Why Immigration Matters
You’ll find an embarrassment of riches when it
comes to additional resources for all of the aspects
of immigration to American covered in this issue. I’ll
start with those that give broad coverage to immigration
in general.
Here are some good printed sources with reliable bibliographies
for further reading:
Cose, Ellis. A Nation Of Strangers: Prejudice, Politics,
And The
Populating Of America (New York: Morrow, c1992).
Daniels, Roger. Coming To America: A History Of
Immigration And Ethnicity In American Life (New
York, NY: Perennial, 2002).
Dublin, Thomas, ed. Immigrant Voices: New Lives
In America, 1773-1986
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1993).
Jones, Maldwyn Allen. American Immigration
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
On the Web, you may want to start with the most obvious
website of all, that for Ellis Island:
http://www.ellisisland.org/
Indeed, Ellis Island provides the best (of many) online
timeline and graph tracing immigration from all parts
of the world in its “Peopling of America”
site:
http://www.ellisisland.org/immexp/wseix_4_3.asp?
As usual, some of the best websites for young students
of American history have been mounted by television
channels. Among those well worth a visit are:
http://school.discovery.com/
[Discovery Channel; search for "immigration"]
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/newamericans/
[PBS]
The ever reliable American Memory initiative at the
Library of Congress provides “Immigration …
The Changing Face of America." This feature presentation
links educators to primary sources from the Library
of Congress' online collections:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/
immig/immigration_set2.html
You will also want to investigate the “Americans
All” website sponsored by the People of America
Foundation. This website is devoted to sources for the
study of the hundreds of groups who are now numbered
among “Americans.” Click on the “Teachers”
link and you’ll find a choice of classroom aids
organized by grade level and subject. The site is in
the process of construction, and new items are added
all the time:
http://www.americansall.com/teachers/teachers.htm
You may be interested, too, in this “American
Immigration” page that began as a tenth grade
history project:
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Immigration/
Here are samples of websites maintained by American
universities dealing with the subject:
Fordham’s online Modern History Sourcebook
provides useful links to online sources:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/
modsbook28.html#Latin%20American%20Immigration
The “American Women’s History” website
maintained by Middle Tennessee State University is an
excellent guide, with this section on immigrant women:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/wh-immig.html
These books will be of interest if you’d like
to explore some of the issues raised in Professor Kessner’s
essay:
Brown, Mary Elizabeth. Shapers Of The Great Debate
On Immigration: A
Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1999).
Daniels, Roger. Guarding The Golden Door: American
Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (New
York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
Glazer, Nathan. The New Immigration: A Challenge
To American Society (San Diego, CA: San Diego State
University Press, c1988).
Handlin, Oscar, ed. Children Of The Uprooted
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968, c1966).
Reimers, David M. Unwelcome Strangers: American
Identity and the Turn
Against Immigration (New York: Columbia University
Press, c1998).
Saveth, Edward N. American Historians and European
Immigrants, 1875-1925 (New York, Columbia Univ.
Press, 1948).
