Immigration to the United States

2000 Census Population Ancestry Map

American immigration (or immigration to the United States of America) refers to the movement of non-residents to the United States. Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of American history. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior. As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined.^[1] Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965,^[2] the number of first- generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled,^[3] from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007.^[4] 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The leading emigrating countries to the United States were Mexico, India, and the Philippines.^[5]

While an influx of new residents from different cultures presents some challenges, "the United States has always been energized by its immigrant populations," said President Bill Clinton in 1998. "America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants [...] They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people."^[6] Cheap airline travel post-1960 facilitated travel to the United States, but migration remains difficult, expensive, and dangerous for those who cross the United States–Mexico border illegally.^[7] Family reunification accounts for approximately two-thirds of legal immigration to the US every year.^[8]

Debates on immigration have called for increasing enforcement of existing laws with regard to illegal immigrants, building a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) U.S.-Mexico border, or creating a new guest worker program. Through much of 2006, the country and Congress was immersed in a debate about these proposals. As of April 2010, few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence was approved.

History

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-nineteenth century, the turn of the twentieth, and post-1965. Each epoch brought distinct national groups, races, and ethnicities to the United States. During the seveneenth century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America.^[9] Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants.^[10] The mid-nineteenth century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early twentieth-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1902.

Historians estimate that less than one million immigrants—perhaps as few as 400,000—crossed the Atlantic during the 17th and 18th centuries.^[11] In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year,^[12] including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States.^[13] The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travellers died.^[14] In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law.^[15]

The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country.^[16] By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.^[17] In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians, and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.^[18] Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.^[19]

Immigration patterns of the 1930s were dominated by the Great Depression, which hit the U.S. hard and lasted over ten years there. In the final prosperous year, 1929, there were 279,678 immigrants recorded,^[20] but in 1933, only 23,068 came to the U.S.^[11] In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.^[21] The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will.^[22] Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.^[23]

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations, which changed the ethnic make-up of the United States.^[24] While European immigrants accounted for nearly 60% of the total foreign population in 1970, they accounted for only 15% in 2000.^[25] Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and again between 1970 and 1990.^[26] In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990,^[27] which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%.^[28] Nearly eight million immigrants came to the United States from 2000 to 2005, more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history.^[29] Almost half entered illegally.^[30] Since 1986, Congress has passed seven amnesties for illegal immigrants.^[31] Hispanic immigrants were among the first victims of the late-2000s recession.^[32] 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence in 2009.^[33]

Contemporary immigration

Until the 1930s, the gender imbalance among legal immigrants was quite sharp, with most legal immigrants being male. As of the 1990s, however, women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants, shifting away from the male-dominated immigration of the past.^[34] Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented.^[35] Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.^[36]

Immigrants are likely to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This phenomenon has held true throughout the history of immigration to the United States.^[37] Three-quarters of immigrants surveyed by Public Agenda said they intended to make the U.S. their permanent home, and that if they had to do it over again, 80% of immigrants say they would still come to the US. In the same study, 80% of immigrants say the government has become tougher on enforcing immigration laws since 9/11, and 30% report that they personally have experienced discrimination.^[38]

Public attitudes about immigration in the U.S. have been heavily influenced by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The number of Americans who took a Gallup poll they wanted immigration restricted increased 20 percentage points after the attacks.^[39] Half of Americans say tighter controls on immigration would do "a great deal" to enhance U.S. national security, according to a Public Agenda survey.^[40]

More than 80 cities in the United States,^[41] including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, have sanctuary policies, which vary locally.^[42]

Demography

The United States admitted more legal immigrants from 1991 to 2000, between ten to eleven million, than in any previous decade. In the most recent decade, the ten million legal immigrants that settled in the U.S. represent an annual growth of only about 0.3% as the U.S. population grew from 249 million to 281 million. By comparison, the highest previous decade was the 1900s, when 8.8 million people arrived, increasing the total U.S. population by one percent every year. Specifically, "nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born." ^[43]

Little Italy in New York, ca.1900.

By 1970 immigrants accounted for 4.7 percent of the US population and rising to 6.2 percent in 1980, with an estimated 12.5 percent to this date.^[44] As of 2010, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 are immigrants or are immigrants' children.^[45] Eight percent of all babies born in the U.S. in 2008 belonged to illegal immigrant parents, according to a recent analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center.^[46]

Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 250,000 in the 1930s, to 2.5 million in the 1950s, to 4.5 million in the 1970s, and to 7.3 million in the 1980s, before resting at about 10 million in the 1990s.^[47] Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States now are at their highest level ever, at just over 37,000,000 legal immigrants. Illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year with a net of at least 700,000 illegal immigrants arriving every year.^[48][49] Immigration led to a 57.4% increase in foreign born population from 1990 to 2000.^[50]

While immigration has increased drastically over the last century, the foreign born share of the population was still higher in 1900 (about 20%) than it is today (about 10%). A number of factors may be attributed to the decrease in the representation of foreign born residents in the United States. Most significant has been the change in the composition of immigrants; prior to 1890, 82% of immigrants came from North and Western Europe. From 1891 to 1920, that number dropped to 25%, with a rise in immigrants from East, Central, and South Europe, summing up to 64%. Animosity towards these different and foreign immigrants rose in the United States, resulting in much legislation to limit immigration.

Crowd at the Philippine Independence Day Parade in New York City.

Contemporary immigrants settle predominantly in seven states, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois, comprising about 44% of the U.S. population as a whole. The combined total immigrant population of these seven states is 70% of the total foreign-born population as of 2000. If current birth rate and immigration rates were to remain unchanged for another 70 to 80 years, the U.S. population would double to nearly 600 million.^[51] The Census Bureau's estimates actually go as high as predicting that there will be one billion Americans in 2100, compared to one million people in 1700 and 5.2 million in 1800.^[52][53]

The top twelve emigrant countries in 2006 were Mexico (173,753), People's Republic of China (87,345), Philippines (74,607), India (61,369), Cuba (45,614), Colombia (43,151), Dominican Republic (38,069), El Salvador (31,783), Vietnam (30,695), Jamaica (24,976), South Korea (24,386), Guatemala (24,146). Other countries comprise an additional 606,370.^[54] In fiscal year 2006, 202 refugees from Iraq were allowed to resettle in the United States.^[55][56]

In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were an estimated 500,000 Hispanics.^[57] The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, one-quarter of the population will be of Hispanic descent.^[58] This demographic shift is largely fueled by immigration from Latin America.^[59][60]

Origin

Rate of immigration to the United States relative to sending countries' population size, 2001-2005

Projected regional growth rates using birth, death, immigration, and emigration rates. Latin America and Caribbean will be growing slower than US by 2024

Top Ten Foreign Countries - Foreign Born Population Among U.S. Immigrants

Immigration by state

Percentage change in Foreign Born Population 1990 to 2000

Source: U.S. Census 1990 and 2000

Effects of immigration

Demographics

The Census Bureau estimates the US population will grow from 281 million in 2000 to 397 million in 2050 with immigration, but only to 328 million with no immigration.^[61] A new report from the Pew Research Center projects that by 2050, non-Hispanic whites will account for 47% of the population, down from the 2005 figure of 67%.^[62] Non-Hispanic whites made up 85% of the population in 1960.^[63] It also foresees the Hispanic population rising from 14% in 2005 to 29% by 2050.^[64] The Asian population is expected to more than triple by 2050. Overall, the population of the United States is due to rise from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million in 2050, with 82% of the increase from immigrants.^[65]

In 35 of the country's 50 largest cities, non-Hispanic whites were at the last census or are predicted to be in the minority.^[66] In California, non-Hispanic whites slipped from 80% of the state's population in 1970 to 42.3% in 2008.^[67][68]

Economic

Immigrants march for more rights in Northern California's largest city, San Jose in 2006.

In a late 1980s study, economists overwhelmingly viewed immigration, including illegal immigration, as a positive for the economy.^[69] According to James Smith, a senior economist at Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation and lead author of the United States National Research Council's study "The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration", immigrants contribute as much as $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year.^[70] The NRC report found that although immigrants, especially those from Latin America, caused a net loss in terms of taxes paid versus social services received, overall immigration was a net economic gain due to an increase in pay for higher-skilled workers, lower prices for goods and services produced by immigrant labor, and more efficiency and lower wages for some owners of capital. The report also notes that although immigrant workers compete with domestic workers for low-skilled jobs, some immigrants specialize in activities that otherwise would not exist in an area, and thus can be beneficial for all domestic residents.^[71] About twenty-one million immigrants, or about fifteen percent of the labor force, hold jobs in the United States; however, the number of unemployed is only seven million, meaning that immigrant workers are not taking jobs from domestic workers, but rather are doing jobs that would not have existed had the immigrant workers not been in the United States.^[72] U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Business Owners: Hispanic-Owned Firms: 2002 indicated that the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States grew to nearly 1.6 million in 2002. Those businesses generated about $222 billion in revenue.^[73] The report notes that the burden of poor immigrants is not born equally among states, and is most heavy in California.^[74] Another claim supporting expanding immigration levels is that immigrants mostly do jobs Americans do not want. A 2006 Pew Hispanic Center report added evidence to support this claim, when they found that increasing immigration levels have not hurt employment prospects for American workers.^[75]

In 2009, a study by the Cato Institute, a free market think tank, found that legalization of low-skilled illegal resident workers in the US would result in a net increase in US GDP of $180 billion over ten years.^[76] Jason Riley notes that because of progressive income taxation, in which the top 1% of earners pay 37% of federal income taxes (even though they actually pay a lower tax percentage based on their income), 60% of Americans collect more in government services than they pay in, which also reflects on immigrants.^[77] In any event, the typical immigrant and his children will pay a net $80,000 more in their lifetime than they collect in government services according to the NAS.^[78]

The Kauffman Foundation’s index of entrepreneurial activity is nearly 40% higher for immigrants than for natives.^[79] Immigrants were involved in the founding of many prominent American high-tech companies, such as Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, and eBay.^[80]

The number of garment factories in Manhattan's Chinatown has fallen from 400 in 2000 to about 150 in 2005. Most of the garment industry has moved to China.^[81]

On the poor end of the spectrum, the "New Americans" report found that low-wage immigration does not, on aggregate, lower the wages of most domestic workers. The report also addresses the question of if immigration affects black Americans differently from the population in general: "While some have suspected that blacks suffer disproportionately from the inflow of low-skilled immigrants, none of the available evidence suggests that they have been particularly hard-hit on a national level. Some have lost their jobs, especially in places where immigrants are concentrated. But the majority of blacks live elsewhere, and their economic fortunes are tied to other factors."^[82]

Robert Samuelson points out that poor immigrants strain public services such as local schools and health care. He points out that "from 2000 to 2006, 41 percent of the increase in people without health insurance occurred among Hispanics."^[83] According to the immigration reduction advocacy group Center for Immigration Studies, 25.8% of Mexican immigrants live in poverty, which is more than double the rate for natives in 1999.^[84] In another report, The Heritage Foundation notes that from 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased by 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million.^[85]

Hispanic immigrants in the United States were hit hard by the subprime mortgage crisis. There was a disproportionate level of foreclosures in some immigrant neighborhoods.^[86] The banking industry provided home loans to undocumented immigrants, viewing it as an untapped resource for growing their own revenue stream.^[87] In October 2008, KFYI reported that according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, five million illegal immigrants held fraudulent home mortgages.^[88] The story was later pulled from their website and replaced with a correction.^[89] The Phoenix Business Journal cited a HUD spokesman saying that there was no basis to news reports that more than five million bad mortgages were held by illegal immigrants, and that the agency had no data showing the number of illegal immigrants holding foreclosed or bad mortgages.^[90]

Social

The largest mass lynching in American history involved the lynching of eleven Italians in New Orleans in 1891.

Benjamin Franklin opposed German immigration, stating that they would not assimilate into the culture.^[91] Irish immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the nativist Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843. It was engendered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants. In 1891, a lynch mob stormed a local jail and hanged several Italians following the acquittal of several Sicilian immigrants alleged to be involved in the murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy. 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. Systematic bias against Japanese and German immigrants emerged during and after World War II. Irish and Jewish immigrants were popular targets early in the 20th century, and most recently, immigrants from Latin American countries are often viewed with hostility. Some Americans have not completely adjusted to the largely non-European immigration and racism does occur. After the September 11 attacks, many Middle-Eastern immigrants and those perceived to be of Middle-Eastern origins were targets of hate crimes.

Racist thinking among and between minority groups does occur;^[92][93] examples of this are conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants, notably in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, and between African Americans and non-white Latino immigrants.^[94][95] There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican prison gangs, as well as significant riots in California prisons where they have targeted each other, for ethnic reasons.^[96][97] There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who have moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by people of Mexican origin, and vice versa.^[98][99] There has also been an increase in violence between non-Hispanic Anglo Americans and Latino immigrants, and between African immigrants and African Americans.^[100]

Political

Immigrants differ on their political views; however, the Democratic Party is considered to be in a far stronger position among immigrants overall.^[101][102] Research shows that religious affiliation can also significantly impact both their social values and voting patterns of immigrants, as well as the broader American population. Hispanic evangelicals, for example, are more strongly conservative than non-Hispanic evangelicals.^[103] This trend is often similar for Hispanics or others strongly identifying with the Catholic Church, a religion that strongly opposes abortion and gay marriage.

Health

The issue of the health of immigrants and the associated cost to the public has been largely discussed. The non-emergency use of emergency rooms ostensibly indicates an incapacity to pay, yet some studies allege disproportionately lower access to unpaid health care by immigrants.^[104] For this and other reasons, there have been various disputes about how much immigration is costing the United States public health system.^[105] University of Maryland economist and Cato Institute scholar Julian Lincoln Simon concluded in 1995 that while immigrants probably pay more into the health system than they take out, this is not the case for elderly immigrants and refugees, who are more dependent on public services for survival.^[106]

Immigration from areas of high incidences of disease is thought to have fueled the resurgence of tuberculosis (TB), chagas, and hepatitis in areas of low incidence.^[107] According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), TB cases among foreign-born individuals remain disproportionately high, at nearly nine times the rate of U.S.-born persons.^[108][109] To reduce the risk of diseases in low-incidence areas, the main countermeasure has been the screening of immigrants on arrival.^[110] HIV/AIDS entered the United States in around 1969, likely through a single infected immigrant from Haiti.^[111][112] Conversely, many new HIV infections in Mexico can be traced back to the United States.^[113] People infected with HIV were banned from entering the United States in 1987 by executive order, but the 1993 statute supporting the ban was lifted in 2009. The executive branch is expected to administratively remove HIV from the list of infectious diseases barring immigration, but immigrants generally would need to show that they would not be a burden on public welfare.^[114] Researchers have also found what is known as the "healthy immigrant effect", in which immigrants in general tend to be healthier than individuals born in the U.S.^[115][116]

Various researchers have criticized the position held by Simon and others that increased U.S. population growth is sustainable. David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), note in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third.^[117][118]

Perceived heavy immigration, especially in the southwest, has led to some fears about population pressures on the water supply in some areas. California continues to grow by more than a half-million a year and is expected to reach 48 million in 2030.^[119] According to the California Department of Water Resources, if more supplies are not found by 2020, residents will face a water shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today.^[120] Los Angeles is a coastal desert able to support at most one million people on its own water.^[121] California is considering using desalination to solve this problem.^[122]

Crime

Empirical studies on links between immigration and crime are mixed. Certain studies have suggested that immigrants are underrepresented in criminal statistics.^[123] An Op-Ed in The New York Times by Harvard University Professor in Sociology Robert J. Sampson says that immigration of Hispanics may in fact be associated with decreased crime.^[124] A 1999 paper by John Hagan and Alberto Palloni estimated that the involvement in crime by Hispanic immigrants are less than that of other citizens.^[125]

Native-born American men between 18-39 are five times more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants in the same demographic.^[126] In a study released by the non-partisan research group The Public Policy Institute of California, immigrants were ten times less likely to be incarcerated than native born Americans.^[127] In his 1999 book Crime and Immigrant Youth, sociologist Tony Waters writes that immigrants themselves are less likely to be arrested and incarcerated; he also noted, however, that the children of some immigrant groups are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. This is a by-product of the strains that emerge between immigrant parents living in poor, inner city neighborhoods.^[128] According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, for example, as of 2001, 4% of Hispanic males in their twenties and thirties were in prison or jail, compared to 1.8% of non-Hispanic white males. Hispanic men are almost four times as likely to go to prison at some point in their lives than non-Hispanic white males, although less likely than non-Hispanic African American males.^[129] There was an estimated 30,000 street gangs and more than 800,000 gang members active in the U.S. in 2007, up from 731,500 in 2002. New immigrants are susceptible to gang influences and activities because of language barriers, employment difficulties, support, protection, and fear.^{[130][131][132][133]}

Education

Forty percent of Ph.D. scientists working in the United States were born abroad, an example of brain drain.^[79] Immigrant children have historically been greatly affected by cultural misunderstanding, language barriers, and feelings of isolation within the school atmosphere. More recently, however, immigrant children are finding a more welcoming school atmosphere. This does not undermine the difficulties immigrants face upon entering U.S. schools; immigrant children maintain their native tongue can leave them feeling disadvantaged within English speaking schools.

Public opinion

In 1982, an opinion poll showed respondents a card listing a number of groups and asked, "Thinking both of what they have contributed to this country and have gotten from this country, for each one tell me whether you think, on balance, they've been a good or a bad thing for this country," which produced the results shown in the table. "By high margins, Americans are telling pollsters it was a very good thing that Poles, Italians, and Jews emigrated to America. Once again, it's the newcomers who are viewed with suspicion. This time, it's the Mexicans, the Filipinos, and the people from the Caribbean who make Americans nervous." ^[135]

In a 2002 study, which took place soon after the September 11 attacks, 55% of Americans favored decreasing legal immigration, 27% favored keeping it at the same level, and 15% favored increasing it.^[136]

In 2006, the immigration-reduction advocacy think tank the Center for Immigration Studies released a poll that found that 68% of Americans think U.S. immigration levels are too high, and just 2% said they are too low. They also found that 70% said they are less likely to vote for candidates that favor increasing legal immigration.^[137] In 2004, 55% of Americans believed legal immigration should remain at the current level or increased and 41% said it should be decreased.^[138] The less contact a native-born American has with immigrants, the more likely one would have a negative view of immigrants.^[138]

One of the most important factors regarding public opinion about immigration is the level of unemployment; anti-immigrant sentiment is highest where unemployment is highest, and vice-versa.^[139]

Legal issues

Laws concerning immigration and naturalization

Laws concerning immigration and naturalization include:

• the 1990 Immigration Act (IMMACT), which limits the annual number of immigrants to 700,000. It emphasizes that family reunification is the main immigration criterion, in addition to employment-related immigration.
• the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)
• the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)

AEDPA and IIRARA exemplify many categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and have imposed mandatory detention for certain types of cases.

Asylum for refugees

In contrast to economic migrants, who generally do not gain legal admission, refugees, as defined by international law, can gain legal status through a process of seeking and receiving asylum, either by being designated a refugee while abroad, or by physically entering the United States and requesting asylum status thereafter. A specified number of legally defined refugees, who either apply for asylum overseas or after arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually. Refugees compose about one-tenth of the total annual immigration to the United States, though some large refugee populations are very prominent.

Since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation, and over than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. Of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as much as the next nine countries combined; for example, Japan accepted sixteen refugees in 1999, while the United States took in 85,010 for resettlement, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States.^[140] Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept these refugees.^[141]

The U.S. will accept 70,000 refugees in fiscal year 2007, and President Bush stated that his eventual goal is a program that resettles 90,000 refugees in the United States each year. In 2006, the State Department officially re-opened the Vietnamese resettlement program. In recent years, the main refugee-sending regions have been Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, and Ethiopia.^[142] The ceiling for refugee resettlement for fiscal year 2008 was 80,000 refugees.^[143] The United States expected to admit a minimum of 17,000 Iraqi refugees during fiscal year 2009.^[144]

In 2009, President Bush set the admissions ceiling at 80,000 refugees.^[145] In FY 2008, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was appropriated over $655 million for the longer-term services provided to refugees after their arrival in the US.^[146]

In 1991-92, Bhutan expelled roughly 100,000 ethnic Nepalis, most of whom have been living in seven refugee camps in eastern Nepal. The United States has worked towards resettling more than 60,000 of these refugees in the third country settlement programme.^[147]

Miscellaneous documented immigration

In removal proceedings in front of an immigration judge, cancellation of removal is a form of relief that is available for certain long-time residents of the United States. It allows a person being faced with the threat of removal to obtain permanent residence if that person has been physically present in the U.S. for at least ten years, has had good moral character during that period, has not been convicted of certain crimes, and can show that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his or her U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, children, or parent. This form of relief is only available when a person is served with a Notice to Appear to appear in the proceedings in the Immigration Court. Many persons have received their green cards in this way even when removal or deportation was imminent.

Members of Congress may submit private bills granting residency to specific named individuals. A special committee vets the requests, which require extensive documentation. Congress has bestowed the title of "Honorary Citizen of the United States" to six people. The only two living recipients were Winston Churchill and Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, while the other instances were posthumous honors. The Central Intelligence Agency has the statutory authority to admit up to one hundred people a year outside of normal immigration procedures, and to provide for their settlement and support. The program is called "PL110", named after the legislation that created the agency, Public Law 110, the Central Intelligence Agency Act.

Immigration in popular culture

1888 cartoon in Puck attacks businessmen for welcoming large numbers of low paid immigrants, leaving the American workingman unemployed^[148].

The history of immigration to the United States is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in the American folklore, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to "The Song of Myself" to Neil Diamond's "America" to the animated feature An American Tail^[149].

In the 1880s to 1910s, vaudeville dominated the popular image of immigrants, with very popular caricature portrayals of ethnic groups. The specific features of these caricature became widely accepted as accurate portrayals.^[150]

In The Melting Pot (1908), playwright Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) explored issues that dominated Progressive Era debates about immigration policies. Zangwill's theme of the positive benefits of the American melting pot resonated widely in popular culture and literary and academic circles in the 20th century; his cultural symbolism - in which he situated immigration issues - likewise informed American cultural imagining of immigrants for decades, as exemplified by Hollywood films^[151][152]. The popular culture's image of ethnic celebrities often includes stereotypes about immigrant groups. For example, Frank Sinatra's public image as a superstar contained important elements of the American Dream while simultaneously incorporating stereotypes about Italian Americans that were based in nativist and Progressive responses to immigration^[153].

Maggie and Jiggs from Bringing Up Father (January 7, 1940).

The process of assimilation was often a theme of popular culture. For example, "lace-curtain Irish" referred to middle-class Irish Americans desiring assimilation into mainstream society in counterpoint to an older, more raffish "shanty Irish". The occasional malapropisms and left-footed social blunders of these upward mobiles were gleefully lampooned in vaudeville, popular song, and the comic strips of the day such as "Bringing Up Father", starring Maggie and Jiggs, which ran in daily newspapers for 87 years (1913 to 2000)^[154][155]. In recent years the popular culture has paid special attention to Mexican immigration^[156]

Immigration in literature

The Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg wrote a series of four novels describing one Swedish family's migration from Småland to Minnesota in the late 19th century, a destiny shared by almost one million people. These novels have been translated into English (The Emigrants, 1951, Unto a Good Land, 1954, The Settlers, 1961, The Last Letter Home, 1961). The musical Kristina från Duvemåla by ex-ABBA members Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson is based on this story.^[157][158]

Interpretive perspectives

The Statue of Liberty was a common sight to many immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island

The American Dream is the belief that through hard work and determination, any United States immigrant can achieve a better life, usually in terms of financial prosperity and enhanced personal freedom of choice.^[159] According to historians, the rapid economic and industrial expansion of the U.S. is not simply a function of being a resource rich, hard working, and inventive country, but the belief that anybody could get a share of the country's wealth if he or she was willing to work hard^[160]. This dream has been a major factor in attracting immigrants to the United States.^[161]

Legal perspectives

University of North Carolina law professor Hiroshi Motomura has identified three approaches the United States has taken to the legal status of immigrants in his book Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. The first, dominant in the 19th century, treated immigrants as in transition; in other words, as prospective citizens. As soon as people declared their intention to become citizens, they received multiple low-cost benefits, including the eligibility for free homesteads in the Homestead Act of 1869, and in many states, the right to vote. The goal was to make the country more attractive, so large numbers of farmers and skilled craftsmen would settle new lands. By the 1880s, a second approach took over, treating newcomers as "immigrants by contract". An implicit deal existed where immigrants who were literate and could earn their own living were permitted in restricted numbers. Once in the United States, they would have limited legal rights, but were not allowed to vote until they became citizens, and would not be eligible for the New Deal government benefits available in the 1930s. The third and more recent policy is "immigration by affiliation", which Motomura argues is the treatment which depends on how deeply-rooted people have become in the country. An immigrant who applies for citizenship as soon as permitted, has a long history of working in the United States, and has significant family ties, is more deeply affiliated and can expect better treatment.^[162]

Footnotes

Further reading

Early period

• Alexander, June Granatir. Daily Life in Immigrant America, 1870–1920: How the Second Great Wave of Immigrants Made Their Way in America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007. xvi, 332 pp.)
• Archdeacon, Thomas J. Becoming American: An Ethnic History (1984)
• Bankston, Carl L. III and Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, eds. Immigration in U.S. History Salem Press, (2006)
• Berthoff, Rowland Tappan. British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790-1950 (1953).
• Bodnar, John. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America Indiana University Press, (1985)
• Briggs, John. An Italian Passage: Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-1930 Yale University Press, (1978)
• Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 University of Washington Press, (1988)
• Daniels, Roger. Coming to America 2nd ed. (2005)
• Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door : American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (2005)
• Diner, Hasia. The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 (2004)
• Diner, Hasia. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (2003)
• Eltis, David; Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives (2002) emphasis on migration to Americas before 1800
• Gjerde, Jon, ed. Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History (1998) primary sources and excerpts from scholars.
• Glazier, Michael, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (1999), articles by over 200 experts, covering both Catholics and Protestants.
• Greene, Victor R. A Singing Ambivalence: American Immigrants Between Old World and New, 1830-1930 (2004), coving musical traditions
• Isaac Aaronovich Hourwich. Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States (1912) full text online]
• Joseph, Samuel; Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 Columbia University Press, (1914)
• Kulikoff, Allan; From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000), details on colonial immigration
• Meagher, Timothy J. The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. (2005)
• Miller, Kerby M. Emigrants and Exiles (1985), influential scholarly interpretation of Irish immigration
• Motomura, Hiroshi. Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (2006), legal history
• Pochmann, Henry A. and Arthur R. Schultz; German Culture in America, 1600-1900: Philosophical and Literary Influences (1957)
• Sowell, Thomas. Ethnic America: A History (1981), by a conservative economist
• Thernstrom, Stephan, ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980) (ISBN 0-674-37512-2), the standard reference, covering all major groups and most minor groups
• Waters, Tony. Crime and Immigrant Youth Sage Publications (1999), a sociological analysis.
• U.S. Immigration Commission, Abstracts of Reports, 2 vols. (1911); the full 42-volume report is summarized (with additional information) in Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lauck, The Immigrant Problem (1912; 6th ed. 1926)
• Wittke, Carl. We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (1939), covers all major groups
• Yans-McLaughlin, Virginia ed. Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology, and Politics Oxford University Press. (1990)

Recent: post 1965

• Beasley, Vanessa B. ed. Who Belongs in America?: Presidents, Rhetoric, And Immigration (2006)
• Bogen, Elizabeth. Immigration in New York (1987)
• Bommes, Michael and Andrew Geddes. Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State (2000)
• Borjas, George J. ed. Issues in the Economics of Immigration (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report) (2000) 9 statistical essays by scholars;
• Borjas, George. Friends or Strangers (1990)
• Borjas, George J. "Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs" International Migration Review 2002 36(4): 1093-1123. ISSN 0197-9183; finds very steep decline of immigrant welfare participation in California.
• Briggs, Vernon M., Jr. Immigration Policy and the America Labor Force Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
• Briggs, Vernon M., Jr. Mass Immigration and the National Interest (1992)
• Cooper, Mark A. Moving to the United States of America and Immigration. 2008 IBSN 741446251
• Fawcett, James T., and Benjamin V. Carino. Pacific Bridges: The New Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands . New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1987.
• Foner, Nancy. In A New Land: A Comparative View Of Immigration (2005)
• Levinson, David and Melvin Ember, eds. American Immigrant Cultures 2 vol (1997) covers all major and minor groups
• Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (1996)
• Meier, Matt S. and Gutierrez, Margo, eds. The Mexican American Experience : An Encyclopedia (2003) (ISBN 0-313-31643-0)
• Mohl, Raymond A. "Latinization in the Heart of Dixie: Hispanics in Late-twentieth-century Alabama" Alabama Review 2002 55(4): 243-274. ISSN 0002-4341
• Portes, Alejandro, and Robert L. Bach. Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. University of California Press, 1985.
• Portes, Alejandro, and Jozsef Borocz. "Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on Its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation." International Migration Review 23 (1989): 606-30.
• Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben Rumbaut. Immigrant America. University of California Press, 1990.
• Reimers, David. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America Columbia University Press, (1985).
• Smith, James P, and Barry Edmonston, eds. The Immigration Debate: Studies on the Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1998), online version
• Zhou, Min and Carl L. Bankston III Growing Up American: How VIetnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States Russell Sage Foundation. (1998)

See also

• European colonization of the Americas
• United States immigration statistics
• Demographics of the United States
• History of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States
• United States visas
• Illegal immigration to the United States

External links

History

• Immigrant Servants Database
• Asian-Nation: Early Asian Immigration to the U.S.
• Irish Catholic Immigration to America
• Scotch-Irish Immigration to Colonial America

Immigration policy

• Brookings Institute: Immigration Policy
• Urban Institute: Immigration Studies
• The Real Political Purpose of the ICE Raids from Dollars & Sense
• Federation for American Immigration Reform

Current immigration

• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Cornell University's Legal Information Institute: Immigration
• Yearbook of Immigration Statistics - United States Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics 2004, 2005 editions available.
• "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2005" M. Hoefer, N. Rytina, C. Campbell (2006) "Population Estimates (August). U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics.

Economic impact

• The New Political Economy of Immigration by Tom Barry in Dollars & Sense magazine, January/February 2009
• Immigrants and the Labor Market from Dollars & Sense magazine, May/June 2006
• Immigrants in Black & White: A Review of “Communities Without Borders", The Indypendent, Susan Chenelle

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