Italian Immigration

1 Pages 268 Words

Italians have migrated to the United States more than any other European group. Poverty and overpopulation started Italian emigration. Italy’s populations rose in the late 1800’s. Population numbers became severe, especially in some poor southern provinces of Italy. The Italian government was basically run by mostly northerners. The southerners were hurt by high taxes on northern industrial goods. Southerners also suffered from not having large amounts of good farming land, and a lack of coal and iron ore needed by industry. This all brought about poverty in southern Italy.
This poverty in Italy started migrations to other countries. More Italians migrated to South American than to North America. The first Italian immigrants to the United States were the northern Italians. Later, larger amounts of migrants came from the south. The Italians that came to the United States settled to areas that were completely Italian. The Italian Immigration article mentions, “Newly arriving immigrants were also known to seek out those who had emigrated earlier from their same town in Italy” (“Italian”) this kind of states the fact that these communities set up by the Italian’s were based on place of birth and kinship.
Most Italians were not planning on staying in the United States. They planned to stay for approximately a year or two. After that they were going to return to Italy, but instead women and children started coming to the United States with the hopes of starting a new life. Most of the Italians went right for cities, like New York and Chicago, to become unskilled laborers. This made competition between Italians and Irish for the jobs....