IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S.

Immigration to the United States



Table of Contents

Introduction3

Discussion3

Immigration in the Past5

Rise of Anti-Immigrant Feelings6

Immigration Today7

Immigrants: Key to Revitalizing America10

Fixing the System11

Conclusion11

References13

Appendix14

Immigration to the United States

Introduction

According to dictionaries immigration means “the transfer of non-native individuals into a country so as to settle there”. Public opinion polls indicate that a strong and consistent majority of Americans feel the nation's immigration policy is too liberal and needs to be changed. Politicians from both main parties are developing and presenting proposals to increase security at the country's borders, streamline the cumbersome and often ineffective procedures for deporting illegal immigrants, and reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter the country. In immigrant-flooded California, voters in 1994 overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187, a ballot measure calling for the elimination of state welfare, education and nonemergency health benefits to the state's estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants. This paper discusses immigration to the United States.

Discussion

Arguments over immigration and its effect on American society are not new. They have been going on almost as long as this country, founded by immigrants in the early 1600s, has existed. The U.S. is still a magnet, pulling the ambitious and the hopeful from every corner of the globe. The vast majority of today's immigrants are from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, not from Europe, as in previous generations. Concerns about the effects of immigrants on the nation's economy, questions about assimilation, bilingual education and other multicultural issues, and worries over strains on the nation's social-welfare system are hot-button issues. The question Americans are again asking, as they have at various times throughout the nation's history, is "Has the time come to change our country's generally open immigration policy?" (Passel, 2009)

[Source: (Ong, 2004)]

People on all sides of the debate agree that a distinction must be made between illegal immigration, which nearly all Americans wish to better control, and legal immigration. There has never been a consensus, either among the American public or among the nation's political leaders, on how the government should approach legal immigration.

Many social conservatives, who argue that immigrants erode the shared value system that defines America, say restrictions on legal immigration should be tightened. They are joined by labor unions, established minorities such as blacks and other traditionally liberal groups that fear the loss of jobs to immigrants. Opposing them are people from across a wide political and social spectrum who assert that immigrants enrich the U.S. economically and culturally. They also maintain that the U.S., founded as a nation of immigrants seeking better lives, has a duty to accept others who are persecuted in any way. (Andryszewski, 2005)

Immigration in the Past

Along with only a few of the world's other nations, such as Canada, the U.S. has generally welcomed immigration as the primary way of settling and populating its territory.

As many as one-third of all Americans were foreign-born at the dawn of independence, in the late 18th century. Immigration in the early years of the 19th century was low, about 8,000 ...