Yearning to Breathe Free: The American Immigration Story

By

Maysan Haydar

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A cartoon in Puck from 1888.

Employing Immigrants

A cartoon in Puck from 1888 attacked businessmen for hiring large numbers of low-paid immigrant workers while leaving the American men unemployed.

A 1906 New York World cover page.

New York World Cover

A 1906 New York World cover page celebrating immigrants' arrival at Ellis Island.

A political cartoon from 1882.

Chinese Exclusion

A political cartoon from 1882, showing a Chinese man barred entry to the United States while other groups are allowed admittance.

Protesters at a DACA rally.

DACA

Protesters at a DACA rally in San Francisco, 2017.

Mexican workers await legal employment.

Braceros

Mexican workers await legal employment in the United States, 1954.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

VP Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, arrive in Guatemala to discuss the border crisis, June 2021.

A sketch of European immigrants as they pass the Statue of Liberty.

Immigrants at the Statue of Liberty

A sketch of European immigrants as they pass the Statue of Liberty upon entering the United States, 1887.

Chinese immigrant workers building the Transcontinental Railroad.

Chinese Railroad Workers

Chinese immigrant workers building the Transcontinental Railroad, late 1860s.

Front page of The San Francisco Call from November 20, 1901.

The San Francisco Call Front Page

Front page of The San Francisco Call from November 20, 1901, discussing the Chinese Exclusion Convention.

Wong Kim Ark.

Wong Kim Ark

Wong Kim Ark, in a photograph taken from a 1904 U.S. immigration document.

An illustration in The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy.

Anti-Catholic Cartoon

An illustration in The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (1925) depicting anti-Catholic sentiments fueled by waves of Catholic immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries.

A Rosh Hashanah greeting card from the early twentieth century.

Jewish Immigration

A Rosh Hashanah greeting card from the early twentieth century shows Russian Jews looking at their American relatives who are calling them to the United States.

Forced resettlement of Poles from Reichsgau Wartheland.

Forced Migration

Forced resettlement of Poles from Reichsgau Wartheland following the German invasion of 1939.

Crew on the USS Durham help Vietnamese refugees.

Vietnamese Refugees

Crew on the USS Durham help Vietnamese refugees from a small craft onto their vessel in the South China Sea, 1975.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965.

Hart-Cellar Act

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 into law at the base of the Statue of Liberty, 1965.

A sign welcoming people to Little Italy in Manhattan.

Little Italy

A sign welcoming people to Little Italy in Manhattan.

Part of the border wall between USA and Mexico near Ajo, Arizona.

Border Wall

Part of the border wall between USA and Mexico near Ajo, Arizona.

Mexican workers from the Bracero Program working on a farm.

Bracero Workers

Mexican workers from the Bracero Program working on a farm.

U.S. Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Arizona.

U.S. Southern Border

U.S. Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Arizona review documents of immigrants suspected of illegal entry, 2019.

A banner at a march in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Immigrant Workers

A banner at a march in St. Paul, Minnesota where hundreds gathered to protest President Trump's immigration policies, 2018.

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