On June 6, 1993, two hundred and eighty-six Chinese immigrants from Fujian Province, China landed on the coast of New York City. These illegal immigrants had sailed across the Pacific Ocean on a freighter named The Golden Venture for three years. The survivors of the voyage, after years of suffering, were immediately arrested and detained. The documentary, The Golden Venture, accurately depicts the persecution and financial hardships illegal immigrants had to go through in their home country and in the United States. The documentary, in many ways, also depicts the sufferings of many illegal immigrants (those not on The Golden Venture) in the United States about twenty years after the landing of the Golden Venture on the coast of New York City.

Like many of today’s immigrants, the Chinese immigrants on the Golden Venture had to take dangerous and unpredictable routes to get to the United States. The Snakeheads, the smugglers that operated and organized the Golden Venture, led the Chinese immigrants through mountains, opium fields in the Golden Triangle, and several countries before arriving in the United States. The journey took three years and many people were beaten, raped, and died along the way. According to a man who was on the Golden Venture, “[the conditions] were a living hell.” The sufferings the Chinese immigrants had to endure shown on The Golden Venture are similar to the sufferings many of today’s immigrants to have go through.

The Golden Venture also showed the lives of four of the survivors, Guilin Chen, Yan Li, Arming He, and Kaiqu Zheng. All these men had decided to board the freighter to avoid persecution, to make better money, or to find freedom. Guilin Chen and Kaiqu Zheng, for example, boarded the freighter because they were not able to earn enough money in China, whereas Arming He and Yan Li boarded the freighter to avoid persecution and find freedom. Out of these four men, three are still in the United States and happier here than they were in China. Still, they work difficult jobs and fear deportation everyday as immigration laws get stricter every years. Unlike some of these men, most people on The Golden Venture decided to return to China because they were detained for years in the United States even after they had survived the long voyage.

The Golden Venture accurately depicts the lives of Guilin Chen, Yan Li, Arming He, and Kaiqu Zheng, showing the persecution and sufferings they had to endure even 20 years after the landing of the freighter here in the United States. The men work endless hours and still fear deportation even after they have paid the price in jail. The Golden Venture, which depicts the lives of Chinese immigrants from years ago, also depicts the lives of illegal immigrants today. Like many of the Chinese immigrants from The Golden Venture, today’s immigrants work endless hours, fear deportation, and are persecuted. The Golden Venture is not only a depiction of the lives of immigrants a decade or so ago but also a depiction of the lives of immigrants today.

Golden Venture

The documentary Golden Venture was filmed with the intent to use an infamous example of an attempt to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States in order to shed light on the lives of those immigrants and many like them, the reason they were escaping the country, the difficulties they faced throughout their journey, the consequences resulting from partaking in the voyage and the reaction of the American public and officials to the incident. The documentary follows a simple timeline structure, beginning with brief background stories of four specific passengers of the Golden Venture ship immigrants, details about the Golden Venture’s journey to America and the ship’s “arrival” by running aground by Breezy Point on June 6^th, 1993. The documentary then followed these four immigrants through jail, talked to the Americans who supported their plight for freedom and further followed their journeys in the United States or back in China until present day.

The movies got right to the point from the very start – I had never heard of this incident before and it grasped my attention when the frightening footage of people jumping off the ship in New York was played or the mug shots of certain snakeheads were shown and the entire crime scheme was discussed. At this point, the director had established a solid background story, and what followed were the emotional testimonies of the individual passengers and how they were dealing with the incidents going on around them. From the very beginning, the documentary was divided clearly into sections that were introduced by means of a picture and a title, and were thoroughly explained. In the end, however, it seemed that the director was leaning towards stirring negative feelings towards American immigration policy. Personally, I felt terrible after hearing of the futile hardships many of the ship’s passengers had to endure, only to be turned away in large groups.

The details mentioned throughout the movie were brutal, unfiltered and powerful, such as the government sterilizing passengers upon being deported back to China shortly after surviving the brutal voyage during which they starved, were abused and faced storms and unhealthy conditions. Additionally, the shocking details of how much each person spent on this life-threatening voyage and the incredible journey each had to make from China into Thailand silently hinted at how destitute conditions were in communist China at the time of the voyage. The film was a powerful concoction of stunning facts and emotional testimonies and was effective in its message.

Sentenced Home

The documentary Sentenced Home, tells the story of Cambodian refugees who escaped to America following the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge massacres in the 1980’s. It follows the stories of several of these immigrants who came to America as children and grew up with American culture and values, as well as the language. Now, as many of the refugees are being deported back to Cambodia, these immigrants, now young adults, are forced to prepare themselves to the possibility of having to leave their families behind in America and go to a homeland that is completely foreign to them in terms of language, culture and economy.

The documentary was formatted in an interesting way – the director was able to provide factual information throughout the beginning of the film and carry on into a personal and emotional perspective of what each of the three immigrants were going through. The director effectively raised awareness of the problem at hand – the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act which, in essence, forces the deportation of felon criminals who are non-citizens after being released from prison. The director provided a very opposing outlook on the law, highlighting three of the deportees’ struggles. Kim Ho Ma, after facing jail time for firing a gun in self-defense as a teen, was forced to leave his family and try to make it in Cambodia, where jobs are far and few in between. Loeun Lun was separated from his wife and children when deported. Many Uch, a man who organizes baseball leagues and opened a pool hall in order to keep Cambodian-American teens from going down the wrong path, is forced to wait, not knowing when he will be deported.

The use of these three examples was very powerful. I was infuriated by this policy, how U.S. officials don’t even take into consideration how each one of the refugees has made amends or settled down or impacted his community. It saddened me to see the struggles that each one of the Cambodians endured and made me question American policy to the extent that I researched it online after watching the documentary. Unlike the Golden Venture, the documentary didn’t end up on a positive note, which was an effective move by the director but was a bit heavy to process. Altogether however, Sentenced Home was powerful and informatory and focused on appealing to the audience emotionally.

The United States of America has been coined the “land of opportunities” for hundreds of years, a cliché that both spurred and caused vast surges in immigration. Even as far back as the 19^th century, the United States had a reputation of welcoming tides of hopeful newcomers— the land of opportunities.  Mexico and Russia have always provided a good proportion of those newcomers.  The 2000 census reported a population of 20,640,711 people of Mexican origins living in the country, and 2,652,214 Russians.  It’s clear that there is a much larger Mexican population in this country, and there probably always will be, but there is also a much greater distance from the United States.  Considering how much harder it is to get to America from Russia, the huge differences make a lot of sense.  Despite that, both countries’ immigration patterns to the States are great testaments to how much of a staple this country has been for providing people with new life and new prospects.

The reason this country is so diverse today is that for over a century now, the immigrants pouring into the United States have hailed from every type of culture.  Mexico and Russia are two perfect contrasting examples of this.  The people in those countries had very different problems in the 19th century, and they still do now: different forms of leadership, different economic hardships, different roots of oppression, different reasons for wanting to leave.  And yet, immigration from both of those countries showed a strong preference of the United States of America.  The flow of new residents increased consistently from 1880 to 2000, according to the New York Times’ “Immigration Explorer.”

However, there are interesting differences that play into the pattern of almost polar variances between Russia and Mexico.  19^th and 20^th century emigration from Russia was the result of anti-Semitism, with many Eastern European Jews looking for an escape from the prejudices and a better life.  The early Mexican immigration in the U.S was in response for the demand of labor.  All of those immigrants were laborers who were brought into the country for cheap wages and bad conditions.  Another disparity between the two countries’ immigration trend is geographical. The exact opposite happened in Mexico, with immigrant habitation starting out on the west coast and approaching the east as the years passed.

With these geographic patterns came corresponding patterns in the concentration of immigrants in each area.  Russian immigration displays a pattern of fluctuation in rates throughout time.  Within the 20^th century, Russian immigration increased and reached a peak between the years 1910 and 1950, and tapered off slowly for the rest of the century.  In 2000, there seemed to be another surge.  Mexican immigration, however is a slightly different story.  The rates steadily increased throughout time, with the numbers for the year 2000 being the largest recorded.

Russian immigration surged in early 20^th century. The 1910s was the largest influx of Russian immigration to the United States.  They concentrated mainly on the east coast of the U.S. and most Russians settled in Manhattan, New York, Brooklyn, New York, and Cook County, Illinois.  To be exact, there were 312,985 Russians in Manhattan, 160,596 in Brooklyn and 128,369 in Cook County.  Immigrants from Russia arrived at the east coast in the early 20^th century and that’s where the Russian population was mostly concentrated.  As time progressed, they moved further west and spread out throughout the entire nation.

Mexican immigration has been increasing gradually over the 60 years, since the 1950s.  In 2000, which the data in the “Immigration Explorer” reaches, displays the greatest number of Mexican immigrants in the country.  The most are located in Los Angeles County, California, with 1,525,157 Mexican immigrants.  The whole west coast of the United States contains Mexicans, but they are also in South-western United States, mainly in Dallas County and Harris County in Texas.  The populations born in Mexico are 295,678 and 395,459, respectively.  Lastly, another large amount of Mexican immigrants is in Cook County, Illinois, where Russian immigrants used to settle, and in 2000 there are 430,156 immigrants from Mexico there.

The message from all of this data is representative of immigration in the United States of America as a whole.  Despite the differences in rates and time between different immigrant origins, there is a strong history of people coming here that shows no signs of stopping.

Over years, many ethnic groups  traveled to the United States, settled, worked, and gradually assimilated to be called “American”. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, an uncommon ethnic group to the United States, the Italians, immigrated to the United States in masses. The Italians brought with them their family-centered peasant cultures and settled in their own localized groups, maintaining whatever Italian culture and traditions they bought with them. However, with time, the Italians and Americans started interacting more often and an exchange of cultures began. The Italians eventually assimilated into American culture and became “American.”

The foreign-born Italian population in the United States’ prior to the 1880s was small. The majority of Italian immigration to the United States occurred between 1880 and 1920 when the Italian unification posed economic hardship (mainly due to the feudal system prior to the 1800s, in which Northern Italians were the land-owners) on Southern Italian farmers. Between 1876 and 1924, 4.5 million Italians immigrated to the United States. However, the mass Italian immigration was put to an end by the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, which put severe quotas on the number of immigrants allowed to enter. Therefore, the foreign-born Italian population stopped growing. Accordingly, Italian cultures and traditions of today and the decades prior can be traced to the cultures and traditions of the  Italians who came to the United States between the 1880s and 1920s.

Newly arrived  Italians settled in groups within their densely Italian populated communities in the Northeast. For example, Sicilians settled with Sicilians, and Neapolitans settled with Neapolitans. Each cluster  was surrounded by other ethnic groups, who the Italians eventually assimilated with. The Italian immigrants were able to maintain their culture in these communities. Italians maintained use of their own language through newspapers and entertainments such as theater. Also, each cluster of Italians maintained their own family and cultural values. Despite such attempts to preserve their culture, with every generation onwards, the Italians made strides towards becoming assimilated.

Second generation Italians followed in their parents’ footsteps by working menial jobs, living in their segregated communities, and marrying amongst each other. The foreign-born Italian parents did not value education because time spent in school was time spent away from work. In the 1920’s and 30’s, however, the next generation valued education more and often attended vocational schools. Second-generation Italians still continued working in the factories, and in the 1930s, the second-generation Italians joined hands with Americans in labor unions and lobbied for benefits, a step closer to becoming one with the Americans. Following World War II, through their proximity to urban centers or economic growth and rising levels of education, Italians reached managerial positions and attain other white-collar jobs. By 1991, Italians had on average, met or exceeded the average national wage, which proved that they established a solid foothold in America.

We can thank the courageous first generation Italians for laying the groundwork for the development of pizzerias, pasta restaurants, and Little Italys we see today.

Filipinos comprise the second largest group of Asia-born immigrants in the United States, yet looking at available census data it’s difficult to understand how this came to be. The U.S. Census Bureau’s data provides only a very limited amount of information about Filipino immigration post-1980. Because of the limited data pre-1980, we can’t properly gauge how the rate and distribution have changed.

Looking at the historical background, in late 1906, five years after the Philippine-American war officially ended, Filipinos began to migrate to the U.S. in search of work via Hawaii. Over the next three decades, a significant number of Filipinos followed their example. Migration Information Source estimated that around 150,000 Filipinos arrived in the U.S. between 1907 and 1930, most of whom stayed in Hawaii to work on the plantations. The ones that chose not to stay looked for agricultural work in states like California, Oregon, and Washington. A major change occurred, however, when the Philippines Independence Act of 1934 was passed in the United States, as it would grant the Philippines independence ten years later. In order to prevent a flood of Filipino migrants to the U.S. resulting from the act, it also it restricted the number of allowed visas from the Philippines to fifty per year, in turn greatly reducing the number of migrants.

In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act did away with nationality-based restrictions, which allowed migration from the Philippines to once again greatly increase. The incentive to migrate came from an increase in job demand in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in medical professions. The U.S. General Accounting Office via HealthAffairs reports that in 1980, 75% of foreign nationals taking the nursing licensure exam were Filipinos. In 2000, this ratio was 43%, still far greater than that of any other nation.

Now that we have some background on pre-1980 migration from the Philippines, we can study New York Times’ immigration explorer map. From the map, the pockets of migration that originated as early as 1906 in Hawaii, California, and Washington still exist today. Back then, the majority of Filipino migrants resided in Hawaii, as it was the nearest U.S. territory and had work available. From the 1980 map, we can see that the majority shifted to California, with smaller populations in Washington, the Great Lakes area, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, and Texas. Between 1980 and 1990, the Philippine-born population nearly doubled (or more) in all of these regions. From 1990 to 2000, this population increased by roughly a quarter. In Los Angeles, California alone, the population grew from 73,000 in 1980, to 161,000 in 1990, to 203,000 in 2000. In New York, the Philippine-born population increased from roughly 21,000 to 55,000. If 2010 data was also included on the map, we would expect to see continued foreign-born population growth, especially in New York, where the population continues to diversify.

After the end of the bloody Second World War, the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) maintained strict communist rule, under which all countries within the Communist Bloc (Russia, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia) suffered in terms of political corruption and economic downfall. Any Russians who managed to escape immigrated to western countries such as the U.S. However, since the U.S.S.R. had such strict restrictions as to who could leave the country, the number of Russian immigrants coming to the U.S. dramatically decreased compared to the past half century. For example, in 1970, there were 50,000 Russian-born immigrants living in Brooklyn compared to the 220,000 living there in 1930. Similar declines occurred throughout other significant Russian populations throughout the United States.

After 1985, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev and his attempts in modern reform, the formerly thriving economy of the Soviet Union began to decline due to inflation and shortages in goods and budget. In 1991, the U.S.S.R., along with its economy, collapsed; Russia, along with all of the former satellite countries, became a free country. But conditions grew worse.

By 1993, forty to fifty percent of all Russian citizens were living in poverty. Crime and corruption grew and status of living sullied. By 1998, the country witnessed a financial crash that was completely opposite of what was happening in the United States. Naturally, with Russia now being a free country, a wave of migration towards the U.S. emerged.

This new wave of people was of a different caliber; they were young professionals with training in fields such as software, electronics, medicine and even the arts. They are “more worldly, more westernized, with higher standards of living than their predecessors.” As a result of this wave, about 20,000 Russian scientists were employed in the United States in 2003, and the credit for 30% of Microsoft products could be given to the Russian engineers in the U.S.This new refugee population was large. In the year of 1999, the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook reported 16,882 people of the Soviet Union filing refugee status applications to the U.S., 11,700 were accepted, but 16,962 entered the country.  This was the second largest population of entering refugees that year, and made up almost 20% of the refugee population. The total population increased all over the map, with an increase of about 70,000 people in Brooklyn, and one of about 40,000 people in Los Angeles between 1990 and 2000.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the population of foreign-born settlers from Russia has been continually growing, especially in major cities where opportunities exist. A significant population exists, and significant increase is occurring. Although these matters can always be subject to change, the immigration numbers have slowly begun to imitate those seen a century before.

The Irish faced a dire situation starting in 1845 called the Great Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine. One third of Ireland’s population was entirely dependent on the potato as the main source of sustenance, especially for the poor. This staple food made the agrarian economy grow rapidly. However, a common potato disease called potato blight decimated the potato livestock leaving the people with insufficient food supply and less will to remain in their homeland. Emigration skyrocketed at that point and social, political, and economic issues only encouraged people to leave the country.

In contrast to the trend in the 1900’s, the trend in the late 2000’s has been starkly opposite. The Immigration Explorer, a tool on the New York Times website, tells us the migration patterns of various groups to America during an extended time period. Looking at the population of Manhattan, NY in 1890, and 2000, we notice a drastic decrease in the population of foreign born Irish. The population of Manhattan was roughly 1.5 million in both these time periods. The difference is that in 1890, there were 190,418 foreign-born Irish to the 4,147 in 2000. That’s a 98% decrease in the Irish population in New York. Much of this can be attributed to Ireland’s recent economic upturn.

In 1996, Ireland reached its migration “turning point,” making it the last European Union Member State to become a country of net immigration. The main reason being that rapid economic growth created an unprecedented demand for labor across a wide range of sectors, including construction, financial, information technology, and health care. This had a direct impact on the unemployment rate as it fell from a 15% to 3.6% in no time. Ireland had turned from “being a country of emigration to a country of immigration.” The cause of a decrease in Irish immigrants to the US and an increase in emigrants to Ireland is because of this Irish economic prosperity, better known as the “Celtic Tiger” era. This change in the population flow of Ireland is significantly reflected in the Irish immigration trend in the Immigration Explorer. The economic boom in the late 20th century and early 21st century became a major attraction for immigration to Ireland and also helped keep the Irish natives. Thus, there is an apparent decline in the migration of Irish people to America.

One of the largest groups of immigrants that have come to the United States was from Germany.  In fact, up until the 20^th century, German immigration was increasing, albeit slightly.  A majority of these immigrants had always been poor farmers who would eventually settle in the south. However, as seen using the immigration explorer tool, much of this changed in the 20th century as immigration from Germany started to decline slowly.  This decline continued for the next few decades as political tensions in Europe, especially in Germany, rose.

Pre-WWII Germany became a very oppressive environment for the Jewish population.  Under the Nazi Party’s 25 Point Program, Jews were segregated from the “Aryan” population and could not participate in the simplest of tasks, such as going to schools or universities.   This, in turn, had a direct effect on German immigration to the U.S.  During the 1930’s and early 1940’s, a new group of immigrants started coming to America.  About 80% of these immigrants were Jewish.  Furthermore, a significant percentage of the immigrants (both Jews and non-Jews) were intellectuals, a group that had never before come to the U.S. in such large numbers.  In addition, these immigrants, unlike their predecessors, came to the U.S. and settled in cities, further emphasizing the deviation from earlier immigration patterns.

The intellectuals who settled in cities played significant roles in the U.S. during the World War II.  One of the most famous of these figures, perhaps, was Albert Einstein, a German-Jew who, at the time of the war, worked on the Manhattan Project (which allowed the U.S. to develop the first Atomic Bomb).  Similarly, Marlene Dietrich, a German-American actress, toured the states raising war bonds, being one of the first celebrities ever to do so.

During the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would also appoint two prominent Americans of German descent to top commands in the Army and Navy, General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe and Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Pacific. In fact, General Eisenhower would later become the 34^th president of the U.S.  Clearly, the influx of German immigrants not only affected American society, but also the outcome of the war.  Despite the slow rate of immigration during WWII, German influence in America remained strong.

German immigration may be on a slight decline for now, but past immigrants have fused well with countless other ethnic groups in modern day America.  Influences such as German pubs, Catholics, Lutherans, and craftsmen have all been incorporated into American society.  All in all, German immigrants remain the largest ethnic group in the United States, with over 45 million having made their way to the U.S. in the past couple of centuries.  As a result of this, German-Americans, comprising more than a fourth of the white population, have effectively assimilated into American culture all the while preserving their traditions while adapting to new ones to this very day.