American Emigration

Abstract

If there is one place in the United States by which Americans generally like to think the rest of the world’s people regard them, it is the Statue of Liberty standing in New York harbor holding her torch aloft as a beacon signaling the new haven for the homeless and oppressed. (One sociologist has suggested that the second symbol of America abroad is the wagon train, which further illustrates the importance of migration in American culture.) Millions of immigrants passed in her shadow from the latter part of the nineteenth through the middle of the twentieth century. It is ironic that in the wake of the centennial celebration of the “Lady,” or Statue of Liberty, it is now possible to examine in some detail the emigration of Americans abroad.