Jul 04 2011 04:20 pm
Posted by Omar Abdel Salam under ADMIN ONLY - featured,July 5 Assignment
New York vs. El Paso
Image depicts the idea of the quota laws set forth during the 1920's in the United States. Original Source: American Isolationism Cartoon, 1921 (Library of Congress)
During the 1920s many American cities saw quota laws that limited or completely stopped a group of people from entering into the United States. One of the cities that was affected by these quota laws was NYC which saw a great decline of immigration during the 1920s. The congressional acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929 limited greatly the amount of immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe places where the majority of immigration came from to NY (Chudacoff & Smith 206). On the other hand these laws did not limit the immigration coming from the Western Hemisphere therefore, during the 1920’s the majority of the immigrants entering the country where Mexicans. While some of them moved up to some of the northern cities like Chicago and Detroit many of them resided in southwestern cities. For example during this decade Mexicans where a little more than 50% of the population in El Paso, a little less than 50% of the population in in San Antonio and 20% of the population in Los Angeles (Chudacoff & Smith 206). This influx of Chicanos provided a large body of labor as they worked in steel mills, tanneries, meat-packing industries, automobile factories, etc. However these Chicanos were also faced issues in the United States such as segregation a negative aspect of their time here.
Image of a Mexican immigrant couple during the 1920's. Original Source: UC Berkeley Bancroft Library
One Response to “New York vs. El Paso”
Daniel Edward on 06 Jul 2011 at 3:21 pm #
The quotas did indeed limit the amount of immigrants coming from Europe to the United States in the 1920’s. The amount of Mexican immigrants is not directly related to the decrease in the European immigrants. The same amount of Mexicans would have immigrated to America even if the quotas weren’t put in place. The Mexicans faced the same treatment all immigrants recieved when they came to the US. They worked for less money and people hated them. The only difference is more or less, they were the only people coming to the US, so they recieved more discrimination.