History of immigration to the United States

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[edit] Population and immigration 15,000 BC - AD 1500

Main article: Models of migration to the New World

The first humans in North America are believed to have migrated from northeast Asia, via the Beringia land bridge available during the most recent glaciation. The land bridge was closed when the ice melted about 10,000 years ago. The group of people locked into the Americas at that time developed into most of the various indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Inuit migration occurred separately and later.

[edit] Population and immigration AD 1500-1600

European immigration to the current territory of the U.S. started a few decades after Columbus' discovery in 1492 and was mainly composed of Spaniards. The first cities to be founded were Pensacola in 1559 by the Spaniards, Fort Caroline in 1564 by the French, and San Agustín (present-day Saint Augustine) in Florida by the Spaniards in 1565. In the Colorado River valley, Spaniards founded Santa Fe in 1607-1608 and Albuquerque in 1706. The British crown tried to prevent Spanish immigration in Florida, and San Agustín was destroyed or plundered several times by pirates at the service of the crown or by the British army, though it was located in territory belonging to the Spanish Crown.

[edit] Population and immigration AD 1600-1790

Main article: Colonial history of the United States of America

Main article: British colonization of the Americas

Main article: Thirteen Colonies

Main article: European colonization of the Americas

The first successful English colony in the present-day United States, however, was established as a barely successful business enterprise, after much loss of life, in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. Once tobacco was found to be a profitable crop, many plantations were established along the Chesapeake Bay and along the southern rivers and coast.

English Pilgrims established a small settlement near Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620; much larger numbers of English Puritans came to Boston, Massachusetts and adjacent areas from about 1629 to 1640. Basque, French, English and Portuguese fishermen had been fishing off the New England and Newfoundland coast since about 1520, and some small summer fishing settlements/camps long pre-dated Jamestown. Permanent small English fishing settlements from mostly fishing communities in England were established along the Maine-New Hampshire coast starting roughly in 1621. The colonies from Maine to the New York border were the New England colonies.

The Dutch established settlements along the Hudson River in New York starting about 1626. Some of the early Dutch settlers set up large landed estates along the Hudson River and brought in farmers who became renters. Others established rich trading posts for trading with the Indians and started cities such as New Amsterdam (now New York City) and Albany, New York. Starting in about 1680 Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers and other English and German Protestant sects settling initially around Philadelphia and the Delaware River valley. Along with New York, New Jersey and Baltimore, Maryland this is normally considered the core of the middle colonies.

The fourth main colonial center of settlement is what is called the western "frontier" in the western parts of Pennsylvania and the South which was settled in the early 1700s to late 1700s by mostly Scots-Irish, Scots and others mostly from northern England border lands. The Scotch-Irish soon became the dominant culture of the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Areas where people reported 'American' ancestry were the places where, historically, Scottish and Scots-Irish Protestants settled in America: in the interior of the South, and the Appalachian region. It is believed the number of Scottish Americans could be in the region of 20 million and Scots-Irish Americans at 27 million.

In 1598, Juan de Oñate founded the San Juan colony on the Rio Grande, the first permanent European settlement in present-day New Mexico. In 1609, Pedro de Peralta, a later governor of the Province of New Mexico, established the settlement of Santa Fe at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The city, along with most of the settled areas of the state, was abandoned by the Spanish for 12 years (1680-1692) as a result of the successful Pueblo Revolt. After the death of the Pueblo leader Popé, Diego de Vargas restored the area to Spanish rule. While developing Santa Fe as a trade center, the returning Spanish settlers founded the old town of Albuquerque in 1706, naming it for the viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Alburquerque.^[1]

Spanish Texas lasted between 1690 and 1821 when Texas was governed as a Spanish colony separate from New Spain, known as the "Kingdom of Texas". In 1731, Canary Islanders (or "Isleños") arrived to establish what is known today as San Antonio. The majority of the people who colonized Texas and New Mexico in the Spanish colonial period drew their identity from the Spaniards and the criollos. In 1781 Spanish settlers founded Los Angeles.

In the late 17th century, French expeditions established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and north to French territory in Canada. Louisiana attracted considerably fewer French colonists than its West Indian colonies did. After the Seven Years' War Louisiana became a colony of Spain. During the period of Spanish rule, several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia (now Nova Scotia, Canada) made their way to Louisiana following British expulsion; settling largely in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana. The Acadian refugees were welcomed by the Spanish, and descendants came to be called Cajuns. Canary Islanders, called Isleños, migrated to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783.

The mostly agricultural Southern English colonies initially had very high death rates for new settlers from malaria, yellow fever and other diseases as well as Indian wars. Despite this, a steady flow of new settlers, mostly from central England and the London area, kept the population growing. The large plantations were mostly owned by friends (mostly minor aristocrats) of the British-appointed governors (Sir William Berkeley initially). Many settlers arrived as indentured servants who had to work off their passage with five to seven years of work for room and board, clothing etc. only. The wages they earned went to pay for their passage. The same deal was initially offered to some black slaves, but gradually the term of servitude became accepted in the South as life for them. After their terms of indentures, many of the Europeans settled small farms on the frontier or started small businesses in the towns. The Southern colonies were about 55% British, 38% Black and roughly 7% second or third generation German. By 1780, nearly all Blacks were native born with only sporadic additions of new slaves being brought in.

The initial areas of New England settlement had been largely cleared of Indians by major outbreaks of measles, smallpox, and plague, among them starting in about 1618 (believed to have been transmitted by visiting fishing fleets from Europe). The peak New England settlement occurred from about 1629 to about 1641 when about 20,000 Puritan settlers arrived mostly from the East Anglian parts of England (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and East Sussex) ^[2]. In the next 150 years, their "Yankee" descendants largely filled in the New England states.

The New England colonists were the most urban and educated of all the colonists and had many skilled farmers as well as tradesmen and skilled craftsmen among them. They started the first English colonial university in the Americas, Harvard, in 1635 to train their ministers. They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all had their own militias) and common religious activity. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture and fisheries were their main income sources. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed the mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects), small wide-spread villages (minimizing spread of disease) and abundant food supply resulted in the lowest death rate and highest birth rate (marriage was expected and birth control was not, and a much higher than average number of children and mothers survived) of any of the colonies. The eastern and northern frontier around the initial New England settlements was mainly settled by the descendants of the original New Englanders. Immigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and the start of the English Civil War decreased to less than 1%^{[citation needed]} (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all years prior to 1845. The rapid growth of the New England colonies (~700,000 by 1790) was almost entirely due to the high birth rate (>3%) and low death rate (<1%) per year.

The middle colonies' settlements were scattered west of New York City (established 1626; taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (established 1682). The Dutch-started colony of New York had the most eclectic collection of residents from many different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700. The Pennsylvania colonial center was dominated by the Quakers for decades after they emigrated, mainly from the North Midlands of England, from about 1680 to 1725. The main commercial center of Philadelphia was run mostly by prosperous Quakers, supplemented by many small farming and trading communities with a strong German contingent located in several small towns in the Delaware River valley.

Many more settlers arrived in the middle colonies starting in about 1680 when Pennsylvania was founded and many Protestant sects were encouraged to settle there by freedom of religion and good land--cheap. They came by the was about 60% British and 33% of German extraction. By 1780, in New York, about 17% of the population were descendants of Dutch settlers and the rest were mostly English with a wide mixture of other Europeans and about 6% blacks. New Jersey and Delaware had a majority of British with 7-11% German-descended colonists, about 6% black population, and a small contingent of Swedish descendants of New Sweden. Nearly all were at least third-generation natives.

Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the 18th century.^[3]. Because of the notorious Bloody Code, life in 18th century (and early 19th century) Britain was hazardous. By the 1770s, there were 222 crimes in Britain that carried the death penalty, many of which even included petty offenses such as stealing goods worth over five shillings, cutting down a tree, stealing an animal, stealing from a rabbit warren, and being out at night with a blackened face.^[4] For example, Michael Hammond and his sister, Ann, whose ages were given as 7 and 11, were reportedly hanged at King's Lynn on Wednesday, 28 September 1708 for theft. The local press did not, however, consider the executions of two children newsworthy.^[5].

The colonial western frontier was mainly settled from about 1717 to 1775 by mostly Presbyterian settlers from northern England border lands, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, fleeing bad times and persecution in those areas. After the American Revolution these same areas in Britain were the first to resume significant immigration. Most initially landed in family groups in Philadelphia or Baltimore but soon migrated to the western frontier where land was cheaper and restrictions less onerous.

While these settlements had differences in detail, they had many things in common. Nearly all were settled and financed by privately organized groups of English settlers or families using private free enterprise without any significant English Royal or Parliamentary government support or input. Nearly all commercial activity was run in small privately owned businesses with good credit both at home and in England being essential since they were often cash poor. Most settlements were nearly independent of trade with Britain as most grew or made nearly everything they needed--the average cost of imports per most households was only about 5-15 English pounds per year. Most settlements were done by complete family groups with several generations often present in each settlement. Probably close to 80% of the families owned the land they lived and farmed on. They nearly all used English Common Law as their basic code of law and except initially for the Dutch, Swedes and Germans, spoke some dialect of English. They nearly all established their own popularly elected governments and courts on as many levels as they could and were nearly all, within a few years, mostly armed, self governing, self supporting and self replicating. This self ruling pattern became so ingrained that almost all new settlements by one or more groups of settlers would have their own government up and running shortly after they settled down for the next 200 years. Nearly all, after a hundred years plus of living together, had learned to tolerate other religions than their own. This was a major improvement from the often very bloody Reformation and Counter-Reformation wars going on in Europe in this period. British troops up until the French and Indian War in the 1760s were a great rarity in the colonies as the colonists provided nearly all their own law enforcement and militia forces they wanted or needed from their own ranks. The American Revolution was in many ways a fight to maintain the property and independence they already enjoyed as the British tried, belatedly, to exploit them for the benefit of the crown and Parliament. Nearly all colonies and later, states in the United States, were settled by migration from another colony or state, as foreign immigration usually only played a minor role after the initial settlements were started. Many new immigrants did end up on the frontiers as that was where the land was usually the cheapest.

After these colonies were settled, they grew almost entirely by natural growth with foreign born populations rarely exceeding 10% (except in isolated instances). The last significant colonies to be settled mainly by immigrants were Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, Georgia and the Borderlands in the late 1700s as migration (not immigration) continued to provide nearly all the settlers for each new colony or state. This pattern would continue throughout U.S. History. The extent of colonial settlements by 1800 is shown by this map from the [great] University of Texas map collection.[2]

Population growth is nearly always by natural increase but significant immigration can sometimes be seen in some states when populations grow by more than 80% {a 3% growth rate) in a 20 year interval.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Population in 1790

According to the source, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Kory L. Meyerink and Loretto Dennis Szucs, the following were the countries of origin for new arrivals coming to the United States before 1790. The regions marked * were part of Great Britain. The ancestry of the 3.9 million population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names in the 1790 census and assigning them a country of origin. The Irish in the 1790 census were mostly Scots Irish. The French were mostly Huguenots. The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790 was probably less than 5%. The Indian population inside territorial U.S. 1790 boundaries was less than 100,000.

1. Data From Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPS)
2. Several West African regions were the home to most African immigrants. Population from U.S. 1790 Census
3. Germany in this time period consists of a large number of separate countries, the largest of which was Prussia.
4. Jewish settlers were from several European countries.
5. The Other category probably contains mostly English ancestry settlers; but the loss of several states detailed census records in the burning of Washington D.C. in the War of 1812 makes estimating closer difficult. Nearly all states that lost their 1790 (and 1800) census records have tried to reconstitute their original census from tax records etc. with various degrees of success. The summaries of the 1790 and 1800 census from all states survived.
6. The Total is the total immigration over the approximately 130 year span of colonial existence of the U.S. colonies as found in the 1790 census. Many of the colonists, especially from the New England colonies, are already into their fifth generation of being in America. At the time of the American Revolution the foreign born population is estimated to be from 300,000 to 400,000.

The 1790 population already reflects the approximate 50,000 “Loyalists or Tories”, who emigrated to Canada at the end of the American Revolution and the less than 10,000 more who emigrated to other British possessions including England.

The total white population in 1790 was about 80% British ancestry and roughly doubled by natural increase every 25 years. Since approximately 1675, the native born population of the U.S. has never fallen below 85% of the population.

Relentless population expansion pushed the U.S. frontier to the Pacific by 1848. Most immigrants came long distances to settle in the U.S. Many Irish, however, left Canada for the U.S. in the 1840s. French Canadians who came down from Quebec after 1860 and the Mexicans who came north after 1911 found it easier to move back and forth.

[edit] Immigration 1790 to 1849

In the early years of the U.S., immigration was only about 6000 people a year on average, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, and the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1814 severely limited immigration from Europe. The War of 1812 (1812-1814) with Britain again prevented any significant immigration. By 1808, Congress had banned the importation of slaves, slowing that human traffic to a trickle. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. For the first time, federal records, including ship passenger lists, were kept for immigration. Total immigration for one year in 1820 was 8,385, gradually building to 23,322 by 1830 with 143,000 total immigrating during the intervening decade. From 1831 to 1840, immigration increased greatly, to 599,000 total, as 207,000 Irish, even before the famine of 1845-49, started to emigrate in large numbers as Britain eased travel restrictions. 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French formed the next largest immigrant groups in that decade. From 1841 to 1850, immigration exploded to 1,713,000 total immigrants as at least 781,000 Irish, with the famine of 1845-1849 driving them, fled their homeland to escape poverty and death. The British, attempting to divert some of this traffic to help settle Canada, offered bargain fares of 15 shillings, instead of the normal 5 pounds (100 shillings) for transit to Canada. Thousands of poor Irish took advantage of this offer, and headed to Canada on what came to be called the "coffin ships" because of their high death rates. Once in Canada, many Irish walked across the border or caught an intercoastal freighter to the nearest major city in the United States - usually Boston or New York. Bad potato crops and failed revolutions struck the heart of Europe in 1848, contributing to the decade's total of 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British and 77,000 French immigrants. Bad times in Europe drove people out; land, relatives, freedom, opportunity and jobs in America lured them in.

Immigration records provide data on immigration since 1830. The census of 1850 was the first census in which place of birth was asked. The foreign-born population in the U.S. likely reached its minimum around 1815, at approximately 100,000 or 1.4% of the population. By 1815, most of the immigrants who arrived before the American Revolution had died, and there had been almost no new immigration.

1. The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are estimates.
2. The number foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations.

Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was by internal increase; about 98.5% of the population was native-born. By 1850, this had shifted to about 90% native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration started in the mid 1840s, shifting the population from about 95% Protestant down to about 90% by 1850.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 4,000 living in California. An additional approximate 2,500 U.S. and foreign born California residents also become U.S. citizens.

In 1849, the California Gold Rush spurred significant immigration from Mexico, South America, China, Australia, and Europe. The Gold Rush also caused a mass migration within the U.S., resulting in California's admittance to the union on September 9, 1850 with a population of about 90,000.

Mulberry Street, along which Manhattan's Little Italy is centered. Lower East Side, circa 1900.

[edit] Immigration 1850 to 1930

Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans immigrated to the United States with a peak in the years between 1881 and 1885, when a million Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the Midwest. Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5 million Irish entered America. Before the 1840s most Irish immigrants were Irish Presbyterians or Scots-Irish. After 1840, the Catholics arrived in large numbers, in part because of the famines of the 1840s.^[6] Mortality rates of 30% aboard the coffin ships were common.^[7]

Irish immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the Nativist/Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854–56, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery, most often joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election.^[8][9]

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews would flee the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. from 1881-1924.

Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians left Quebec to immigrate to the United States and settle, mainly in New England. Considering that the population of Quebec was only 892,061 in 1851, this was a massive exodus. 13.6 million Americans claimed to have French ancestry in the 1980 census. A large proportion of them have ancestors who emigrated from French Canada, since immigration from France has been very low during the entire history of the United States. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 1910s marked the high point of Italian immigration to the United States. Over two million Italians immigrated in those years, with a total of 5.3 million between 1820 and 1980. About a third returned to Italy, after working an average of five years in the U.S.

About 1.5 million Swedes and Norwegians immigrated to the United States within this period, due to opportunity in America and poverty and religious oppression in united Sweden-Norway. This accounted for around 20% of the total population of the kingdom at that time. They settled mainly in the Midwest, especially Minnesota and the Dakotas. Danes had comparably low immigration rates due to a better economy; after 1900 many Danish immigrants were Mormon converts who moved to Utah.

Over two million Eastern Europeans, mainly Catholics and Jews, immigrated between 1880 and 1924. People of Polish ancestry are the largest Eastern European ancestry group in the United States. Immigration of Eastern Orthodox ethnic groups was much lower.

Lebanese and Syrian immigrants started to settle in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The vast majority of the immigrants from Lebanon and Syria were Christians, but smaller numbers of Jews and Muslims also settled. Many lived in New York City and Boston. In the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of these immigrants set out west, with Detroit getting a large number of Middle Eastern immigrants, as well as many Midwestern areas where the Arabs worked as farmers.

The Dillingham Commission was instituted by the United States Congress in 1907 to investigate the effects of immigration on the country. The Commission's analysis of American immigration during the previous three decades led it to conclude that the major source of immigration had shifted from northern and western Europeans to southern and eastern Europeans. It was, however, apt to generalizations about these regional groups that were subjective and failed to differentiate between distinct cultural attributes.

The Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.

From 1880 to 1924, around two million Jews moved to the United States, mostly seeking better opportunity in America and fleeing the pogroms of the Russian Empire. After 1933 Jews who tried to flee Nazi Germany were often denied access to the United States, highlighted by the event of the S.S. St. Louis. Immigration restrictions laws passed in the 1920s tried to achieve four goals: reduce drastically the number of unskilled immigrants; favor uniting of families by giving preferences to relatives; keeping the ethnic distribution stable by allocating quotas to various ethnic groups; with no quotas initially set for Mexico and Latin America because of the ongoing Mexican Revolution. In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were about 500,000 Hispanics.^[10]

New immigration was a term from the late 1880s that came from the influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (areas that previously didn't have large numbers of immigrants) into the United States. Some Americans feared that the new to life in their new land. This raised the issue of whether the U.S. was still a "melting pot," or if it had just become a "dumping ground," and many Americans subsequently became unhappy with this development.

Americans’ preference of old immigration rather than new immigration reflected a sudden rise in conservatism. Immigration, although always being a part of American culture, swelled during the 19th century, coinciding with the rise of urban America. Before the “flood” which occurred in the 1870s was a period called “old” immigration. Old immigrants were mostly from Western Europe, especially Britain, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia. Since most of them, with the exception of the Irish, had Anglo-Saxon or Protestant backgrounds, they were quickly incorporated into American society, welcomed into the "asylum of liberty." However, beginning in 1870, “new” immigration began, with large numbers of people arriving from eastern and southern Europe as well as Asia, Russia, Italy, and Japan. Not only were these peoples’ language and culture less like that of America, they looked different. They were predominantly Jewish and Catholic, which sparked tensions. The unfortunate circumstances that the new immigrants arrived in made their image even worse. They came to the new urban America, where disease, overcrowding and crime festered. As a result, relations became openly hostile, with many Americans becoming anti-immigrant, fearing the customs, religion, and poverty of the new immigrants, considering them less desirable than old immigrants. In reality, this perceived difference did not exist; the new immigrants, although seeming different, brought the same sort of values as old ones did. Statistically, they did not commit any more crime or contribute to any more of the misfortunes as any previous immigrant generation.

In 1924, quotas were set for European immigrants so that no more than 2% of the 1890 immigrant stocks were allowed into America. In addition, Congress passed a literacy act in 1917 to curb the influx of low-skilled immigrants from entering the country.

By the 1920s, the United States had relatively large populations of many European immigrants spread out over 150 years who had joined the original British descendants majority in America. The foreign born population in the U.S. has never exceeded 15% since before 1675 and has never been a land of immigrant majorities since then. Americans of European ancestry have always been and remain in the majority.

The Mexican Revolution of 1911-1929 killed an estimated one million Mexicans [3] and drove at least a million refugees temporarily into the U.S. Many returned in the 1920s or 1930s. The recorded immigration was 219,000 from 1910-1920 and 459,000 from 1920 to 1930. Because of the porous border and the poor or non-existent records from this time period, the real numbers are undoubtedly higher. This recorded number of Mexican immigrants drops to only 23,000 from the decade of 1930 to 1940. Indeed 100,000s returned during the Great Depression either voluntarily or with some U.S. persuasion.

[edit] Immigration 1930 to 2000

Immigration patterns of the 1930s were dominated by the Great Depression, which hit the U.S. hard and lasted over ten years there. More people left the U.S. than arrived in some years in the 1930s. In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in the depression year 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.

The National Origins Formula was established in 1927. Total annual immigration was capped at 150,000.

In 1934, the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which provided for independence of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, stripped Filipinos of their status as U.S. nationals. Until 1965, national origin quotas in the immigration law strictly limited immigration from the Philippines. In 1965, after revision of the immigration law, significant Filipino immigration began, totaling 1,728,000 by 2004.

In 1938, the immigration that never happened is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century as shown in the Evian Conference of 1938. The immigration of the oppressed from Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler's policies was limited to only a small fraction of those who wanted to leave Germany. Due in part to anti-Semitism, isolationism, the Depression and xenophobia, the immigration policy of the Roosevelt Administration made it very difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas. See also:Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), The Holocaust, Bermuda Conference, British Mandate of Palestine, White Paper of 1939, SS St. Louis.

In 1945, the War Brides Act allowed foreign-born wives of U.S. citizens who had served in the U.S. armed forces to immigrate to the United States. In 1946, The War Brides Act was extended to include fiancés of American soldiers who were also allowed to immigrate to the United States. In 1946, the Luce-Cellar Act extended the right to become naturalized citizens to newly freed Filipinos and Asian Indians. The immigration quota was set at 100 people a year.^{[citation needed]}

At the end of World War II, "regular" immigration almost immediately increased under the official national origins quota system as refugees from war torn Europe started immigrating to the U.S. After the war, there were jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one, including immigrants, while most women employed during the war went back into the home. From 1941 to 1950, 1,035,000 people immigrated to the U.S., including 226,000 from Germany, 139,000 from the UK, 171,000 from Canada, 60,000 from Mexico and 57,000 from Italy.

The Displaced Persons (DP) Act of 1948 finally allowed displaced people of World War II to start immigrating [4]. Some 200,000 Europeans and 17,000 orphans displaced by World War II were initially allowed to immigrate to the United States outside of immigration quotas. President Harry S. Truman signed the first DP act on June 25, 1948, allowing entry for 200,000 DPs, and then followed by the more accommodating second DP act on 16 June, 1950, allowing entry for another 200,000. This quota, included acceptance of 55,000 Volksdeutschen, required sponsorship of all immigrants. The American program was the most notoriously bureaucratic of all the DP programs and much of the humanitarian effort was undertaken by charitable organizations, such as the Lutheran World Federation and other ethnic groups. Along with an additional quota of 200,000 granted in 1953 and more in succeeding years, a total of nearly 600,000 refugees were allowed into the country outside the quota system, second only to Israel’s 650,000.

In 1950, after the start of the Korean War, the Internal Security Act barred admission to any foreigner who was Communist, who might engage in activities "which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States."

In 1950, the invasion of South Korea by North Korea started the Korean War and left a war ravaged Korea behind. There was little U.S. immigration because of the national origin quotas in the immigration law. In 1965, after revision of the immigration law, significant Korean immigration began, totaling 848,000 by 2004.

In 1952, the McCarran Walter Immigration Act affirmed the national-origins quota system of 1924 and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920, or 175,455. The act exempted spouses and children of U.S. citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere from the quota. In 1953, the Refugee Relief Act extended refugee status to non-Europeans.

In 1954, Operation Wetback forced the return of thousands of illegal immigrants to Mexico. [5]. Between 1944 and 1954, "the decade of the wetback," the number of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico increased by 6,000 percent. It is estimated that, in 1954, before Operation Wetback got under way, more than a million workers had crossed the Rio Grande illegally. Cheap labor displaced native agricultural workers, and increased violation of labor laws and discrimination encouraged criminality, disease, and illiteracy. According to a study conducted in 1950 by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas, the Rio Grande valley cotton growers were paying approximately half of the wages paid elsewhere in Texas. The United States Border Patrol aided by municipal, county, state, and federal authorities, as well as the military, began a quasi-military operation of search and seizure of all illegal immigrants. Fanning out from the lower Rio Grande valley, Operation Wetback moved northward. Illegal immigrants were repatriated initially through Presidio because the Mexican city across the border, Ojinaga, had rail connections to the interior of Mexico by which workers could be quickly moved on to Durango. The forces used by the government were actually relatively small, perhaps no more than 700 men, but were augmented by border patrol officials who hoped to scare illegal workers into fleeing back to Mexico. Ships were a preferred mode of transport because they carried the illegal workers farther away from the border than did buses, trucks, or trains. It is difficult to estimate the number of illegal immigrants that left due to the operation--most voluntarily. The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The program was ultimately abandoned due to questions surrounding the ethics of its implementation. Citizens of Mexican descent complained of police stopping all "Mexican looking" people and utilizing extreme “police-state” methods including deportation of American-born children who by law were citizens. ^[11]

The failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution, before being crushed by the Soviets, forged a temporary hole in the Iron Curtain that allowed a burst of refugees to escape, bringing in 245,000 new Hungarian families to the U.S. by 1960. In the decade of 1950 to 1960, the U.S. had 2,515,000 new immigrants with 477,000 arriving from Germany, 185,000 from Italy, 52,000 new arrivals from Holland, 203,000 from the UK, 46,000 from Japan, 300,000 from Mexico, and 377,000 from Canada.

After the Cuban revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro, refugees flowed in from Cuba. An estimated 409,000 new families had emigrated to the U.S. by 1970.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act), passed by a Democratic controlled Congress, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. Over 28,000,000 have legally immigrated since 1965 under its provisions. Prior to 1965, the U.S. was taking in around 178,000 legal immigrants annually.

Because of the wide use of family preferences put into immigration law, immigration from then on was mostly "Chain migration" where recent immigrants who were already here sponsored their relatives. Instead of a "national origins system", what the U.S. now has is an "immigrant origins system" where ever increasing numbers of the recent immigrants sponsor ever increasing numbers of their relatives. The result was that most of legal immigrants now come from Asia and Latin America, and not Europe. Total immigration for the decade totaled 3,321,000 immigrants including about 200,000 each from Germany, Italy and the UK, 400,000 from Canada and 453,000 from Mexico.

The U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and the subsequent armed Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975 brought a new wave of refugees, many of whom spent years in Asian camps waiting to get into the U.S. By 1990, 543,000 Vietnamese family members were settled in the U.S. and 863,000 by 2000. Significant Filipino immigration started with 501,000 family members in 1980, 913,000 in 1990 and 1,222,000 by 2000. South Korean immigration started in 1980 with 290,000 family members in 1980, 568,000 in 1990 and 701,000 in 2000. In 2000, turmoil and war in Central America brought 692,000 family members from the Dominican Republic and 765,000 from El Salvador by 2000. Cuban Americans also continued to grow, with 608,000 family members in 1980, 737,000 in 1990 and 952,000 in 2000.

Two new large immigrant groups showed up in 2000: the Chinese with 1,391,000 family members; India with 1,003,000 family members. Both groups were well represented with high levels of expertise and education.

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating for the first time, in theory at least, penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants. IRCA, as proposed in Congress, was projected to give amnesty to about 1,000,000 undocumented workers. In practice, amnesty for about 3,000,000 immigrants already in the United States was granted. Most were from Mexico. Legal Mexican immigrant family numbers were 2,198,000 in 1980, 4,289,000 in 1990 (includes IRCA) and 7,841,000 in 2000. Adding in another 12,000,000 illegals of which about 80% are thought to be Mexicans would bring the Mexican family total to over 16,000,000 -- about 16% of the Mexican population.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 removed quotas on large segments of the immigration flow and legal immigration to the U.S. surged. The number of legal immigrants rose from about 2.5 million in the 1950s to 4.5 million in the 1970s to 7.3 million in the 1980s to about 10 million in the 1990s. In 2006, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 legal immigrants per year of which about 600,000 are Change of Status immigrants who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States are at their highest level ever at over 35,000,000. Net illegal immigration also soared from about 130,000 per year in the 1970s, to 300,000+ per year in the 1980s to over 500,000 per year in the 1990s to over 700,000 per year in the 2000s. Total illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year [in 2006] with a net of at least 700,000 more illegal immigrants arriving each year to join the 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 that are already here. (Pew Hispanic Data Estimates [6]) (See: Illegal immigration to the United States)

[edit] Immigration summary 1830 to 2000

The top ten countries of birth of the foreign born population in the U.S. since 1830, according to the U.S. Census, are shown below. Blank entries mean that the country did not make it into the top ten for that census, and not that there are ‘’no’’ data from that census. The 1830 numbers are from immigration statistics as listed in the 2004 Year Book of Immigration Statistics [7]. *The 1830 numbers list un-naturalized foreign citizens in 1830 and does not include naturalized foreign born. The 1850 census is the first census that asks for place of birth. The historical census data can be found online in the Virginia Library Geostat Center [8] Population numbers are in thousands.

[edit] See also

• Immigration to the United States

[edit] References