Chapter 11: Migration in Prosperity, Depression, and War

Individual immigrate all over the world in hope of success, eagerly searching for a better future for themselves and their families.  Even when restrictive immigration legislation and phasing in of the national origins system in the 1920s immigration didn’t cease. I don’t understand how many scholars that study American immigration can ignore the nearly five million immigrants of the years 1920-1945. Every part of immigration including facts and personal stories are an equally important part of history. It’s interesting that the average immigration for the quarter century was nearly two hundred thousand a year. I can’t believe how nearly half of all the immigrants entered in the four years before the 1924 act took affect, and more than a third came in the following six years, while the last fifteen years of depression and war saw just over a seventh. Net migration, immigration minus return migration, shows an outstanding unbalance. Its unbelievable how during the quarter century there was almost one remigrant for every three immigrant’s. It’s shocking that in the impact of the worst years of the Great Depression more people remigrated than immigrated from 1932-1935. In the 1930’s the number of people leaving the United States exceeded the number entering. The great drop in the number of immigrants from 241,700 in 1930 and 97,139 in 1931 is one of the significant demarcation points in the history of American immigration. It’s interesting how one of the major changes in immigration occurred during the war years. A labor shortage, after the gut and long term mass unemployment of the 1930s, caused the United States deliberately to stimulate the migration of Mexican laborers to work in the agriculture of the American Southwest and West and on America’s railroad. I find it interesting how Daniels refers to the Spanish Mexicans as the pioneers of the American Southwest and the majority if the West Coast. Regardless of the country’s hardships financially, war, and Great Depression; nothing seemed to make immigrants settle. These individuals knew their purpose for immigrating and some of them completed their task and immigrated back to their original country.