New York Connected New York in the 1920s had nearly 6 million residents and was a center of manufacturing, commerce, and culture. Immigrants entering through the port and migrants coming by road and rail fed the city’s thriving economy. In 1923 New York produced 1/12th of all manufacturing in the nation.

They first came from Ireland and Germany and later from Italy, Eastern Europe, and China, among other places. Because most immigrants were poor when they arrived, they often lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where rents for the crowded apartment buildings, called tenements, were low.

A large number of immigrants coming to the United States landed in New York. There were three different ports in New York City from 1855 to 1954, where passengers landed: Castle Garden, the Barge Office, and Ellis Island.

The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. It also increased the tax paid by new immigrants upon arrival and allowed immigration officials to exercise more discretion in making decisions over whom to exclude.

The Immigration Act of 1990 increased the annual limits on the total level of immigration to the United States. 140,000 visas for employment-related immigration. 55,000 visas for immediate relatives of immigrants granted amnesty. 40,000 visas for immigrants from “adversely affected” countries.

The body of law governing current immigration policy is called The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA allows the United States to grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas each year across various visa categories. Each year the United States also admits a variety of noncitizens on a temporary basis.

President Chester A. Arthur

Thus, the act was among the first pieces of commonwealth legislation enacted. In 1901 the Immigration Restriction Act effectively ended all non-European immigration by providing for entrance examinations in European languages.

About the White Australia policy The Immigration Restriction Act was one of the first Commonwealth laws passed after Federation. It was based on the existing laws of the colonies. The aim of the law was to limit non-white (particularly Asian) immigration to Australia, to help keep Australia ‘British’.

1897

The Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which was designed to facilitate the mass deportation of nearly all the Pacific Islanders (called “Kanakas”) working in Australia, especially in the Queensland sugar industry.

Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant to their native land. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders.

In an Australian context, South Sea Islanders refers to Australian descendants of Pacific Islanders from more than 80 islands in the South Seas – including the Melanesian archipelagoes of the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Vanuatu – who were kidnapped or recruited between the mid to late 19th century as labourers …

[4] However, as cotton proved unviable, the sugar industry began developing around this time and most South Sea Islanders brought to Australia worked as manual labourers in the sugar cane fields….

Pacific Islanders, Pacificer, Pasifika, or Pasefika, are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. It is a geographic and ethnic/racial term to describe the inhabitants and diaspora of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania (Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia).

The indigenous peoples of Oceania are Polynesians, Melanesians (including Torres Strait Islanders), Micronesians, Papuans, and Aboriginal Australians. The term “Pacific Islanders” excludes Australian Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and may be understood to include non-indigenous populations of the Pacific Islands.

Irrespective of their differences, the fact remains that Islanders, are indigenous inhabitants of parts of Australia, who, like Aborigines, have been greatly affected by European settlement.