One thing that the Italian immigrants did during their voyage was the passengers were given narrow beds in crowded compartments that smelled of spoiled food, human waste, and sweating people who had nowhere to bathe

Steerage passengers were allowed on deck only once a day. The rest of the time, they tried to amuse themselves by playing games, singing, and making music with accordions, mandolins, and other instruments.

Many Italian immigrants were “birds of passage”—young men who came to earn some money and return home. When several coworkers died in a work accident, Pascal's father decided to return to Italy as well. “We are not better off than when we started,” he said.

Fortunately, Italian neighborhoods also offered opportunities for fun. Most Italians were Catholics who celebrated saints' days as they had in Italy. They strung colored lights, flags, and streamers along the shops and streets where families strolled among booths that offered food and games. Fireworks, music, and dancing reminded everyone of life back home.

Above everything else, Italians valued family closeness. Some Italian parents refused to send their children to school because they feared that learning English would separate their children from the family. Besides, a child in school was not earning money to help the family. As a result, many immigrant children never learned the skills they needed for better jobs.

Some Americans feared that immigrants from Italy would always be poor and illiterate. Pascal D'Angelo was one of many who proved them wrong. After coming to the United States, Pascal bought himself a dictionary and learned to read and write English, and in time, he became a well-known poet whose work was published in national magazines.

However, that changed after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, including most birth records. Suddenly, many Chinese men were able to claim to be native-born citizens and as citizens, they were allowed to bring their wives and children to the United States

Suddenly, many Chinese men were able to claim to be native-born citizens and as citizens, they were allowed to bring their wives and children to the United States.

said one Chinese immigrant. Chinese usually remained on the island for three to four weeks, but sometimes they spent months or even years there. To pass the time, they carved poems on the wooden walls with silverware smuggled from the dining halls

Chinese settled in city neighborhoods like San Francisco's bustling Chinatown, where they could find work at Chinese laundries, restaurants, and stores. Chinese newspapers, herbal medicines, foods, and festivals provided familiarity, comfort, and support.

For many years, most Chinese immigrants were men. In 1900, only about 1 in 20 Chinese on the U.S. mainland was female. With so few women and families, the Chinese population began to decline. In 1880, about 105,000 Chinese lived in the United States, but by 1920, there were only 61,600.

Many Chinese started laundries because, as Lee explained, “It requires little capital and is one of the few opportunities that are open. Men of other nationalities who are jealous of the Chinese … have shut him out of working on farms or in factories or building railroads.”

Some Jews worked as street vendors, using pushcarts to sell everything from coal to secondhand clothes. Pushcart vendors saved their money to buy horsedrawn carts and eventually small stores. Although most Jews were poor, they arrived in the United States with a wide range of skills and were employed as cobblers, butchers, carpenters, and watchmakers. Almost half found jobs in the city's garment factories.

Parents who made a little money often sent their sons, and sometimes their daughters, to the city's inexpensive public colleges. By 1910, more Jewish youths over the age of 16 were still in school than were young people of any other ethnic group.

Like other immigrant groups, Jews faced prejudice and discrimination. Most private schools and clubs refused to accept Jews. Hospitals refused to hire Jewish doctors, and the New York Bar Association would not admit Jews as lawyers. Many ads for jobs stated simply, “Christians only.”

Mary Antin's first world had been a Jewish village in Russia. For centuries, Russians had discriminated against Jews, who dressed, worshiped, and ate differently from their Christian neighbors. By the 1800s, Russia had hundreds of anti-Jewish laws, including ones restricting where Jews could live and prohibiting them from living in big cities or owning land.

Many Jews fled such persecution, hoping to find refuge in the United States. Between 1881 and 1924, some 2.4 million Jews came to the United States from Russia and other countries in eastern Europe. Mary Antin's father was one such immigrant.

In 1881, assassins killed the Russian monarch Czar Alexander II, and nervous government leaders subsequently blamed Jews for his murder, even though the assassin was not Jewish. Angry Russians raged through Jewish villages, burning, looting, and killing in attacks, called pogroms. This happened repeatedly for more than 30 years. The word pogrom comes from Russian words meaning “like thunder.”

To further limit immigration, Congress established a quota system in 1921 and refined it in 1924. Under this system, by 1927 only 150,000 immigrants were allowed to enter the United States annually, and people from East Asia were completely excluded. In addition, quotas limited immigration from any one country to 2 percent of the number of people from that country who lived in the United States in 1890. Most eastern and southern Europeans had arrived after that year. As a result, most of the quota spaces were reserved for immigrants from England, Ireland, and Germany. The new laws did not restrict Mexican immigration, but Mexicans now needed passports and visas to enter the United States. Visas allow people from other nations to enter and stay in the United States for a limited period. For the first time, the nation was closing its doors.

The surge in immigration that began in the 1880s fueled another rise in nativism. Some native-born Americans blamed immigrants for everything from slums and crime to hard times and competition for jobs, which prompted many labor leaders to discriminate against people who were not white. In 1909, for example, the president of the United Mine Workers wrote of Asians that “as a race their standard of living is extremely low, and their assimilation by Americans impossible.”