A Country of Immigrants

As you walk along the street in any American city, you see many different faces. You see oriental faces, black faces, and white faces. These are the faces of the United States, a country of immigrants from all over the world. Immigrants are people who leave one country to live permanently in another country.

The first immigrants came to North America in the 1600s from northern European countries such as England and Holland. These people generally had light skin and light hair. They came to live in North America because they wanted religious freedom. In the 1700s and early 1800s immigrants continued to move from Europe to the United States. At this time there was one group of unwilling immigrants, black Africans. These people were tricked or forced to come to the United States, where they worked on the large farms in the south. The blacks had no freedom; they were slaves. In the 1800s many Chinese and Irish immigrants came to the United States. They came because of economic or political problems in their countries. The most recent immigrants to the United States, the Indochinese, Cubans, and Central Americans also came because of economic or political problems in their own countries. Except for the blacks, most of these immigrants thought of the United States as a land of opportunity, of a chance for freedom and new lives.

In the United States, these immigrants looked for help from other immigrants who shared the same background, language, and religion. Therefore, there are neighborhoods in each U.S. city made up almost entirely of one ethnic or racial group. There are all Italian, all Puerto Rican, or all Irish neighborhoods in many East Coast cities and all Mexican neighborhoods in the Southwest.

In Dearborn, Michigan, there is a large group of Lebanese. There are racial neighborhoods such as oriental Chinatown in San Francisco and black Harlem in New York. There are also neighborhoods with a strong religious feeling such as a Jewish part of Brooklyn in New York. And, of course, there are economic neighborhood divisions; in American cities very often poor people do not live in the same neighborhoods as rich people.

This wide variety of neighborhoods in the cities is a reflection of the different groups in American society. American society is a mixture of racial, language, cultural, religious, and economic groups. People sometimes call America a melting pot and compare its society to a soup with many different ingredients. The ingredients (different races, cultures, religions, and economic groups) supposedly mix together to make a smooth soup. But, in reality, there are a few lumps left in the soup.