Immigration
The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 stopped the issuance of passports to Japanese laborers trying to go to America or Hawaii. However, there was a loophole in the agreement that allowed wives and children to immigrate to be with their husbands and fathers. It was because of this loophole that so many picture brides were able to immigrate to Hawaii and the United States. The impact of the Gentlemen’s Agreement is evident in the population percentage of men and women before and after it was issued. For example, 86.7 percent of Japanese admitted to U.S. prior to Gentlemen’s agreement were men, after the agreement only 41.6 percent of the Japanese admitted were men. The spread of the Japanese people grew so rapidly that, in 1897, the Japanese were known as the largest single ethnic group in Hawai’i, consisting of 40 percent of the population by the year 1900. Between 1907 and 1923 14,276 Japanese picture brides and 951 Korean picture brides arrived in Hawaii. Between 1908 and 1920 over 10,000 picture brides arrived on the West Coast of the United States.
Read more about this topic: Picture Bride
Famous quotes containing the word immigration:
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)