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You emigrated from Southern or Eastern Europe for economic or safety reasons. If from the Mezzogiorno, southern Italy, you were impoverished and are coming to America to find work and support your family. You intend for it to be temporary but might stay permanently. Or as a Jew emigrating from Russia, you are trying to escape persecution. Your people are economically attacked and physically threatened. You want to escape and never return. Either way you want to find work in America to escape the political persecution and corruption as well as the economic inequality. What you find in America are unsanitary tenements, low paying/dangerous jobs, and a threat to your culture. You strive to maintain your culture and instill your beliefs in your children, without appearing �un-American.� The government is not assisting you so the way that you survive is through the efforts of philanthropists, ethnic/religious groups, and charities supported by progressives. Compulsory education is instituted and you are torn. Your children will have more opportunities to succeed, but the schools can be seen as a tool to assimilate your children (potentially encouraging them to abandon your culture). America offers you both opportunity and dangers. Important questions to consider as an immigrant: 1. Why did you come to America? 2. What do you want from a government? 3. What is an �American�? 4. What do you fear most? 5. How do you feel about becoming an �American�?

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1. Class Text 2. Alan Kraut, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880- 1921.

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