. However, immigrants continued to come, sailing into the port of New York with fake passports, or from Cuba to Florida, hidden in the holds of boats loaded with contraband liquor. Jews, one of the main targets of the quota laws, figured prominently in the new international underworld of illegal immigration. However, they ultimately managed to escape permanent association with the identity of the “illegal alien” in a way that other groups, such as Mexicans, thus far, have not. In After They Closed the Gates, Libby Garland tells the untold stories of the Jewish migrants and smugglers involved in that underworld, showing how such stories contributed to growing national anxieties about illegal immigration. Garland also helps us understand how Jews were linked to, and then unlinked from, the specter of illegal immigration. By tracing this complex history, Garland offers compelling insights into the contingent nature of citizenship, belonging, and Americanness.

Unwanted
Unwanted

Author: Maddalena Marinari

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1469652943

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In the late nineteenth century, Italians and Eastern European Jews joined millions of migrants around the globe who left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in rapidly industrializing nations, including the United States. Many Americans of northern and western European ancestry regarded these newcomers as biologically and culturally inferior--unassimilable--and by 1924, the United States had instituted national origins quotas to curtail immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Weaving together political, social, and transnational history, Maddalena Marinari examines how, from 1882 to 1965, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly influenced the country's immigration policy as they mobilized against the immigration laws that marked them as undesirable. Strategic alliances among restrictionist legislators in Congress, a climate of anti-immigrant hysteria, and a fickle executive branch often left these immigrants with few options except to negotiate and accept political compromises. As they tested the limits of citizenship and citizen activism, however, the actors at the heart of Marinari's story shaped the terms of debate around immigration in the United States in ways we still reckon with today.