With so many immigrants coming to America, it is no wonder that historians have disagreed over who came and why. Early historians of immigration focused on those arriving in the United States. These newcomers are depicted as an undifferentiated mass of European peasants, striking out on their own, often poverty-stricken, sometimes persecuted, sometimes eager for opportunity. The march of so many immigrants into American life, these historians argue, both reflected and helped to create the uniqueness of the American experience.

More recently, historians have placed immigration to the United States in global perspective by examining both receiving and sending countries. In an international context, the United States moves from the center of immigration history to the fringes of the story as one of many countries attracting migrants in an expanding world economy. Immigration to the United States thus becomes part of an international labor exchange and the American experience less exceptional and more comparable to that of other receiving nations such as Argentina and Australia. As for the immigrants themselves, the international perspective underscores the diversity of the newcomers and of their motives. Landless young men from Italy hoped to return to buy plots in Italy, whereas the sons of cattle farmers from western Norway left for good because inheritance laws kept them from owning farms at home. Other immigrants to the United States, fewer in number, came not from Europe but from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia.

1			Begin by reading through this website on American immigration. Why do its authors argue that Americans came to the United States? On what elements of the American immigrant experience does this site focus? What role do they perceive immigrants playing in American culture? http://library.thinkquest.org/26786/en/tours/list.php3 Now read this essay on attracting immigrants to Western Canada. How, if at all, does the perception of immigrants shift between these two sources? Why did these immigrants come to Canada? Were there reasons different from those mentioned on the first website? If so, does this shift in understanding alter your perspective on the immigrant experience? How? http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/ensign2/humanAdaptations/skEnthnicity/Ukrainian/heritage/heritage.html