Hawaii Immigration History

“Jimmy Carter said, we become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” Hawaii is a multicultural and multiethnic islands. That is one of the great parts of living in Hawaii. It all started when immigrants from all over the world came to Hawaii as a sugar plantation worker. One of the immigrants are Portuguese. During the 19th century, big groups of Portuguese came to work in sugar plantations because they were recruited by the Hawaiian government and the Planters’ Society. Also, a doctor living in Portugal named Dr. William Hillebrand, promoted jobs in Hawai’i and organized the first immigrants that came. There are over 20, 000 Portuguese immigrants …show more content…
Portugal have a subtropical climate similar to Hawaii but their life in the Azores and Madeira was hard and the people are uneducated and very poor. They had no chance for economic improvement. Their conditions worsened when famine hit the island of Madeira as a result of a fungus blight that ruined all their crops which caused little food left for too many people. At the same time, political tension is happening. Most of the people had no voice and the Portuguese government ignored their needs and complaints. The Portuguese government enforced a compulsory military service that required men to serve in the military and many conscription laws such as anti-immigration. As a result, people were angry and there were no one to help in the fields and support their families. In the article “California and Hawaii: Life in the West,” the author states that “When the final agreements were completed in 1877, the board of immigration for the Hawaiian Islands had agreed to incur the cost of transportation for immigrants and their families from the Madeira and Azores Islands and to provide them with jobs at $10.00 per month, lodging , rations, and medical care” which shows that this is one of the factors that pulled immigrants to come to Hawaii and work in the plantations (Williams 54). Hawaii offered them hope and opportunities for a new life. Despite the contracts that they are …show more content…
They were allowed to bring their families unlike the Chinese and Japanese immigrants were they had come as single men. In the article “Portuguese Workers Arrive,” the author states that “they were offered an acre of lands, a house, and improved working conditions - but remained below haole owners in the plantation hierarchy” which shows that they were treated better than the Asian immigrants (Anonymous, 1). They were considered as middlemen workers which made them lunas and were separated physically or socially between themselves and the other contract laborers. Due to this social status, many of them moved to the mainland and others stayed to advance their economic conditions. They were also appointed as strikebreakers and became qualified for U.S. citizenship. When their contract expires, only few of them renewed their contracts because they prefer to work in their own farms. Sooner or later they found more skilled jobs in the cities that increased their educational level and English proficiency. In the article “California and Hawaii: Life in the West,” the author states that “Portuguese immigrants in Hawaii disbanded as a nationality group, settled apart from one another and preferably, in haole-occupied areas. They associated with other man and their own group, modifying old-world customs and taking on new ones, marrying outside the group and especially into the