United States

All societies are somehow defined by the geographical space they occupy and how they open up theses spaces to the world. Through trade, conquest, emigration and communication, nations have always influenced others beyond their borders and have always been influenced, culturally, economically or politically. Exchanging is an act of giving and receiving something else in return. When the first settlers, the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America on the MayFlower, fleeing Europe since they were persecuted as Puritans, they established a new society and imported to the land their tradition, their culture, their science and above all their religion. For the first time, these Protestant fundamentalists opened up American borders fence to immigration, the process of entering another country in order to live there, and they were the creators of a new multicultural society.

Thus, how the United States become “The Nation of immigrants”?

Different steps are proving component of American history, including immigration, allowing the emergence of a modern society soaked in several cultures.

First of all, different waves of immigration were each subject to same motivations. As pronounced Kennedy in his speech in 1959 "The Nation of immigrants", "three large forces - religious persecution, political oppression and economic hardship - provide the chief motives for mass migration." Indeed, when in 1620, the first group of Puritans who disagreed with the established Church of England decided to sail to the United States and to establish a new settlement in Massachusetts; they were fleeing persecution owing to their beliefs, their convictions. Similarly, at the beginning of the 19th century, most of immigrants tried to flee British domination, potatoes famine in Ireland or revolutionary wars in Germany which put the country to fire and the sword. The extreme poverty in Scandinavia or from the 1840’s to today, the desire to find a better life are other significant examples, mentioned by the newspaper, “The Economist” on December 23th, 1999. Thus, three waves of immigration shook the United States and allowed to the country to become an important host country for immigrants, seeking refuge and security.

Over time, the United States succeeded in establishing a controlled and regulated immigration. Ellis Island’s reception center opened his doors on January, 1st 1892 and welcomed 12 million of immigrants until its closure in November 1954. It was once certified disease-free and not feeble-minded that immigrants were allowed across the harbour into New York. Nevertheless, 2 percent of them were made return to their country of origin because of health and this is the reason why the place was often called “The Island of Tears” or “Heartbreak Island”. At that time, the context was completely different than this one we know: the country needed workforce in the industrial sector and the fate of newcomers in the country was not most of the time it hoped. As Bruce Springsteen denounced in his song "American Land", while the country prospered, foreign working class remained in poverty. “They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin. They died to get here a hundred years ago they are still dyin now. The hands that built the country were always trying to keep down.”

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