►My channel: http://youtube.com/TheBestFilmArchives ►SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/TheBestFilmArchives?sub_confirmation=1 ►Google+: http://plus.google.com/+TheBestFilmArchives ►Facebook: http://facebook.com/TheBestFilmArchives ►Twitter: http://twitter.com/BestFilmArch This documentary covers the single largest migration of immigrants to the United States of America through Ellis Island between 1890 and 1920. It is the story of Ellis Island and the American immigration experience. This film is a tribute to the 18 million men, women and children who made the torturous journey from the Old to the New World between 1890 and 1920, in the single largest migration in human history. The film radically tells the immigrants' stories as they braved the unknown, from the time they left their homelands, their journey across the ocean, to the moment the doors of Ellis Island opened, revealing the great promise of America. About the immigration to the USA (until 1930) The history of immigration to the United States is a continuing story of peoples from more populated continents, particularly Europe and also Africa and Asia, crossing oceans to the new land. Historians do not treat the first indigenous settlers as immigrants. Starting around 1600 British and other Europeans settled primarily on the east coast. Later Africans were brought as slaves. During the nation's history, the growing country experienced successive waves of immigration which rose and fell over time, particularly from Europe, with the cost of transoceanic transportation sometimes paid by travelers becoming indentured servants after their arrival in the New World. At other times, immigration rules became more restrictive. With the ending of numerical restrictions in 1965 and the advent of cheap air travel immigration has increased from Asia and Latin America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States. During the 17th century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-19th century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20th-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia. Historians estimate that fewer than one million immigrants - perhaps as few as 400,000 - crossed the Atlantic during the 17th and 18th centuries. The 1790 Act limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians in the 1950s. In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States. The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died. In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875. The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States. In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians, and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States About the Americanization Americanization is the process of an immigrant to the United States of America becoming a person who shares American values, beliefs and customs and is assimilated into American society. This process typically involves learning English and adjusting to American culture, and customs, while keeping the old foods and religion. The Americanization movement was a nationwide organized effort in the 1910s to bring millions of recent immigrants into the American cultural system. 30+ states passed laws requiring Americanization programs. The movement climaxed during World War I, as eligible young immigrant men were drafted into the Army, and the nation made every effort to integrate the European ethnic groups into the national identity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americanization_(immigration) Island of Hope, Island of Tears (1989)

• published: 20 Jun 2013
• views: 179324