Alistair Cooke created and produced America: The Huddled Masses in 1973 with a purpose, to convey a "personal history" explaining the purpose of the many voyages by Europeans to the land of America. The previous lives of these newcomers were each unique in their own way with the exception of turmoil and uprisings in the homeland. The migration of these masses was as a result beginning to diversify the "Anglo-Saxon Profile", according to Cooke. .
Every immigrant that came to the United States understood the risks and dangers in starting a new life; due to the number of problems with agriculture and political uprisings in Western Europe, the better way of life lied in the United States. Cooke presents Queen Victoria's description of the state of the Irish in the Old country as "rugged and wretched" to accentuate the poverty the potato famine in the late 1840's had brought upon Irish society. Furthermore, political upheavals in Western Europe continued to worsen the life of the European family. With the pope in Italy declaring war, frequent arrests and executions in Austria and uprisings in Sicily against the King of Naples the quality of life in Europe could not worsen for the common European. .
This influx of immigrants by the many Western Europeans was assimilated fairly quickly into American Society except for Irishmen. The Irish were originally looked at in a condescending way by the queen herself; consequently, American society prevented the Irish from assimilating with American culture. For America's protection the immigration process had to pass through the historic Ellis Island. Doctors inspected every immigrant for rare diseases and conditions that could be hazardous to let into the country. Only a typical eight out of ten immigrants made it through inspections and became U.S. citizens.
Even after the second wave of immigration in the early 1900's, immigrants began to collaborate and strike against companies and factories due to their outrageous hours and employment treatment.
The "New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, dedicated in 1886 is a conventional Italian sonnet. Like all sonnets of that kind it treats its theme, the significance of "Liberty enlightening the world" in a descriptive octave and an a encouraging sestet. In the first line the Stature of Liberty is compare...
The alliteration world-wide welcome (l. 7) as well as the enumeration Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses (l. 10/11) with the repeated use of your stresses the readiness to admit everyone regardless of origin or social class. ...
"Give me your scientists, your doctors, your teachers, but keep your huddled masses to yourselves." This quotation vividly shows the problems the leaders of less developed countries find in the immigration policies of the United States. It demonstrates how the US shows a preference towards th...
We are all familiar with the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". ... Foreigners are less welcome precisely because they are perceived as tired and poor and huddled when the public identifies poverty with laziness and sees the barrio as the cause of many problems. ...
In Consuming Hunger we are presented with a real problem in mass media, the very real battle between what is real and what will sell. There are two media campaigns featured; one is the coverage of the famine in Ethiopia, the other of Hands Across America. One deals with hunger in a foreign country,...
Today the American culture yet again faces issues of assimilation and social status of emerging racial and ethnic groups. The American society has had a long history of forced assimilation of minority cultures into what is considered the predominantly Caucasian Protestant majority. During the 19th a...
Compare and Contrast: The Japanese and Chinese Immigrants The Japanese and Chinese people are immigrated to the United States having their own separate goals. They have different religious practices; the Chinese believing in confuses, but the Japanese are different from them because Japanese didn...
