1. Find a person in this photo. How do you think this person traveled to the US?

2. How is their experience as an immigrant different from __________________ [person from Ellis Island photo]?

3. How would their experiences be similar?

4. Why do people leave their homelands? How do you balance between fitting into a new country AND staying connected to the old country?

5. Who is an American? How does a person become part of a new community?

Across time, people have come to the Americas for different reasons. Many thousands of years ago, ancient Native Americans migrated over land from Asia and settled all over North and South America. Over 500 years ago, Europeans began traveling in ships over the Atlantic Ocean to live in the Americas for religious freedom and to make money. In the 1800s and early 1900s, large migrations of Europeans arrived in the United States to find work on farms and in growing cities.

While poor white immigrants decided to come to the U.S. for freedom and opportunity, hundreds of thousands of Africans were forced to come starting in 1619 to work as slaves for white land owners. Immigrants from China and many other countries helped to build railroads and cities in the U.S., which became a powerful, rich country because of the hard work of people from all over the world. At every time during U.S. history, about 10% of the United States population have been immigrants born in other countries. However, in every century, some immigration groups have faced discrimination and strong opposition. For example in the 1800s and early 1900s, some people incorrectly assumed that Chinese, Italian or Irish immigrants were not smart or hard-working people. Today, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these people are not considered immigrants, but Americans.

Today, the United States is home to a mix of many peoples, languages and cultures, and we continue to welcome new immigrants to our country. Immigrants to the U.S. bring new ideas, foods, and traditions to share, and add them to U.S. culture. It can be very painful to leave your home country and try to learn how people live in a new country with a very different culture, but immigrants can often find community in the U.S. by looking for places to eat foods from home, practice their religion, speak their languages or enjoy their culture. They might also build new communities at work, at school or in their neighborhoods. With the help of these new communities, immigrants accomplish an amazing task: they learn about the customs, rules, and systems of their new home and find ways to combine this new culture and their culture of origin.

Immigration is at the center of United States history. Immigrants make the culture, economy and future of the United States strong, successful and hopeful!

Read as a Google Doc

1. ancient

2. opportunity

3. discrimination

4. opposition

5. cultures

6. painful

7. origin

8. successful

9. hopeful

Across time, people have come to the Americas for different reasons. Many thousands of years ago, ancient Native Americans migrated over land from Asia and settled all over North and South America. Over 500 years ago, Europeans began traveling in ships over the Atlantic Ocean to live in the Americas for religious freedom and to make money. In the 1800s and early 1900s, large migrations of Europeans arrived in the United States to find work on farms and in growing cities.

While poor white immigrants decided to come to the U.S. for freedom and opportunity, hundreds of thousands of Africans were forced to come starting in 1619 to work as slaves for white land owners. Immigrants from China and many other countries helped to build railroads and cities in the U.S., which became a powerful, rich country because of the hard work of people from all over the world. At every time during U.S. history, about 10% of the United States population have been immigrants born in other countries. However, in every century, some immigration groups have faced discrimination and strong opposition. For example in the 1800s and early 1900s, some people incorrectly assumed that Chinese, Italian or Irish immigrants were not smart or hard-working people. Today, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these people are not considered immigrants, but Americans.

Today, the United States is home to a mix of many peoples, languages and cultures, and we continue to welcome new immigrants to our country. Immigrants to the U.S. bring new ideas, foods, and traditions to share, and add them to U.S. culture. It can be very painful to leave your home country and try to learn how people live in a new country with a very different culture, but immigrants can often find community in the U.S. by looking for places to eat foods from home, practice their religion, speak their languages or enjoy their culture. They might also build new communities at work, at school or in their neighborhoods. With the help of these new communities, immigrants accomplish an amazing task: they learn about the customs, rules, and systems of their new home and find ways to combine this new culture and their culture of origin.

Immigration is at the center of United States history. Immigrants make the culture, economy and future of the United States strong, successful and hopeful!

Read as a Google Doc

Morphological structures from the text

-ful (successful, hopeful)

-tion ( opposition, discrimination, migration)

-ous (religious)