The German, Irish and Italian immigrants who arrived in America during the 1800s often faced prejudice and mistrust. Many had to overcome language barriers. Others discovered that the challenges they had fled from, such as poverty or religious persecution, were to be encountered in America as well.

What difficulties did new immigrants face in America? Immigrants had few jobs, terrible living conditions, poor working conditions, forced assimilation, nativism (discrimination), anti-Aisan sentiment. Why did cities in the United States grow rapidly in the decades following the civil war?

The researchers believe the late 19th and early 20th century immigrants stimulated growth because they were complementary to the needs of local economies at that time. Low-skilled newcomers were supplied labor for industrialization, and higher-skilled arrivals helped spur innovations in agriculture and manufacturing.

Adjusting to a New Life Once they entered the United States, immigrants began the hard work of adjusting to life in a new country. They needed to find homes and jobs. They had to learn a new language and get used to new customs. This was all part of building a new life.

Most immigrants came to farm lands that were much less expensive than those in Europe, while a small but significant minority came as artisans skilled in such professions as carpentry, metal working, textile production, and iron-making.

Unlike earlier immigrants, who mainly came from northern and western Europe, the “new immigrants” came largely from southern and eastern Europe. Largely Catholic and Jewish in religion, the new immigrants came from the Balkans, Italy, Poland, and Russia.

Often stereotyped and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse because they were “different.” While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled.

The 1880s saw the beginning of new immigration, where droves of Europeans came to the U.S., arriving at Ellis Island in the New York Harbor. Their first sight was the newly built Statue of Liberty. This new wave of immigrants came to look for jobs or to escape religious persecution or war, among many other reasons.

And in fact, New York was literally built by immigrants—some of the city’s most iconic residential and commercial buildings were designed by immigrant architects, who drew influence from their home countries to turn NYC into an architectural as well as cultural melting pot.

Ellis Island is a federally-owned island in New York Harbor that was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States. From 1892 to 1924, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there under federal law.

Encountering hostility from native-born Americans upon arriving in the country, most immigrants had nowhere to turn. They moved into poverty stricken neighborhoods and into neglected buildings known as tenements, which are “multifamily dwellings with several apartment-like living quarters”.

The number of immigrants in New York City has risen sharply over the past four decades, and has been a driving force behind the growth in the City’s economy. Immigrants also contribute to the City’s unique cultural and ethnic diversity, helping to make New York a truly international city.

Immigrant workers in the nineteenth century often lived in cramped tenement housing that regularly lacked basic amenities such as running water, ventilation, and toilets. These conditions were ideal for the spread of bacteria and infectious diseases.

The Irish immigrants who entered the United States from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries were changed by America, and also changed this nation. They and their descendants made incalculable contributions in politics, industry, organized labor, religion, literature, music, and art.

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They left because disease had devastated Ireland’s potato crops, leaving millions without food. The Potato Famine killed more than 1 million people in five years and generated great bitterness and anger at the British for providing too little help to their Irish subjects.