American History

Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor, was built to bring order to the entry of immigrants into the United States. At the time of the islands conception and eventual construction, the country had needed people to help satisfy the needs of the nation. Painting a picture of the island in its heyday, it was said that during the years of Ellis Island immigration from 1892-1924, there were more than twenty million individual stories that would eventually be shared with family and friends. Whether passengers or crew, first class or steerage, the voyage was an unforgettable experience. (Ellis island - History). The Island served a role resembling that of a combination of a modern-day airport, immigration office, and embassy for the immigrants. It is to this effect, for example, that upon their arrival, all immigrants registered their immigration papers and documents at Ellis Island. These immigrants came from different parts of the world, though immigrants of the aforementioned era largely originated from Europe and each people had their own stories and reasons for permanently leaving their homeland and choosing the United States as their new home.The Irish Most of the Irish immigrants of the time were from Ulster, Ireland Irish Presbyterian descendants of Scottish immigrants who had migrated to Northern Ireland. After 1820, the sufferings of the Irish Catholics under the oppressive British rule of their native land caused many of them emigrate from their homes to the United States. Between 1847 and 1854, in fact, about 1.2 million Irish men and women immigrated to the United States, and about a quarter of a million of these were Irish Catholics. That is a rather significant rate of immigration, considering that that span of time was less than a decade. To put this into perspective, between 1871 and 1910, about 1.9 million Irish people immigrated to the U.S. (Parrillo, 2000). These people settled in New England at first.  

According to Parrillo (2000), the Irish were the first ethnic group to come to the United States in large numbers as a minority whose culture differed from the dominant culture of the country. They were a generally poverty-stricken people a majority of them were poor and lived under low-class standards. Native U.S. citizens blamed their widespread poverty for many of the countrys ills at the time. These irish immigrants could only find low-paying menial jobs, because their limited qualifications only allowed them to be classified as unskilled laborers. In addition, many unmarried Irish women migrated to look for jobs in domestic service as maids, or work in clothing factories. What is interesting to note though, is that Irish labor in the 19th century was one of the factors that played a key role in the industrial expansion of the United States the contributions included building the great canal systems and railroads (Parrillo, 2000).  The Italian  

During the course of history, more than 4.5 million Italian immigrants have made a home of the United States of America. Roughly 80 percent of these immigrants, however, arrived between 1880 and 1920. Also, many of the Italian men engaged in shuttle migration, meaning that they kept going back and forth between Italy and the United States (Parrillo, 2000). They did this because they were overcome by feelings of helpless poverty and the looming threat of economic disasters in their lives. Like the Irish, the Italians of this era were generally unskilled laborers and this caused them to earn poor wages.

The Jewish
Well-known history has seen the suffering of countless Jews as they lived in Europe. They were not only discriminated against, but a good number of them were killed simply due to their ethnoreligious backgrounds. As a result, many of these European Jews migrated to the United States to break away from the hateful suffering that they used to live in. Generally, their movements from many Europe countries to the United States can essentially be traced back to these causalities.  The Russian   The first Russian immigrants were Mennonites, who actually were of German origin and had maintained their German language and German customs within Russian border (Parrillo, 2000). During the 1870s, many Russians became the targets of forced military conscription, and it was shortly afterwards that they began to leave Russia and immigrate to North America. Parrillo (2000) stated that more than 3 million Russian immigrants arrived in the United States between 1881 and 1920. In addition, many of this number were Jews in fact, Jews composed about 43 percent of the total number of Russian immigrants. As such, the aforementioned reasons for Jewish emigration may also be applicable to this large percentage of Russian immigrants. In general though, the reasons why many Russians left their motherland for the U.S. was because they sought political and religion freedom meaning that they believed they had higher chances of living better lives in this new country.