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'Immigration to the United States of America' is the movement of non-residents to the United States, and has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the American history even though the foreign born have never been more than 16% of the population since about 1675. In 1900, when the US population was 76 million, there were about 500,000 Hispanics.^[1] Of those who immigrated between 2000 and 2005, 58% were from Latin America.
The economic, social and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding race, ethnicity, religion, economic benefits, job growth, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, levels of criminality, nationalities, political loyalties, moral values, and work habits. As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined.^[2]
Given the distance of North America from Eurasia, most historical U.S. immigration was a risky venture, which inspired dreams of prosperity and opportunity not found in the Old World. Since the advent of international jet travel in the 1960s, travel to the United States has been made easy by plane, but remains difficult, expensive and dangerous for some illegally crossing the Mexican border at unauthorized points.
Immigration boomed to a 57.4% increase in foreign born population from 1000 to 2000. The public started to focus on existing immigration law and immigration outside the law, especially the over 7.5 million illegal alien workers with more than 12 million household members already inside the U.S. and another 700,000 to perhaps more than 850,000 predicted for each coming year. At issue was whether the immigration laws and enforcement system were working as the public wanted them to work. Illegal household members from Mexico alone were estimated at over 8 million.^[3].
Bureau figures show the U.S. population grew by 2.8 million between July 1, 2004, and July 1, 2005. Hispanics accounted for 1.3 million of that increase. If current birth rate and immigration rates were to remain unchanged for another 60 to 70 years, US population would double to some 600 millions. The Census Bureau's estimates actually go as high as predicting that there will be one billion Americans in 2100.^[4] United States had only one million people in 1700, and 5.2 million in 1800.^[5] Census statistics also show that 45% of children under age 5 are from a racial or ethnic minority.^[6][7]
There were 1,266,264 immigrants who were granted legal residence in 2006, up from 601,516 in 1987, 849,807 in 2000, and 1,122,373 in 2005. The top twelve sending countries in 2006, by country of birth: Mexico - 173,753, China, People’s Republic - 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 - 606,370.^[8] In fiscal year 2006, just 202 refugees from Iraq were allowed to resettle in the United States.^[9][10]
The Bureau of the Census projects that by 2050 one-quarter of the population will be Hispanic. In 35 of the country's 50 largest cities, non-Hispanic whites are or soon will be in the minority.^[11] In California, non-Hispanic whites slipped from 80% of the state's population in 1970 to 43% in 2006.^[12] This demographic shift is partly fueled by immigration.^[13][14]
Proposals were put forward to criminalize illegal immigrants, to build a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico,and to create a new guest worker program. Throughout most of 2006, the country and Congress saw itself immersed in a debate about these proposals. As of March 2007, few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence was approved. Many cities, including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, have adopted “sanctuary” ordinances banning police from asking people about their immigration status.^[15]

Contents

History

Population and immigration 15,000 BC - ?

Population and immigration 1600-1790 AD

Population in 1790

Immigration 1790 to 1849

Immigration 1850 to 1930

Immigration 1930 to 2000

Immigration summary 1830 to 2000

Contemporary immigration

Demography

Origin

Immigration to states

Effects of immigration

Crime

Legal issues

Laws concerning immigration and naturalization

Visas

Asylum for refugees

Miscellaneous documented immigration

Illegal immigration

Immigration in popular culture

Immigration in literature

Quotations

Interpretive perspectives

Legal perspectives

Media

See also

General

Laws

History

United States

Controversy

References

Secondary sources

Recent: post 1965

External links

History

Immigration policy

Current immigration

Economic impact

History

Population and immigration 15,000 BC - ?

Main articles: Historical migration

The first humans in North America are believed to have migrated from northeast Asia, via the 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 the various indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Population and immigration 1600-1790 AD

Main articles: Colonial North America north of Rio Grande

Main articles: British colonization of the Americas

Main articles: Thirteen Colonies

Main articles: European colonization of the Americas

Many speculate that the Ancient Norse seafarers discovered North America centuries before the British. However, the first successful English colony in what is now the United States 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. These constituted the southern colonies.
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 1628 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 Applachian region. It is believed the number of Scottish Americans could be in the region of 20 million and Scots-Irish Americans at 27 million.
The mostly agricultural Southern 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. Their wages they earned going 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 these settlers 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 in 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) ^[16]. 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% (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 (est. 1626, taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (estabished 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.^[17]. 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 offences 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.^[18] 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.^[19].
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.
All these settlements, while different in detail, 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.
All the colonies, after they were started, 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.[1]
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.

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.

U.S. Historical Populations
Country	Immigrants Before 1790	Population 1790 -1
Africa -2	360,000	757,000
England ★	230,000	2,100,000
Ulster Scot-Irish ★	135,000	300,000
Germany -3	103,000	270,000
Scotland ★	48,500	150,000
Ireland ★	8,000	(Incl. in Scot-Irish)
Netherlands	6,000	100,000
Wales ★	4,000	10,000
France	3,000	15,000
Jews -4	1,000	2,000
Sweden	500	2,000
Other -5	50,000	200,000
Total -6	950,000	3,900,000

# Data From Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPS)
# Several West African regions were the home to most African immigrants. Population from US 1790 Census
# Germany in this time period consists of a large number of separate countries, the largest of which was Prussia.
# Jewish settlers were from several European countries.
# 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.
# 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.
Already by 1790 the ancestry question is starting to become meaningless as many people from many different countries intermarry in each generation and nearly all these ancestries are starting to merge to become ''American''. The total white population in 1790 was about 80% British ancestry and roughly doubles by natural increase every 25 years. The native born population of the U.S. has never fallen below 85% of the population after about 1675--100 years before the American Revolution.
Relentless population expansion pushed the U.S. frontier to the Pacific by 1848. Given the U.S. geography, most immigrants came long distances to settle in the U.S. However the Irish leaving Canada for the US in the 1840s, the French Canadians who came down from Quebec after 1860, and the Mexicans who came north after 1911, found it easy to move back and forth.

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 1845-1919 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.

Population and Foreign Born 1790 to 1849 Census Population, Immigrants per Decade
Census	Population	Immigrants-1	Foreign Born	%
1790	3,918,000	60,000
1800	5,236,000	60,000
1810	7,036,000	60,000
1820	10,086,000	60,000
1830	12,785,000	143,000	200,000 -2	1.6%
1840	17,018,000	599,000	800,000 -2	4.7%
1850	23,054,000	1,713,000	2,244,000	9.7%

The number of immigrants from 1830 on are from immigration records. The census of 1850 was the first census in which place of birth was asked. It is probably a reasonable estimate that the foreign born population in the U.S. reached its minimum in about 1815 at something like 100,000 or 1.4% of the population. By 1815, most of the immigrants that arrived before the American Revolution had passed on, and there had been almost no new immigration.
# ''The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are estimates.''
# ''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, Europe and caused a mass migration within the US, resulting in the state of California being admitted to the union on September 9, 1850, with a population of about 90,000.

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.
Irish immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the nativist Know Nothing movement, originated 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.^[20][21]

Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians left Quebec to emigrate 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 years 1910 to 1920 were 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 immigrating between 1820 and 1980. About a third of them returned to Italy, after working an average of five years in the US.
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 through the 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 30s, 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 unobjective and failed to differentiate between distinct cultural attributes
The Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, and the Immigration Act of 1924.
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.
'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 and 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 [2] 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.

Immigration 1930 to 2000

Immigration patterns of the 1930s are 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 least prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.
The National Origins Formula was established in 1929. 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.
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 UK, 171,000 from Canada and 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 [3]. 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. Truman signed the first DP act on June 25, 1948, allowing entry by 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 is a Communist or 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 starts the Korean War and leaves 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 begins 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 aliens to Mexico. [4]. 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 exaggerated by border patrol officials who hoped to scare illegal workers into flight 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 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 US was taking 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 are already here sponsor 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 Philippines 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. The Cuban American family continues 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[5])
(See: Illegal immigration to the United States)

Immigration summary 1830 to 2000

According to the U.S. Census, the top ten countries of birth of the foreign born population in the U.S. since 1830 are shown below. These numbers show the foreign population in each census and people will usually show up for several census. Blank entries simply means that they did not make it into the top ten for that census, and not that there is ‘’no’’ data from that census. The 1830 numbers are from immigration statistics as listed in the 2004 Year Book of Immigration Statistics [6].
★ 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 [7] Population numbers are in thousands.

Country/Year	1830 ★	1850	1880	1900	1930	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000
Austria						305	214
Bohemia			85
Canada	2	148	717	1,180	1,310	953	812	843	745	678
China			104							1,391
Cuba							439	608	737	952
Czechoslovakia					492
Dominican Republic										692
El Salvador										765
France	9	54	107
Germany	8	584	1,967	2,663	1,609	990	833	849	712
Holland	1	10
Hungary						245
India										1,007
Ireland	54	962	1,855	1,615	745	339
Italy				484	1,790	1,257	1,009	832	581
Korea								290	568	701
Mexico	11	13			641	576	760	2,199	4,298	7,841
Norway		13	182	336
Pakistan										724
Philippines								501	913	1,222
Poland					1,269	748	548	418
Russia/Soviet Union				424	1,154	691	463	406
Sweden			194	582	595
Switzerland	3	13	89
United Kingdom	27	379	918	1,168	1,403	833	686	669	640
Vietnam									543	863
Total Foreign Born	108 ★	2,244	6,679	10,341	14,204	10,347	9,619	14,079	19,763	31,100
% Foreign Born	0.8% ★	9.7%	13.3%	13.6%	11.6%	5.8%	4.7%	6.2%	7.9%	11.1%
Native Born	12,677	20,947	43,476	65,653	108,571	168,978	193,591	212,466	228,946	250,321
% Native Born	99.2%	90.3%	86.7%	86.4%	88.4%	94.2%	95.3%	93.8%	92.1%	88.9%
Total Population	12,785	23,191	50,155	75,994	122,775	179,325	203,210	226,545	248,709	281,421
	1830 ★	1850	1880	1900	1930	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000

Contemporary immigration

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 told the Gallup poll they wanted immigration restricted increased 20 percentage points after the attacks.[8] 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.[9]
Public opinion surveys suggest that Americans see both the good and bad sides of immigration at the same time.[10] A June 2006 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found the public evenly divided on the fundamental question of whether immigration helps or hurts the country, with 44 percent saying it helps and 45 percent saying it hurts the U.S.[11] Surveys do show that the U.S. public has a far more positive outlook about legal immigration than illegal immigration. The public is less willing to provide government services or legal protections to illegal immigrants. When survey data is examined by race, African Americans are both more willing to extend government services to illegal immigrants and more worried about competition for jobs, according to the Pew Research Center.[12]
Three-quarters of immigrants surveyed by Public Agenda said they intend to make the U.S. their permanent home. If they had it to do over again, 80 percent of immigrants say they would still come to the U.S. But half of immigrants say the government has become tougher on enforcing immigration laws since 9/11 and three in 10 report they have personally experienced discrimination.[13]

Demography

Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 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. After 2000 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 now are at their highest level ever at over 35,000,000 legal immigrants. Illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year 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[14]) Contemporary immigrants settle predominantly in seven states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois. These are all high foreign born population states, together comprising about 44% of the US population as a whole. The combined total immigrant population of these seven states is much higher than what would be proportional, with 70% of the total foreign-born population as of 2000.

Origin

Projected immigration 2000, 2004 and 2010:

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

Country	#/year	2000	2004	2010	2010, %
Canada	24,200	678,000	774,800	920,000	2.3%
China	50,900	1,391,000	1,594,600	1,900,000	4.7%
Cuba	14,800	952,000	1,011,200	1,100,000	2.7%
Dominican Republic	24,900	692,000	791,600	941,000	2.3%
El Salvador	33,500	765,000	899,000	1,100,000	2.7%
India	59,300	1,007,000	1,244,200	1,600,000	4.0%
Korea	17,900	701,000	772,600	880,000	2.2%
Mexico	175,900	7,841,000	8,544,600	9,600,000	23.7%
Philippines	47,800	1,222,000	1,413,200	1,700,000	4.2%
Ireland	33,700	863,000	997,800	1,200,000	3.0%
Total Pop. Top 10	498,900	16,112,000	18,747,600	21,741,000	53.7%
Total Foreign Born	940,000	31,100,000	34,860,000	40,500,000	100%

Historical Data from 2000 U.S. Census and 2004 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics

# The average number of legal immigrants/year immigrating from 2000 to 2004
# The number of foreign born immigrants in the U.S. from 2000 census
# Year 2004 foreign born. Year 2000 foreign born plus 2000 to 2004 immigration
# Year 2010 foreign born projected assuming average number per year is maintained
# Percent of foreign born from this country
# Legal immigration numbers as reported to immigration authorities only
# Estimated illegal immigration numbers.^[22]

Immigration to states

Percentage change in Foreign Born Population 1990 to 2000

North Carolina	273.7%	South Carolina	132.1%	Mississippi	95.8%	Wisconsin	59.4%	Vermont	32.5%
Georgia	233.4%	Minnesota	130.4%	Washington	90.7%	New Jersey	52.7%	Connecticut	32.4%
Nevada	202.0%	Idaho	121.7%	Texas	90.2%	Alaska	49.8%	New Hampshire	31.5%
Arkansas	196.3%	Kansas	114.4%	New Mexico	85.8%	Michigan	47.3%	Ohio	30.7%
Utah	170.8%	Iowa	110.3%	Virginia	82.9%	Wyoming	46.5%	Hawaii	30.4%
Tennessee	169.0%	Oregon	108.0%	Missouri	80.8%	Pennsylvania	37.6%	North Dakota	29.0%
Nebraska	164.7%	Alabama	101.6%	South Dakota	74.6%	California	37.2%	Rhode Island	25.4%
Colorado	159.7%	Delaware	101.6%	Maryland	65.3%	New York	35.6%	West Virginia	23.4%
Arizona	135.9%	Oklahoma	101.2%	Florida	60.6%	Massachusetts	34.7%	Montana	19.0%
Kentucky	135.3%	Indiana	97.9%	Illinois	60.6%	Louisiana	32.6%	Maine	1.1%

Source: U.S. Census 1990 and 2000

Average change in U.S. from 1990 to 2000 was a 57.4% increase in foreign population.
See:Census 2003 publications [18] for more complete information.

Effects of immigration

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.^[23] 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 Hispanic-owned businesses generated about $222 billion in revenue.^[24]
In 2002, Asian American businesses amounted to over 1.1 million. Asian-owned businesses employ more than 2.2 million persons and earn more than $326 billion in business revenues. Asian firms also account for 5% of nonfarm businesses, 2% of their employment and 1.4% of their receipts in the U.S.^[25] Compared to their population base, Asian Americans today are well represented in the professional sector and tend to earn higher wages, especially in technology and business.^[26] Some refer to Asian Americans as a model minority because the Asian American culture contains a high work ethic, respect for elders and high valuation of family. Statistics such as household income and low incarceration rate are also discussed as positive aspects of Asian Americans.^[27]
Immigrants differ on their political views. For example, many Cubans and Colombians tend to favor conservative political ideologies and support the Republicans, while Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Asian Americans ^[28] lean more towards the Democratic Party; however, because the latter groups are far more numerous (Mexicans alone are nearly 60% of Hispanics), the Democratic Party is considered to be in a far stronger position among immigrants overall.^[29]
Minority racism is sometimes considered controversial because of theories of power in society. Racist thinking among and between minority groups does occur, for example conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants (notably in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots) or between blacks and Hispanic immigrants.^[30][31] There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican prison gangs and significant riots in California prisons where Mexican inmates and African Americans have targeted each other particularly, based on racial reasons.^[32][33] There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who have moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by people of Mexican descent, and vice versa.^[34][35] There has also been an increase in racial violence between whites and Hispanic immigrants^[36] and between African immigrants and American blacks.^[37]
Immigration from areas of high incidence is thought to have fueled the resurgence of tuberculosis (TB), chagas, and hepatitis in areas of low incidence.^[38] 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.^[39][40] To reduce the risk of diseases in low-incidence areas, the main countermeasure has been the screening of immigrants on arrival.^[41]
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), place in theirs 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. Current U.S. population of more than 300 million and U.S. population growth of approximately three million people each year, partly fuelled by immigration, are unsustainable, says study.^{[42] [43]}
California population continues to grow by more than a half million a year and is expected to reach 48 million in 2030. According to the California Department of Water Resources, if more supplies aren’t found by 2020, residents will face a water shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today.^[44] Los Angeles is a coastal desert able to support at most one million people on its own water.^[45] California is considering using desalination to solve this problem.^[46]
Pew Hispanic Center found that immigrants mostly do jobs Americans don't want.^[47] The 1997 study by the National Science Foundation analyzed the economic effects of immigration. Their findings include:

Education, Income and Taxes
Source of Immigrant	Europe/ Canada	Asia	Latin America	Other	U.S. / CA
Years of Education ★	14.2	14.7	9.2	12+	14.4
Household Income ★	$42k	$57k	$32k	$42k	42k
Effective Federal tax rate ★ ★	18.7%	22%	5%	18.7%	18.7%
Effective State tax rate ★ ★ ★	10%	12%	9%	10%	10.9%
Average Federal taxes	$7.9k	$12.5k	$1.6k	$7.9k	$7.9k
Average State taxes	$4.2k	$6.8k	$2.9	$4.2k	$4.5k
'Source:' ★ Census data [20] ★ ★ Average federal tax data from CBO estimates of effective Federal tax rates [21] ★ ★ ★ State taxes are from California Statistical Abstract [22] Note: Most of the Federal and state taxes are paid by households earning significantly more than average.

National Science Foundation Immigrant Economics Federal State Local Net Annual Gain (Cost) per Household [1996]
Source of Immigrant	Europe/ Canada	%	Asia	%	Latin America ★	%	Other	%	All ★ ★	Hshlds.	Total Cost ★ ★ ★ $Billions
California	$1,631	26%	$1,081	25%	($7,206)	43%	$3,313	6%	($2.206)	9.2 mill.	($20.0)
New Jersey	$449	26%	$2,022	25%	($5,625)	43%	$3,052	6%	($1,613)	9.2 mill.	($15.0)
Illegal Immigrant Economics 2005 ★ ★ ★ ★ Gain or (Cost) per household and Total Cost
California	$1,631	6%	$1,081	9%	($7,206)	81%	$3,313	4%	($5,509)	4 mill.	($22.0)
New Jersey	$449	6%	$2,022	9%	($5,625)	81%	$3,052	4%	($4,225)	4 mill.	($17.0)
National Science Foundation Immigrant Economics Federal, State, Local Total Net Annual Gain (Cost) Updated to [2005]
Source of Immigrant	Europe/ Canada		Asia		Latin America ★		Other		All ★ ★		Total Cost ★ ★ ★
Immigrants to 2005 ★ ★ ★ ★	$Billions	%	$Billions	%	$Billions	%	$Billions	%	Households		$Billions
All to '96 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★	$2.5	26%	$3.6	25%	($25.3)	43%	$1.8	6%	9.2	million	($18.0)
Legal ‘97-05	$0.5	17%	$1.4	33%	($7.2)	43%	$0.6	6%	2.6	million	($5.0)
Illegal ‘97-05	$0.2	6%	$0.3	9%	($12.1)	81%	$0.3	4%	~2.3	million	($11.0)
TOTAL 2005	$3.2		$5.3		($44.6)		$2.7		14.1	million	($34.0)
'Source:' ''The New Americans'', National Science Foundation Table 6.4, pg 284[23] ★ Red data in parenthesis means this is the calculated cost over and above tax payments by legal and illegal immigrants to other taxpayers per household [3] Total costs considered average of New Jersey and California state calulations. No adjustments for price or tax changes since 1996, assumes 3/household; percent distribution info from Pew Hispanic ★ ★ All costs are the net prorated costs for all immigration. ★ ★ ★ Total costs calculated for all U.S. non-citizen immigrants, legal and illegal, 9.2 million households 1996 ★ ★ ★ ★ All Immigrants to 2005 in millions, Legal immigrants from Immigration Yearbook 2005 Table 3, Illegal immigrant info from Pew Hispanic ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Costs average of California and New Jersey Data indicates the number of illegal immigrants has been equal or greater than legal immigration since about 1995. Foreign born citizens granted citizenship not included.

Crime

The bulk of empirical studies the last century have found that immigrants typically are underrepresented in criminal statistics.^[48] 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.^[49]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.^[50] According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of 2001, 4% of Hispanic males in their twenties and thirties were in prison or jail - as compared to 1.8% of white males.^[51]
Sociologist Tony Waters in his 1999 book ''Crime and Immigrant Youth'' agreed with others that immigrants themselves are less likely to be arrested and incarcerated. However, he also noted, that the children of some immigrant groups in the United States 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, and their sons.
There were an estimated 25,000 street gangs and more than 750,000 gang members active across the USA in 2004, up from 731,500 in 2002.^[52] By 1999, Hispanics accounted for 46% of all gang members, Blacks 31%, Whites 13%, and Asian 7%.^[53]

Legal issues

Laws concerning immigration and naturalization

The first naturalization law in the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character" who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year. In 1795 this was increased to five years residence and three years after notice of intent to apply for citizenship, and again to 14 years residence and five years notice of intent in 1798.
The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1865, protects children born in the United States. The phrase: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" was interpreted by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case ''United States v. Wong Kim Ark'' as covering everyone born in the U.S. regardless of the citizenship of the parents, with the exception of the children of diplomats. See the articles ''jus soli'' (birthplace) and ''jus sanguinis'' (bloodline) for further discussion.
The next significant change in the scope of naturalization law came in 1870, when the law was broadened to allow African-Americans to be naturalized. Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization but not from living in the United States. There were also significant restrictions on some Asians at the state level, for example in California, non-citizen Asians were not allowed to own land. Since a significant number of people never go through naturalization, once they are authorized to live in the US, this restriction for most was merely a formality.
After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the 1870s, who joined the 105,000 who had immigrated between 1850 and 1870, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which specifically limited further Chinese immigration. Chinese had immigrated to the Western United States as a result of unsettled conditions in China, the availability of jobs working on railroads, and the Gold Rush that was going on at that time in California. The xenophobic "Yellow Peril" expression became popular to justify racism against Asians.
The act excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for 10 years and was the first immigration law passed by Congress that targeted a specific ethnic group. Laborers in the United States and laborers with work visas received a certificate of residency and were allowed to travel in and out of the United States. Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The act was renewed in 1892 by the Geary Act for another 10 years, and in 1902 with no terminal date. It was repealed in 1943, although large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until 1965.
The Empire of Japan's State Department negotiated the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907, a protocol where Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to her citizens who wanted to emigrate to the U.S. In practice the Japanese government compromised with its prospective emigrants and continued to give passports to the Territory of Hawaii where many Japanese resided. Once in Hawaii it was easy for the Japanese to continue on to Japanese settlements on the west coast if they so desired. In the decade of 1901 to 1910, 129,000 Japanese immigrated to the U.S. or Hawaii, nearly all were males and on five year work contracts and 117,000 more came in the decades from 1911 to 1930. How many of them stayed and how many returned at the end of their contracts is unknown but it is estimated that about one-half returned. Again this immigrant flow was at least 80% male and the demand for female Japanese immigrants almost immediately arose. This need was met in part by what are called "postcard wives" who immigrated to new husbands who had chosen them on the basis of their pictures. (Similar marriages also occurred in nearly all cultures throughout the female-starved West). The Japanese government finally quit issuing passports to the Territory of Hawaii for single women in the 1920s.
Congress also banned persons because of their health or lack of education. An 1882 law banned entry of "lunatics" and infectious disease carriers. After President William McKinley was assassinated by a second-generation immigrant anarchist, Congress enacted the Anarchist Exclusion Act in 1901 to exclude known anarchist agitators. A literacy requirement was added in Immigration Act of 1917.
In 1921, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration. The quotas were based on the number of foreign-born residents of each nationality who were living in the United States as of the 1910 census.
The crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship, since zealous prosecutors argued Indian Americans had gained citizenship illegally. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (invalidated in 1952) and others similar racist laws prohibited these aliens from owning land property, thus effectively stripping Indian Americans from land rights. While the decision was placating racist Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide/Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the "Yellow Peril", and while more recent legislation influenced by the civil-rights movement has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification.
A more complex quota plan replaced this "emergency" system under the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act). The reference census used was changed to that of 1890, which greatly reduced the number of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. An annual ceiling of 154,227 was set for the Eastern Hemisphere. Each country had a quota proportional to its population in the U.S. as of the 1920 census.
In 1932 President Roosevelt and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression as immigration went from 236,000 in 1929 to 23,000 in 1933. Total immigration in the decade of 1931 to 1940 was 528,000 averaging less than 53,000 a year.
The Chinese exclusion laws were repealed in 1943. The Luce-Celler Act of 1946 ended discrimination against Indian Americans and Philippines, who were accorded the right to naturalization, and allowed a meager quota of 100 immigrant a year.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) revised the quotas again, basing them on the 1920 census. For the first time in American history, racial distinctions were omitted from the U.S. Code. As could be expected, most of the quota allocation went to immigrants from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany who already had relatives in the United States. The anti-subversive features of this law are still in force.
The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act) abolished the system of national-origin quotas. There was, for the first time, a limitation on Western Hemisphere immigration (120,000 per year), with the Eastern Hemisphere limited to 170,000. Because of the family preferences put into immigration law, immigration is now mostly "chain immigration" where recent immigrants who are already here sponsor their relatives. Family related immigration is often outside the quota system. At the time, the then-chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that -- ''"The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." ''(U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3.)
The 1980 Refugee Act -- Established policies for refugees redefining "refugee" according to United Nations ''norms''. A target for refugees was set at 50,000 and the worldwide ceiling for immigrants was reduced to 270,000 annually.
In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating for the first time penalties for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. These penalties are very seldom enforced and forged documents are rampant leading to wide spread illegal immigrant employment. IRCA also contained an amnesty for about 3,000,000 illegal immigrants already in the United States, and mandated the intensification of some of the activities of the United States Border Patrol or INS (now part of Department of Homeland Security, DHS).
By one account, the actual number of annual legal immigrants was estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 in 1989. This subsequently increased and is now well over 1 million annually, not including illegal migration or temporary work visas.
The 1990 Immigration Act (IMMACT) -- Modified and expanded the 1965 act; it significantly increased the total immigration limit to 700,000 and increased visas by 40 percent. Family reunification was retained as the main immigration criteria with significant increases in employment-related immigration.
Several pieces of legislation signed into law in 1996 marked a turn towards harsher policies for both legal and illegal immigrants. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) vastly increased the categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and imposed mandatory detention for certain types of deportation cases. As a result, well over 1,000,000 individuals have been deported since 1996.

Visas

Main articles: United States visas

There are many different kinds of visas.

Asylum for refugees

Main articles: Asylum in the United States

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 asylee 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 more 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 just 16 refugees in 1999, while the United States took in 85,010 for resettlement, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The US will accept 70,000 refugees in FY 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-region has been Africa (Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Ethiopia).^[54] A July 22, 2007 article notes that in the past nine months only 133 of the planned 7000 Iraqi
refugees were allowed into the United States.^[55][56]

Miscellaneous documented immigration

In removal proceedings (deportation) 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: (1) has been physically present in the U.S. for at least ten years, (2) has had good moral character during that period, (3) has not been convicted of certain crimes, and (4) can show that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his or her US citizen/permanent resident spouse, children, or parent. This form of relief is only available when a person is served with a Notice to Appear (like a civil summons) to appear in the proceedings in the Immigration Court. Many persons have received their green cards in this way even though removal or deportation was looming.
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