Answer:
1. During the Progressive Era, immigration grew steadily, with most new arrivals unskilled workers from eastern and southern Europe, as well as China. These newly transplanted workers typically found employment in steel and textile mills, slaughterhouses, and construction crews in large cities.
2. The act formally removed de facto discrimination against Southern and Eastern Europeans as well as Asians, in addition to other non-Western and Northern European ethnic groups from the immigration policy of the United States.
3. Immigrants also make an important contribution to the U.S. economy. Most directly, immigration increases potential economic output by increasing the size of the labor force. Immigrants also contribute to increasing productivity.
4. The old immigrants arrived in the mid-1800s, coming mostly from northwestern Europe, while the new immigrants arrived a generation later, traveling mostly from southeastern Europe. Immigrants migrated to escape problems in their native countries and in search of new opportunities in America. Many historians in the 1920s separated immigrants into two distinct groups: old immigrants, or those who arrived in America before the Civil War; and new immigrants, those who arrived in America after the Civil War. This distinction was made as a result of the political trends of the time.