The Controversy over Illegal Immigration

Introduction

Any understanding of the factors encouraging immigration to the United States must rest on an understanding of the economic conditions motivating immigrants, as well as the effects of their presence in the United States. Though the groups coming to the United States have changed over time in their place of origin as well as the role they assumed after arriving, economic factors have generally been the primary driving forces behind both immigration and responses of U.S. residents to immigrants.

Discussion

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as England was building what would become the British Empire, its leaders were driven by the doctrine of mercantilism. English colonies were to serve as sources of raw materials that would be processed and turned into marketable goods in the home country. The raw materials that North America had to offer, notably tobacco and later cotton, were in high demand in England. It was therefore in England's interest to encourage production of these and other labour-intensive natural products. It was also in England's interest to populate its American colonies to meet the consequent labour needs (Smith & Edmonston, p. 344). Immigration was promoted by those whose potential profits required as many settlers as possible.

Some settlers went to the colonies on their own, particularly as the restructuring of English agriculture during the eighteenth century deprived many that lacked title to land in Great Britain of the opportunity to make adequate livings. Those who lacked the capital to make the voyage to America could become indentured servants, paying off the costs of their transportation through several years of contractually bound labour. Indentured servitude was most common in the southern colonies during the seventeenth century. After it became clear that northern Europeans had trouble performing hard physical labour in the South's hot climate, indentured European servants were replaced by enslaved Africans.

Throughout the British North American colonies, populations grew through high rates of natural increase and immigration of people despairing of ever owning enough land in Britain to support their families. The earliest immigrants settled close to the Atlantic coast, but through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inland regions began to fill up. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of non- English immigrants, especially members of German religious groups such as the Amish sought greater freedom in America (Simon, pp. 201). These people brought with them both devotion to their communities and a willingness to work hard to expand their communities' agricultural output. Many British immigrants dreamed of climbing the social ladder by becoming craftsmen or traders, especially in New England, where the poor agricultural potential of much of the land propelled the most ambitious immigrants into trades.

Nineteenth Century Immigration

From the end of the American Revolution in 1783 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the population of the United States increased from about 3 million people to around 100 million. Much of that increase was from natural population growth, but as many as 45 million immigrants are believed to have come to the United States during ...