Immigration+SpeechJP09

Slide 1, Title Sec. 1-5: Why Should People Immigrate by Jonathan Partesano Slide 2, people on a boat: For centuries, people have been immigrating from all over the world. Some by boat and some by foot. But one of the most common time periods of immigration was the 1800's. As you can see here in this graph, immigration was very high in the 1800's. Especially in the middle of the century. But the question is, is immigration a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I think that it's a good thing. Sure, it doesn't really benefit everybody, but it makes life easier for the immigrants. Here are a few examples why I think that it is a good thing:

My first example is the Ireland Potatoe famine. From 1841 to 1850, 780,719 people from Ireland immigrated to the U.S. The main cause was the potatoe famine. It killed about 1 million people and reduced Ireland's population by 25%. 1 million more people immigrated to many different countries. If they had not immigrated, there could have potentially been 1 million more deaths from the famine. Also, the immigrants had kids when they came here, so many of us that are here today might not have ever been born if they didn't come here.

My second example is the German immigrants. The German people lost faith in their governments capability to resolve economic problems after the unsucessful German revolution of 1848. Over the next ten years after the revolution, about 1 million Germans immigrated to America. There were many different reasons for this, one of them being over population. When they came here, they had much better economy and a better environment. There was a lot more space here for them. It wasn't as crowded as Germany. It really helped the immigrants out, which makes it a good thing.

Another example is the Norwegion immigrants. A good number of them were farmers, and they had trouble finding land in Norway. Farming was the only thing that many of them could do, so there wasn't any other job that they could get there. There was plenty of land in the U.S., especially in Minnesota and North Dakota. So they went there, along with a few other states, so that they could farm. If they didn't come here, they would have no farm land of their own, so they wouldn't have any way to make money. Coming here completely changed their lives.

Those are three of the examples of why I think that immigration is a good thing. It really gives the immigrants a much better life than they already had.