Immigration to the United States
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]
Recent 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.[citation needed]
History
Main article: History of immigration to the United States
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 seventeenth 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.Historians estimate that less than one million immigrants—perhaps as few as 400,000—crossed the Atlantic during the 17th and 18th centuries.[11] The 1790 Act limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians in the 1950s.[12] In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year,[13] 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.[14] The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died.[15] In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law.[16]
The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country.[17] By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.[18] 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.[19] Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.[20]
Polish immigrants working on the farm, 1909
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,[21] 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.[22] 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.[23] Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.[24]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.[25] While European immigrants accounted for nearly 60% of the total foreign population in 1970, they accounted for only 15% in 2000.[26] Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and again between 1970 and 1990.[27] In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990,[28] which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%.[29] Appointed by Bill Clinton,[30] the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform called for reducing legal immigration to about 550,000 a year.[31]
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.[32] Almost half entered illegally.[33] Since 1986, Congress has passed seven amnesties for illegal immigrants.[34] In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed immigration reform that gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants in the country.[35] Hispanic immigrants were among the first victims of the late-2000s recession,[36] but since the recession's end in June 2009, immigrants posted a net gain of 656,000 jobs.[37] 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence in 2009.[38]
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.[39] Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented.[40] Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.[41]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.[42] Three-quarters of immigrants surveyed by Public Agenda[when?] 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.[43]
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[clarification needed].[44] 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.[45]
More than 80 cities in the United States,[46] 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.[47]
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." [48]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.[49] As of 2010, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 are immigrants or are immigrants' children.[50] 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.[51]
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.[52] 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.[53][54] Immigration led to a 57.4% increase in foreign born population from 1990 to 2000.[55]
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.
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.[56] 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.[57][58]
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.[59] In fiscal year 2006, 202 refugees from Iraq were allowed to resettle in the United States.[60][61]
In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were an estimated 500,000 Hispanics.[62] The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, one-quarter of the population will be of Hispanic descent.[63] This demographic shift is largely fueled by immigration from Latin America.[64][65]
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