Immigration to America in the early 1900sIn the eyes of the first American colonists and the founders of the Constitution, the United States was supposed to represent the ideals of acceptance and tolerance towards those of all social classes. When the immigration rush began in the mid-1800s, America turned out to be anything but that. Millions of immigrants would soon understand the meaning of hardship and rejection as newcomers as they attempted to assimilate into American culture. For countless immigrants, the struggle to get to America was rivaled only by the struggle to gain acceptance among the existing American population. It has been said that immigration is as old as America itself. Immigration dates back to the 1500s, when the West faced the arrival of the Spanish. At the time, the Americas had been colonized by Indians, who were soon threatened by the first American immigrants. These Spanish conquerors threatened to undermine the Indians' culture and way of life. Evidently, immigration has begun since the beginning of our country's time and has had an everlasting effect on America today. Between 1880 and 1920 nearly twenty-four million immigrants arrived in the United States. Between better wages, religious freedom, and career opportunities, there were more than enough reasons to leave your homeland for America. Due to poverty, lack of future and various discrimination in their homelands, the incentive to leave was increasing. During the mid-1800s and early 1900s, laborers and farmers in Eastern Europe earned only 15 to 30 wages per day. In America they earned 50 cents to a dollar a day, doubling their wages. Those lower wage earners in their homeland were halfway there…oil and mining companies depended on cheap Chinese labor for most of their profits and were still reluctant to pay higher wages to white American workers. These businesses increasingly depended on Japanese immigrants to replace prohibited Chinese workers. When the Japanese arrived, the Americans told the same story they had with the Chinese. Once again they argued that the Japanese were taking their jobs and not absorbing American culture. The United States intervened once again, creating an informal treaty with Japan, limiting Japanese immigration to the United States. America continued to recruit workers from other countries, constantly concerned about the immigration problem. In 1924, the federal government passed the Immigration Act which officially banned further immigration from Asia and Europe to the United States..