us immigrant essay

• Social Justice
• Environment
• Health & Happiness
• Get YES! Emails
• Teacher Resources

• Give A Gift Subscription
• Teaching Sustainability
• Teaching Social Justice
• Teaching Respect & Empathy
• Student Writing Lessons
• Visual Learning Lessons
• Tough Topics Discussion Guides
• About the YES! for Teachers Program
• Student Writing Contest

Follow YES! For Teachers

Eight brilliant student essays on immigration and unjust assumptions.

Read winning essays from our winter 2019 “Border (In)Security” student writing contest.

For the winter 2019 student writing competition, “Border (In)Security,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the “Constitution-Free Zone” by Lornet Turnbull and respond with an up-to-700-word essay. 

Students had a choice between two writing prompts for this contest on immigration policies at the border and in the “Constitution-free zone,” a 100-mile perimeter from land and sea borders where U.S. Border Patrol can search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant. They could state their positions on the impact of immigration policies on our country’s security and how we determine who is welcome to live here. Or they could write about a time when someone made an unfair assumption about them, just as Border Patrol agents have made warrantless searches of Greyhound passengers based simply on race and clothing.

The Winners

From the hundreds of essays written, these eight were chosen as winners. Be sure to read the author’s response to the essay winners and the literary gems that caught our eye.

Middle School Winner: Alessandra Serafini

High School Winner: Cain Trevino

High School Winner: Ethan Peter

University Winner: Daniel Fries

Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Powerful Voice Winner: Tiara Lewis

Powerful Voice Winner: Hailee Park

Powerful Voice Winner: Aminata Toure

From the Author Lornet Turnbull

Literary Gems

Middle school winner.

Alessandra Serafini

Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Broken Promises

“…Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These words were written by Emma Lazarus and are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. And yet, the very door they talk about is no longer available to those who need it the most. The door has been shut, chained, and guarded. It no longer shines like gold. Those seeking asylum are being turned away. Families are being split up; children are being stranded. The promise America made to those in need is broken.

Not only is the promise to asylum seekers broken, but the promises made to some 200 million people already residing within the U.S. are broken, too. Anyone within 100 miles of the United States border lives in the “Constitution-free zone” and can be searched with “reasonable suspicion,” a suspicion that is determined by Border Patrol officers. The zone encompasses major cities, such as Seattle and New York City, and it even covers entire states, such as Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. I live in the Seattle area, and it is unsettling that I can be searched and interrogated without the usual warrant. In these areas, there has been an abuse of power; people have been unlawfully searched and interrogated because of assumed race or religion.

The ACLU obtained data from the Customs and Border Protection Agency that demonstrate this reprehensible profiling. The data found that “82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed are, in fact, U.S. citizens.” These warrantless searches impede the trust-building process and communication between the local population and law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, this lack of trust makes campaigns, such as Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something,” ineffective due to the actions of the department’s own members and officers. Worst of all, profiling ostracizes entire communities and makes them feel unsafe in their own country.

Ironically, asylum seekers come to America in search of safety. However, the thin veil of safety has been drawn back, and, behind it, our tarnished colors are visible. We need to welcome people in their darkest hours rather than destroy their last bit of hope by slamming the door in their faces. The immigration process is currently in shambles, and an effective process is essential for both those already in the country and those outside of it. Many asylum seekers are running from war, poverty, hunger, and death. Their countries’ instability has hijacked every aspect of their lives, made them vagabonds, and the possibility of death, a cruel and unforgiving death, is real. They see no future for their children, and they are desperate for the perceived promise of America—a promise of opportunity, freedom, and a safe future. An effective process would determine who actually needs help and then grant them passage into America. Why should everyone be turned away? My grandmother immigrated to America from Scotland in 1955. I exist because she had a chance that others are now being denied.

Emma Lazarus named Lady Liberty the “Mother of Exiles.” Why are we denying her the happiness of children? Because we cannot decide which ones? America has an inexplicable area where our constitution has been spurned and forgotten. Additionally, there is a rancorous movement to close our southern border because of a deep-rooted fear of immigrants and what they represent. For too many Americans, they represent the end of established power and white supremacy, which is their worst nightmare. In fact, immigrants do represent change—healthy change—with new ideas and new energy that will help make this country stronger. Governmental agreement on a humane security plan is critical to ensure that America reaches its full potential. We can help. We can help people in unimaginably terrifying situations, and that should be our America.

Alessandra Serafini plays on a national soccer team for Seattle United and is learning American Sign Language outside of school. Her goal is to spread awareness about issues such as climate change, poverty, and large-scale political conflict through writing and public speaking.

  High School Winner

Cain Trevino

North Side High School, Fort Worth, Texas

Xenophobia and the Constitution-Free Zone

In August of 2017, U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus that had just arrived at the White River Junction station from Boston. According to Danielle Bonadona, a Lebanon resident and a bus passenger, “They wouldn’t let us get off. They boarded the bus and told us they needed to see our IDs or papers.” Bonadona, a 29-year-old American citizen, said that the agents spent around 20 minutes on the bus and “only checked the IDs of people who had accents or were not white.” Bonadona said she was aware of the 100-mile rule, but the experience of being stopped and searched felt “pretty unconstitutional.”

In the YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” by Lornet Turnbull, the author references the ACLU’s argument that “the 100-mile zone violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.” However, the Supreme Court upholds the use of immigration checkpoints for inquiries on citizenship status. In my view, the ACLU makes a reasonable argument. The laws of the 100-mile zone are blurred, and, too often, officials give arbitrary reasons to conduct a search. Xenophobia and fear of immigrants burgeons in cities within these areas. People of color and those with accents or who are non-English speakers are profiled by law enforcement agencies that enforce anti-immigrant policies. The “Constitution-free zone” is portrayed as an effective barrier to secure our borders. However, this anti-immigrant zone does not make our country any safer. In fact, it does the opposite.

As a former student from the Houston area, I can tell you that the Constitution-free zone makes immigrants and citizens alike feel on edge. The Department of Homeland Security’s white SUVs patrol our streets. Even students feel the weight of anti-immigrant laws. Dennis Rivera Sarmiento, an undocumented student who attended Austin High School in Houston, was held by school police in February 2018 for a minor altercation and was handed over to county police. He was later picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held in a detention center. It is unfair that kids like Dennis face much harsher consequences for minor incidents than other students with citizenship.

These instances are a direct result of anti-immigrant laws. For example, the 287(g) program gives local and state police the authority to share individuals’ information with ICE after an arrest. This means that immigrants can be deported for committing misdemeanors as minor as running a red light. Other laws like Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature, allow police to ask people about their immigration status after they are detained. These policies make immigrants and people of color feel like they’re always under surveillance and that, at any moment, they may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.

During Hurricane Harvey, the immigrant community was hesitant to go to the shelters because images of immigration authorities patrolling the area began to surface online. It made them feel like their own city was against them at a time when they needed them most. Constitution-free zones create communities of fear. For many immigrants, the danger of being questioned about immigration status prevents them from reporting crimes, even when they are the victim. Unreported crime only places more groups of people at risk and, overall, makes communities less safe.

In order to create a humane immigration process, citizens and non-citizens must hold policymakers accountable and get rid of discriminatory laws like 287(g) and Senate Bill 4. Abolishing the Constitution-free zone will also require pressure from the public and many organizations. For a more streamlined legal process, the League of United Latin American Citizens suggests background checks and a small application fee for incoming immigrants, as well as permanent resident status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients. Other organizations propose expanding the green card lottery and asylum for immigrants escaping the dangers of their home countries.

Immigrants who come to the U.S. are only looking for an opportunity to provide for their families and themselves; so, the question of deciding who gets inside the border and who doesn’t is the same as trying to prove some people are worth more than others. The narratives created by anti-immigrant media plant the false idea that immigrants bring nothing but crime and terrorism. Increased funding for the border and enforcing laws like 287(g) empower anti-immigrant groups to vilify immigrants and promote a witch hunt that targets innocent people. This hatred and xenophobia allow law enforcement to ask any person of color or non-native English speaker about their citizenship or to detain a teenager for a minor incident. Getting rid of the 100-mile zone means standing up for justice and freedom because nobody, regardless of citizenship, should have to live under laws created from fear and hatred.

Cain Trevino is a sophomore. Cain is proud of his Mexican and Salvadorian descent and is an advocate for the implementation of Ethnic Studies in Texas. He enjoys basketball, playing the violin, and studying c omputer science. Cain plans to pursue a career in engineering at Stanford University and later earn a PhD.  

High School Winner

Ethan Peter

Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.

I’m an expert on bussing. For the past couple of months, I’ve been a busser at a pizza restaurant near my house. It may not be the most glamorous job, but it pays all right, and, I’ll admit, I’m in it for the money.

I arrive at 5 p.m. and inspect the restaurant to ensure it is in pristine condition for the 6 p.m. wave of guests. As customers come and go, I pick up their dirty dishes, wash off their tables, and reset them for the next guests. For the first hour of my shift, the work is fairly straightforward.

I met another expert on bussing while crossing the border in a church van two years ago. Our van arrived at the border checkpoint, and an agent stopped us. She read our passports, let us through, and moved on to her next vehicle. The Border Patrol agent’s job seemed fairly straightforward.

At the restaurant, 6 p.m. means a rush of customers. It’s the end of the workday, and these folks are hungry for our pizzas and salads. My job is no longer straightforward.

Throughout the frenzy, the TVs in the restaurant buzz about waves of people coming to the U.S. border. The peaceful ebb and flow enjoyed by Border agents is disrupted by intense surges of immigrants who seek to enter the U.S. Outside forces push immigrants to the United States: wars break out in the Middle East, gangs terrorize parts of Central and South America, and economic downturns force foreigners to look to the U.S., drawn by the promise of opportunity. Refugees and migrant caravans arrive, and suddenly, a Border Patrol agent’s job is no longer straightforward.

I turn from the TVs in anticipation of a crisis exploding inside the restaurant: crowds that arrive together will leave together. I’ve learned that when a table looks finished with their dishes, I need to proactively ask to take those dishes, otherwise, I will fall behind, and the tables won’t be ready for the next customers. The challenge is judging who is finished eating. I’m forced to read clues and use my discretion.

Interpreting clues is part of a Border Patrol agent’s job, too. Lornet Turnbull states, “For example, CBP data obtained by ACLU in Michigan shows that 82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed is, in fact, a U.S. citizen.” While I try to spot customers done with their meals so I can clear their part of the table, the Border Patrol officer uses clues to detect undocumented immigrants. We both sometimes guess incorrectly, but our intentions are to do our jobs to the best of our abilities.

These situations are uncomfortable. I certainly do not enjoy interrupting a conversation to get someone’s dishes, and I doubt Border Patrol agents enjoy interrogating someone about their immigration status. In both situations, the people we mistakenly ask lose time and are subjected to awkward and uncomfortable situations. However, here’s where the busser and the Border Patrol officer’s situations are different: If I make a mistake, the customer faces a minor inconvenience. The stakes for a Border Patrol agent are much higher. Mistakenly asking for documentation and searching someone can lead to embarrassment or fear—it can even be life-changing. Thus, Border Patrol agents must be fairly certain that someone’s immigration status is questionable before they begin their interrogation.

To avoid these situations altogether, the U.S. must make the path to citizenship for immigrants easier. This is particularly true for immigrants fleeing violence. Many people object to this by saying these immigrants will bring violence with them, but data does not support this view. In 1939, a ship of Jewish refugees from Germany was turned away from the U.S.—a decision viewed negatively through the lens of history. Today, many people advocate restricting immigration for refugees from violent countries; they refuse to learn the lessons from 1939. The sad thing is that many of these immigrants are seen as just as violent as the people they are fleeing. We should not confuse the oppressed with the oppressor.

My restaurant appreciates customers because they bring us money, just as we should appreciate immigrants because they bring us unique perspectives. Equally important, immigrants provide this country with a variety of expert ideas and cultures, which builds better human connections and strengthens our society.

Ethan Peter is a junior. Ethan writes for his school newspaper, The Kirkwood Call, and plays volleyball for his high school and a club team. He hopes to continue to grow as a writer in the future. 

University Winner

Daniel Fries

Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

Detained on the Road to Equality

The United States is a nation of immigrants. There are currently 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. Millions of them are naturalized American citizens, and 23 million, or 7.2 percent of the population, are living here without documentation (US Census, 2016). One in seven residents of the United States was not born here. Multiculturalism is, and always has been, a key part of the American experience. However, romantic notions of finding a better life in the United States for immigrants and refugees don’t reflect reality. In modern history, America is a country that systematically treats immigrants—documented or not—and non-white Americans in a way that is fundamentally different than what is considered right by the majority.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states,“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” When a suspected undocumented immigrant is detained, their basic human rights are violated. Warrantless raids on Greyhound buses within 100 miles of the border (an area referred to by some as the “Constitution-free zone”) are clear violations of human rights. These violations are not due to the current state of politics; they are the symptom of blatant racism in the United States and a system that denigrates and abuses people least able to defend themselves.

It is not surprising that some of the mechanisms that drive modern American racism are political in nature. Human beings are predisposed to dislike and distrust individuals that do not conform to the norms of their social group (Mountz, Allison). Some politicians appeal to this suspicion and wrongly attribute high crime rates to non-white immigrants. The truth is that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, people born in the United States are convicted of crimes at a rate twice that of undocumented non-natives (Cato Institute, 2018).

The majority of immigrants take high risks to seek a better life, giving them incentive to obey the laws of their new country. In many states, any contact with law enforcement may ultimately result in deportation and separation from family. While immigrants commit far fewer crimes, fear of violent crime by much of the U.S. population outweighs the truth. For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy. It’s easier to say that immigrants are taking people’s jobs than explain a changing global economy and its effect on employment. The only crime committed in this instance is discrimination.

Human rights are violated when an undocumented immigrant—or someone perceived as an undocumented immigrant—who has not committed a crime is detained on a Greyhound bus. When a United States citizen is detained on the same bus, constitutional rights are being violated. The fact that this happens every day and that we debate its morality makes it abundantly clear that racism is deeply ingrained in this country. Many Americans who have never experienced this type of oppression lack the capacity to understand its lasting effect. Most Americans don’t know what it’s like to be late to work because they were wrongfully detained, were pulled over by the police for the third time that month for no legal reason, or had to coordinate legal representation for their U.S. citizen grandmother because she was taken off a bus for being a suspected undocumented immigrant. This oppression is cruel and unnecessary.

America doesn’t need a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants; it needs to seriously address how to deal with immigration. It is possible to reform the current system in such a way that anyone can become a member of American society, instead of existing outside of it. If a person wants to live in the United States and agrees to follow its laws and pay its taxes, a path to citizenship should be available.

People come to the U.S. from all over the world for many reasons. Some have no other choice. There are ongoing humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen, and South America that are responsible for the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers at our borders. If the United States wants to address the current situation, it must acknowledge the global factors affecting the immigrants at the center of this debate and make fact-informed decisions. There is a way to maintain the security of America while treating migrants and refugees compassionately, to let those who wish to contribute to our society do so, and to offer a hand up instead of building a wall.

Daniel Fries studies computer science. Daniel has served as a wildland firefighter in Oregon, California, and Alaska. He is passionate about science, nature, and the ways that technology contributes to making the world a better, more empathetic, and safer place.

Powerful Voice Winner

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Wellness, Business and Sports School, Woodburn, Ore.

An Emotion an Immigrant Knows Too Well

Before Donald Trump’s campaign, I was oblivious to my race and the idea of racism. As far as I knew, I was the same as everyone else. I didn’t stop to think about our different-colored skins. I lived in a house with a family and attended school five days a week just like everyone else. So, what made me different?

Seventh grade was a very stressful year—the year that race and racism made an appearance in my life. It was as if a cold splash of water woke me up and finally opened my eyes to what the world was saying. It was this year that Donald Trump started initiating change about who got the right to live in this country and who didn’t. There was a lot of talk about deportation, specifically for Mexicans, and it sparked commotion and fear in me.

I remember being afraid and nervous to go out. At home, the anxiety was there but always at the far back of my mind because I felt safe inside. My fear began as a small whisper, but every time I stepped out of my house, it got louder. I would have dreams about the deportation police coming to my school; when I went to places like the library, the park, the store, or the mall, I would pay attention to everyone and to my surroundings. In my head, I would always ask myself, “Did they give us nasty looks?,” “Why does it seem quieter?” “Was that a cop I just saw?” I would notice little things, like how there were only a few Mexicans out or how empty a store was. When my mom went grocery shopping, I would pray that she would be safe. I was born in America, and both my parents were legally documented. My mom was basically raised here. Still, I couldn’t help but feel nervous.

I knew I shouldn’t have been afraid, but with one look, agents could have automatically thought my family and I were undocumented. Even when the deportation police would figure out that we weren’t undocumented, they’d still figure out a way to deport us—at least that was what was going through my head. It got so bad that I didn’t even want to do the simplest things like go grocery shopping because there was a rumor that the week before a person was taken from Walmart.

I felt scared and nervous, and I wasn’t even undocumented. I can’t even imagine how people who are undocumented must have felt, how they feel. All I can think is that it’s probably ten times worse than what I was feeling. Always worrying about being deported and separated from your family must be hard. I was living in fear, and I didn’t even have it that bad. My heart goes out to families that get separated from each other. It’s because of those fears that I detest the “Constitution-free zone.”

Legally documented and undocumented people who live in the Constitution-free zone are in constant fear of being deported. People shouldn’t have to live this way. In fact, there have been arguments that the 100-mile zone violates the Fourth Amendment, which gives people the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld these practices.

One question that Lornet Turnbull asks in her YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” is, “How should we decide who is welcome in the U.S and who is not?” Instead of focusing on immigrants, how about we focus on the people who shoot up schools, rape girls, exploit women for human sex trafficking, and sell drugs? These are the people who make our country unsafe; they are the ones who shouldn’t be accepted. Even if they are citizens and have the legal right to live here, they still shouldn’t be included. If they are the ones making this country unsafe, then what gives them the right to live here?

I don’t think that the Constitution-free zone is an effective and justifiable way to make this country more “secure.” If someone isn’t causing any trouble in the United States and is just simply living their life, then they should be welcomed here. We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away. I believe that it’s unfair for people to automatically think that it’s the Hispanics that make this country unsafe. Sure, get all the undocumented people out of the United States, but it’s not going to make this country any safer. It is a society that promotes violence that makes us unsafe, not a race.

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez is a freshman who is passionate about literature and her education. Emma wan ts to inspire others to be creative and try their best. She enjoys reading and creating stories that spark imagination. 

  Powerful Voice Winner

Tiara Lewis

Columbus City Preparatory Schools for Girls,

Columbus, Ohio

Hold Your Head High and Keep Those Fists Down

How would you feel if you walked into a store and salespeople were staring at you? Making you feel like you didn’t belong. Judging you. Assuming that you were going to take something, even though you might have $1,000 on you to spend. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. This is because people will always judge you. It might not be because of your race but for random reasons, like because your hair is black instead of dirty blonde. Or because your hair is short and not long. Or just because they are having a bad day. People will always find ways to bring you down and accuse you of something, but that doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.

Every time I entered a store, I would change my entire personality. I would change the way I talked and the way I walked. I always saw myself as needing to fit in. If a store was all pink, like the store Justice, I would act like a girly girl. If I was shopping in a darker store, like Hot Topic, I would hum to the heavy metal songs and act more goth. I had no idea that I was feeding into stereotypes.

When I was 11, I walked into Claire’s, a well-known store at the mall. That day was my sister’s birthday. Both of us were really happy and had money to spend. As soon as we walked into the store, two employees stared me and my sister down, giving us cold looks. When we went to the cashier to buy some earrings, we thought everything was fine. However, when we walked out of the store, there was a policeman and security guards waiting. At that moment, my sister and I looked at one another, and I said, in a scared little girl voice, “I wonder what happened? Why are they here?”

Then, they stopped us. We didn’t know what was going on. The same employee that cashed us out was screaming as her eyes got big, “What did you steal?” I was starting to get numb. Me and my sister looked at each other and told the truth: “We didn’t steal anything. You can check us.” They rudely ripped through our bags and caused a big scene. My heart was pounding like a drum. I felt violated and scared. Then, the policeman said, “Come with us. We need to call your parents.” While this was happening, the employees were talking to each other, smiling. We got checked again. The police said that they were going to check the cameras, but after they were done searching us, they realized that we didn’t do anything wrong and let us go about our day.

Walking in the mall was embarrassing—everybody staring, looking, and whispering as we left the security office. This made me feel like I did something wrong while knowing I didn’t. We went back to the store to get our shopping bags. The employees sneered, “Don’t you niggers ever come in this store again. You people always take stuff. This time you just got lucky.” Their faces were red and frightening. It was almost like they were in a scary 3D movie, screaming, and coming right at us. I felt hurt and disappointed that someone had the power within them to say something so harsh and wrong to another person. Those employees’ exact words will forever be engraved in my memory.

In the article, “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” Lornet Turnbull states, “In January, they stopped a man in Indio, California, as he was boarding a Los Angeles-bound bus. While questioning this man about his immigration status, agents told him his ‘shoes looked suspicious,’ like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.” They literally judged him by his shoes. They had no proof of anything. If a man is judged by his shoes, who else and what else are being judged in the world?

In the novel  To Kill a Mockingbird , a character named Atticus states, “You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let’em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change.” No matter how much you might try to change yourself, your hairstyle, and your clothes, people will always make assumptions about you. However, you never need to change yourself to make a point or to feel like you fit in. Be yourself. Don’t let those stereotypes turn into facts.

Tiara Lewis is in the eighth grade. Tiara plays the clarinet and is trying to change the world— one essay at a time. She is most often found curled up on her bed, “Divergent” in one hand and a cream-filled doughnut in the other.

Hailee Park

 Wielding My Swords

If I were a swordsman, my weapons would be my identities. I would wield one sword in my left hand and another in my right. People expect me to use both fluently, but I’m not naturally ambidextrous. Even though I am a right-handed swordsman, wielding my dominant sword with ease, I must also carry a sword in my left, the heirloom of my family heritage. Although I try to live up to others’ expectations by using both swords, I may appear inexperienced while attempting to use my left. In some instances, my heirloom is mistaken for representing different families’ since the embellishments look similar.

Many assumptions are made about my heirloom sword based on its appearance, just as many assumptions are made about me based on my physical looks. “Are you Chinese?” When I respond with ‘no,’ they stare at me blankly in confusion. There is a multitude of Asian cultures in the United States, of which I am one. Despite what many others may assume, I am not Chinese; I am an American-born Korean.

“Then… are you Japanese?” Instead of asking a broader question, like “What is your ethnicity?,” they choose to ask a direct question. I reply that I am Korean. I like to think that this answers their question sufficiently; however, they think otherwise. Instead, I take this as their invitation to a duel.

They attack me with another question: “Are you from North Korea or South Korea?” I don’t know how to respond because I’m not from either of those countries; I was born in America. I respond with “South Korea,” where my parents are from because I assume that they’re asking me about my ethnicity. I’m not offended by this situation because I get asked these questions frequently. From this experience, I realize that people don’t know how to politely ask questions about identity to those unlike them. Instead of asking “What is your family’s ethnicity?,” many people use rude alternatives, such as “Where are you from?,” or “What language do you speak?”

When people ask these questions, they make assumptions based on someone’s appearance. In my case, people make inferences like:

“She must be really good at speaking Korean.”

“She’s Asian; therefore, she must be born in Asia.”

“She’s probably Chinese.”

These thoughts may appear in their heads because making assumptions is natural. However, there are instances when assumptions can be taken too far. Some U.S. Border Patrol agents in the “Constitution-free zone” have made similar assumptions based on skin color and clothing. For example, agents marked someone as an undocumented immigrant because “his shoes looked suspicious, like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.”

Another instance was when a Jamaican grandmother was forced off a bus when she was visiting her granddaughter. The impetus was her accent and the color of her skin. Government officials chose to act on their assumptions, even though they had no solid proof that the grandmother was an undocumented immigrant. These situations just touch the surface of the issue of racial injustice in America.

When someone makes unfair assumptions about me, they are pointing their sword and challenging me to a duel; I cannot refuse because I am already involved. It is not appropriate for anyone, including Border Patrol agents, to make unjustified assumptions or to act on those assumptions. Border Patrol agents have no right to confiscate the swords of the innocent solely based on their conjectures. The next time I’m faced with a situation where racially ignorant assumptions are made about me, I will refuse to surrender my sword, point it back at them, and triumphantly fight their ignorance with my cultural pride.

Hailee Park is an eighth grader who enjoys reading many genres. While reading, Hailee recognized the racial injustices against immigrants in America, which inspired her essay. Hailee plays violin in her school’s orchestra and listens to and composes music. 

Aminata Toure

East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We Are Still Dreaming

As a young Muslim American woman, I have been labeled things I am not: a terrorist, oppressed, and an ISIS supporter. I have been accused of planning 9/11, an event that happened before I was born. Lately, in the media, Muslims have been portrayed as supporters of a malevolent cause, terrorizing others just because they do not have the same beliefs. I often scoff at news reports that portray Muslims in such a light, just as I scoff at all names I’ve been labeled. They are words that do not define me. 

In a land where labels have stripped immigrants of their personalities, they are now being stripped of something that makes them human: their rights. The situation described in Lornet Turnbull’s article, “Two-Thirds of Americans are Living in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law. If immigrants do not have protection from the Constitution, is there any way to feel safe?

Although most insults are easy to shrug off, they are still threatening. I am ashamed when I feel afraid to go to the mosque. Friday is an extremely special day when we gather together to pray, but lately, I haven’t been going to the mosque for Jummah prayers. I have realized that I can never feel safe when in a large group of Muslims because of the widespread hatred of Muslims in the United States, commonly referred to as Islamophobia. Police surround our mosque, and there are posters warning us about dangerous people who might attack our place of worship because we have been identified as terrorists.

I wish I could tune out every news report that blasts out the headline “Terrorist Attack!” because I know that I will be judged based on the actions of someone else. Despite this anti-Muslim racism, what I have learned from these insults is that I am proud of my faith. I am a Muslim, but being Muslim doesn’t define me. I am a writer, a student, a dreamer, a friend, a New Yorker, a helper, and an American. I am unapologetically me, a Muslim, and so much more. I definitely think everyone should get to know a Muslim. They would see that some of us are also Harry Potter fans, not just people planning to bomb the White House.

Labels are unjustly placed on us because of the way we speak, the color of our skin, and what we believe in—not for who we are as individuals. Instead, we should all take more time to get to know one another. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. To me, it seems Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is a dream that should be a reality. But, for now, we are dreaming.

Aminata Toure is a Guinean American Muslim student. Aminata loves spoken-word poetry and performs in front of hundreds of people at her school’s annual poetry slam. She loves writing, language, history, and West African food and culture. Aminata wants to work at the United Nations when she grows up.

From the Author 

Dear Alessandra, Cain, Daniel, Tiara, Emma, Hailee, Aminata and Ethan,

I am moved and inspired by the thought each of you put into your responses to my story about this so-called “Constitution-free zone.” Whether we realize it or not, immigration in this country impacts all of us— either because we are immigrants ourselves, have neighbors, friends, and family who are, or because we depend on immigrants for many aspects of our lives—from the food we put on our tables to the technology that bewitches us. It is true that immigrants enrich our society in so many important ways, as many of you point out.

And while the federal statute that permits U.S. Border Patrol officers to stop and search at will any of the 200 million of us in this 100-mile shadow border, immigrants have been their biggest targets. In your essays, you highlight how unjust the law is—nothing short of racial profiling. It is heartening to see each of you, in your own way, speaking out against the unfairness of this practice.

Alessandra, you are correct, the immigration system in this country is in shambles. You make a powerful argument about how profiling ostracizes entire communities and how the warrantless searches allowed by this statute impede trust-building between law enforcement and the people they are called on to serve.

And Cain, you point out how this 100-mile zone, along with other laws in the state of Texas where you attended school, make people feel like they’re “always under surveillance, and that, at any moment, you may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.” It seems unimaginable that people live their lives this way, yet millions in this country do.

You, Emma, for example, speak of living in a kind of silent fear since Donald Trump took office, even though you were born in this country and your parents are here legally. You are right, “We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away.”

And Aminata, you write of being constantly judged and labeled because you’re a Muslim American. How unfortunate and sad that in a country that generations of people fled to search for religious freedom, you are ashamed at times to practice your own. The Constitution-free zone, you write, “goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law.”

Tiara, I could personally relate to your gripping account of being racially profiled and humiliated in a store. You were appalled that the Greyhound passenger in California was targeted by Border Patrol because they claimed his shoes looked like those of someone who had walked across the border: “If a man is judged by his shoes,” you ask, “who else and what else are getting judged in the world?”

Hailee, you write about the incorrect assumptions people make about you, an American born of Korean descent, based solely on your appearance and compared it to the assumptions Border Patrol agents make about those they detain in this zone.

Daniel, you speak of the role of political fearmongering in immigration. It’s not new, but under the current administration, turning immigrants into boogiemen for political gain is currency. You write that “For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy.”

And Ethan, you recognize the contributions immigrants make to this country through the connections we all make with them and the strength they bring to our society.

Keep speaking your truth. Use your words and status to call out injustice wherever and whenever you see it. Untold numbers of people spoke out against this practice by Border Patrol and brought pressure on Greyhound to change. In December, the company began offering passengers written guidance—in both Spanish and English—so they understand what their rights are when officers board their bus. Small steps, yes, but progress nonetheless, brought about by people just like you, speaking up for those who sometimes lack a voice to speak up for themselves.

With sincere gratitude,

Lornet Turnbull

Lornet Turnbull is an editor for YES! and a Seattle-based freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter  @TurnbullL .

We received many outstanding essays for the Winter 2019 Student Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye:

After my parents argued with the woman, they told me if you can fight with fists, you prove the other person’s point, but when you fight with the power of your words, you can have a much bigger impact. I also learned that I should never be ashamed of where I am from. —Fernando Flores, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

Just because we were born here and are privileged to the freedom of our country, we do not have the right to deprive others of a chance at success. —Avalyn Cox, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Maybe, rather than a wall, a better solution to our immigration problem would be a bridge. —Sean Dwyer, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

If anything, what I’ve learned is that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change our world. I don’t know how to make a difference, how to make my voice heard. But I have learned the importance of one word, a simple two-letter word that’s taught to the youngest of us, a word we all know but never recognize: the significance of ‘we.’ —Enna Chiu, Highland Park High School, Highland Park, N.J.

Not to say the Border Patrol should not have authorization to search people within the border, but I am saying it should be near the border, more like one mile, not 100. —Cooper Tarbuck, Maranacook Middle School, Manchester, Maine.

My caramel color, my feminism, my Spanish and English language, my Mexican culture, and my young Latina self gives me the confidence to believe in myself, but it can also teach others that making wrong assumptions about someone because of their skin color, identity, culture, looks or gender can make them look and be weaker. —Ana Hernandez, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We don’t need to change who we are to fit these stereotypes like someone going on a diet to fit into a new pair of pants. —Kaylee Meyers, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

If a human being with no criminal background whatsoever has trouble entering the country because of the way he or she dresses or speaks, border protection degenerates into arbitrariness. —Jonas Schumacher, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany

I believe that you should be able to travel freely throughout your own country without the constant fear of needing to prove that you belong here . —MacKenzie Morgan, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Mich.

America is known as “the Land of Opportunity,” but this label is quickly disappearing. If we keep stopping those striving for a better life, then what will become of this country? —Ennyn Chiu, Highland Park Middle School, Highland Park, N.J.

The fact that two-thirds of the people in the U.S. are living in an area called the “Constitution-free zone” is appalling. Our Constitution was made to protect our rights as citizens, no matter where we are in the country. These systems that we are using to “secure” our country are failing, and we need to find a way to change them. —Isis Liaw, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

I won’t let anyone, especially a man, tell me what I can do, because I am a strong Latina. I will represent where I come from, and I am proud to be Mexican. I will show others that looks can be deceiving. I will show others that even the weakest animal, a beautiful butterfly, is tough, and it will cross any border, no matter how challenging the journey may be. —Brittany Leal, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

Get Stories of Solutions to Share with Your Classroom

Teachers save 50% on YES! Magazine.

Inspiration in Your Inbox

Get the free daily newsletter from YES! Magazine: Stories of people creating a better world to inspire you and your students.

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Key facts about u.s. immigration policies and biden’s proposed changes.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, his administration has acted on a number of fronts to reverse Trump-era restrictions on immigration to the United States. The steps include plans to boost refugee admissions , preserving deportation relief for unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and not enforcing the “ public charge ” rule that denies green cards to immigrants who might use public benefits like Medicaid.

Biden has also lifted restrictions established early in the coronavirus pandemic that drastically reduced the number of visas issued to immigrants. The number of people who received a green card declined from about 240,000 in the second quarter of the 2020 fiscal year (January to March) to about 79,000 in the third quarter (April to June). By comparison, in the third quarter of fiscal 2019, nearly 266,000 people received a green card.

Biden’s biggest immigration proposal to date would allow more new immigrants into the U.S. while giving millions of unauthorized immigrants who are already in the country a pathway to legal status. The expansive legislation would create an eight-year path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants , update the existing family-based immigration system, revise employment-based visa rules and increase the number of diversity visas . By contrast, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to restrict legal immigration in a variety of ways, including through legislation that would have overhauled the nation’s legal immigration system by sharply reducing family-based immigration.

The Biden administration has proposed legislation that would create new ways for immigrants to legally enter the United States. The bill would also create a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants living in the country.

To better understand the existing U.S. immigration system, we analyzed the most recent data available on federal immigration programs. This includes admission categories for green card recipients and the types of temporary employment visas available to immigrant workers. We also examined temporary permissions granted to some immigrants to live and work in the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.

This analysis relies on data from various sources within the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of State, Federal Register announcements and public statements from the White House.

The Senate is considering several immigration provisions in a spending bill, the Build Back Better Act , that the House passed in November 2021. While passage of the bill is uncertain – as is the inclusion of immigration reforms in the bill’s final version – the legislation would make about 7 million unauthorized immigrants eligible to apply for protection from deportation, work permits and driver’s licenses.

Amid a record number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, Biden reinstated in December 2021 a Trump-era policy that requires those who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border and seek asylum to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed. Biden had earlier ended the Migration Protection Protocols , or “Remain in Mexico” policy, and then restarted it after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri that challenged the program’s closure. Asylum seekers do not receive a legal status that allows them to live and work in the U.S. until the claim is approved.

Overall, more than 35 million lawful immigrants live in the U.S.; most are American citizens. Many live and work in the country after being granted lawful permanent residence, while others receive temporary visas available to students and workers. In addition, roughly 1 million unauthorized immigrants have temporary permission to live and work in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.

Here are key details about existing U.S. immigration programs, as well as Biden’s proposed changes to them:

Family-based immigration

In fiscal 2019, nearly 710,000 people received lawful permanent residence in the U.S. through family sponsorship. The program allows someone to receive a green card if they already have a spouse, child, sibling or parent living in the country with U.S. citizenship or, in some cases, a green card. Immigrants from countries with large numbers of applicants often wait for years to receive a green card because a single country can account for no more than 7% of all green cards issued annually.

Biden’s proposal would expand access to family-based green cards in a variety of ways, such as by increasing per-country caps and clearing application backlogs. Today, family-based immigration – referred to by some as “ chain migration ” – is the most common way people gain green cards, in recent years accounting for about two-thirds of the more than 1 million people who receive green cards annually.

Refugee admissions

The U.S. admitted only 11,411 refugees in fiscal year 2021, the lowest number since Congress passed the 1980 Refugee Act for those fleeing persecution in their home countries. The low number of admissions came even after the Biden administration raised the maximum number of refugees the nation could admit to 62,500 in fiscal 2021 . Biden has increased the refugee cap to 125,000 for fiscal 2022, which started on Oct. 1, 2021.

The low number of admissions in recent years is due in part to the ongoing pandemic. The U.S. admitted only about 12,000 refugees in fiscal 2020 after the country suspended admissions during the coronavirus outbreak . This was down from nearly 54,000 in fiscal 2017 and far below the nearly 85,000 refugees admitted in fiscal 2016, the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration.

The recent decline in refugee admissions also reflects policy decisions made by the Trump administration before the pandemic. Trump capped refugee admissions in fiscal 2020 at 18,000 , the lowest total since Congress created the modern refugee program in 1980.

Employment-based green cards

In fiscal 2019, the U.S. government awarded more than 139,000 employment-based green cards to foreign workers and their families. The Biden administration’s proposed legislation could boost the number of employment-based green cards, which are capped at about 140,000 per year . The proposal would allow the use of unused visa slots from previous years and allow spouses and children of employment-based visa holders to receive green cards without counting them against the annual cap. These measures could help clear the large backlog of applicants. The proposed legislation also would eliminate the per-country cap that prevents immigrants from any single country to account for more than 7% of green cards issued each year.

Diversity visas

Each year, about 50,000 people receive green cards through the U.S. diversity visa program , also known as the visa lottery. Since the program began in 1995, more than 1 million immigrants have received green cards through the lottery, which seeks to diversify the U.S. immigrant population by granting visas to underrepresented nations. Citizens of countries with the most legal immigrant arrivals in recent years – such as Mexico, Canada, China and India – are not eligible to apply.

The Biden administration has proposed legislation to increase the annual total to 80,000 diversity visas. Trump had sought to eliminate the program .

In fiscal 2019, more than 188,000 high-skilled foreign workers received H-1B visas . H-1B visas accounted for 22% of all temporary visas for employment issued in 2019. This trailed only the H-2A visa for agricultural workers, which accounted for nearly a quarter (24%) of temporary visas. In all, nearly 2 million H-1B visas were issued from fiscal years 2007 to 2019.

The Biden administration is expected to review policies that led to increased denial rate s of H-1B visa applications under the Trump administration. In addition, Biden has delayed implementing a rule put in place by Trump that sought to prioritize the H-1B visa selection process based on wages, which would have raised the wages of H-1B recipients overall. Biden also proposed legislation to provide permanent work permits to spouses of H-1B visa holders. By contrast, the Trump administration had sought to restrict these permits. The Trump administration also created an electronic registration system that led to a record number of applicants for fiscal 2021.

Temporary permissions

A relatively small number of unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. under unusual circumstances have received temporary legal permission to stay in the country. One key distinction for this group of immigrants is that, despite having received permission to live in the U.S., most don’t have a path to gain lawful permanent residence. The following two programs are examples of this:

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

About 636,000 unauthorized immigrants had temporary work permits and protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, as of Dec. 31, 2020. One of Biden’s first actions as president was to direct the federal government to take steps to preserve the program , which Trump had tried to end before the Supreme Court allowed it to remain in place . DACA recipients, sometimes called “Dreamers,” would be among the undocumented immigrants to have a path to U.S. citizenship under Biden’s immigration bill. Senators have also proposed separate legislation that would do the same.

Temporary Protected Status

Overall, it is estimated that more than 700,000 immigrants from 12 countries currently have or are eligible for a reprieve from deportation under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS , a federal program that gives time-limited permission for some immigrants from certain countries to work and live in the U.S. The program covers those who fled designated nations because of war, hurricanes, earthquakes or other extraordinary conditions that could make it dangerous for them to live there.

The estimated total number of immigrants is based on those currently registered, in addition to those estimated to be eligible from Myanmar – also called Burma – and Venezuela.

Immigrants from Venezuela and Myanmar are newly eligible for TPS under changes made after Biden took office in January 2021 by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program. The government must periodically renew TPS benefits or they will expire. The department extended benefits into 2022 and beyond for eligible immigrants from nine nations: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In addition, the Biden administration expanded eligibility for immigrants from Haiti based on recent turmoil.

Biden and congressional Democrats have proposed granting citizenship to certain immigrants who receive TPS benefits. Under Biden’s large immigration bill, TPS recipients who meet certain conditions could apply immediately for green cards that let them become lawful permanent residents. The proposal would allow TPS holders who meet certain conditions to apply for citizenship three years after receiving a green card, which is two years earlier than usual for green-card holders. By contrast, the Trump administration had sought to end TPS for nearly all beneficiaries, but was blocked from doing so by a series of lawsuits.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published March 22, 2021.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings

Most Latinos say U.S. immigration system needs big changes

Key findings about u.s. immigrants, facts on u.s. immigrants, 2018, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Column: We need immigrants more than ever. They keep hope in this country alive

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

When I think about the American dream, I think of Julio Arana.

He was my student at Cal State Fullerton a decade ago, a crackerjack of a kid from Jalisco who didn’t know what he wanted to do with life but knew the United States was the place to do it in. Today, the 36-year-old is a real estate agent who owns seven properties, from Orange County to the Coachella Valley, and flips houses like a cook handles pancakes. But Arana prides himself most on helping young couples, Latinos and not, buy their first homes.

“I couldn’t have done this in Mexico,” he told me as we stood in front of his latest purchase, a beat-up 1925 Spanish Revival in Santa Ana just down the street from another house he owns. Long-haired, tanned and tattooed, Arana wore a stylish brown hat and a T-shirt with Emiliano Zapata drawn as the grinning skull logo of punk icons the Misfits . “The one thing this country still offers is that the little guy can get it.”

We were at his newest acquisition because he wanted me to see something: On the side of the house, on a wall behind a trellis near the driveway, was a bas-relief stucco swastika the size of an adult head. A previous owner was a World War II veteran, but Arana had no idea why the white-power emblem was there. A historical curio? Emblematic of the previous owner’s beliefs?

It didn’t matter: It was personal to Arana.

“The first property I bought, in Desert Hot Springs, I had to evict Nazis,” he said. “This is full circle.”

Drawing on an unprecedented poll, this series tells the stories of immigrant life in America today, putting their voices in the foreground.

Just a few moments earlier, we had spoken to his neighbor, Marco Chavez. Arana told him his story — he came to this country without papers as an 8-year-old — and the 61-year-old Chavez shared a bit of his: An immigrant from Morelos who bought his home in the early 2000s. His five children are college graduates. He just finished a living trust.

“My chamacos have come out good,” Chavez told us in Spanish, holding a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in another as he looked at his three vintage VW buses parked on the street. “We’ve all done good.”

Julio and I were getting ready to drive 10 minutes away, to a Santa Ana duplex where he was finishing up an ADU. “For us [immigrants] ... there’s all this opportunity around us. People leave their homelands out of despair, and their hope is gone. Here, there’s hope. I see it all around me.”

When my editor first told me that a nationwide L.A. Times/KFF poll found that immigrants are more optimistic about life in the United States than native-born Americans, my initial response was: story of my life.

I was raised in a run-down granny flat in Anaheim a stone’s throw from a lumberyard, the only place my immigrant parents could afford when they married in 1978. By the time I was 10 in 1989, my mother — a tomato canner — and my truck-driving dad had saved up enough to buy a post-World War II tract home in a better part of town.

World & Nation

In an increasingly pessimistic era, immigrants espouse a hallmark American trait — optimism

Immigrants to the U.S. face extensive challenges, but they still report high levels of optimism about their futures and trust in American institutions, a comprehensive survey has found.

Sept. 17, 2023

Within five years, our street went from majority white to almost exclusively Latino. Our former neighbors moved to Washington, Arizona and other states because, they told my parents, the neighborhood wasn’t “safe” anymore, and California was changing.

Thirty-five years later, my dad and youngest brother are still there, the mortgage paid off years ago . I own my own home. So does the sister that follows me.

My parents never explicitly told us about the American dream. Each grew up in wrenching poverty in Zacatecas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. They couldn’t give us much besides a roof over our heads and back-to-school clothes from Montgomery Ward, but their lives were an unspoken lesson: Life in this country is tough, but life back in the rancho was far harder. You’ve got a shot here — so make something of it, because we did.

The L.A. Times/KFF survey also revealed that Latino immigrants aren’t just optimistic, on some measures, they’re more optimistic than other immigrant groups. It’s a tendency that USC sociology professor Jody Agius Vallejo said “studies have found time and time again” — and that more than a few pundits find weird.

She has devoted her research to studying upper- and middle-class Latinos , whose stories of hope and achievement like that of my family and Julio are legion. That includes the family of her husband, immigrants from Jalostotitlán, Jalisco, who settled in Watts in the 1960s and established a pioneering Latino grocery chain .

“I do get frustrated when people are surprised that Latinos are optimistic,” Agius Vallejo said. “Why wouldn’t they [be]? We can’t discount the fact that Latinos have been subject to significant discrimination and segregation and still make something of themselves. It’s a point of pride for them.”

That’s why I roll my eyes when I hear Americans whine about how their country is ruined — and few are more histrionic than former President Trump. Just this July, he told a rapt crowd that “the American dream is being torn to shreds” and the country is “going to hell, and it’s going to hell very fast.”

Whiners: If you don’t like the U.S., leave. Leave it to immigrants.

When I think of the American dream, I think of my uncle, Ezequiel Miranda.

He, my late mother and three aunts came to the United States as children with my grandparents in the early 1960s. They picked crops near Hollister, Calif., before making their way down to Anaheim, where my grandfather, José Miranda, had picked and packed oranges in the 1920s in what was then a segregated city. My uncle dropped out of school in seventh grade, fearing what might happen after he beat up the white bully who had made his life hell for too long.

I still remember the granny flat in Anaheim that mi tío , his wife, Marbella, and five of his six children lived in when I was growing up in the 1980s. It was next to a muddy alley, in a barrio worse than ours. But my uncle, a member of Cement Masons Local 500 for more than 30 years who worked on projects including Disney California Adventure and what’s now called the Crypto.com Arena, lived the maxim he always told his children and us cousins: A trabajar . Get working.

He bought a small house in Anaheim, traded that one for a bigger one down the street and then settled into a two-story home with a swimming pool in Placentia, where he and Marbella still live. They’re finally empty-nesters: Last week, my cousin Placido, his wife and their two teenage daughters moved into a four-bedroom home in Anaheim after selling their condo during the pandemic and staying with his parents.

At 46, he’s the last of his siblings to own a home. His house is on the type of street where neighbors mistook mi tío for the gardener.

“When we bought it, it looked like the set of Jack Tripper’s apartment,” Plas said, referring to a character in the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Three’s Company,” as he took me on a tour of his kitchen (I call my cousin Plas, and he calls me Gus. Assimilation!). He’s a delivery driver for Frito-Lay who didn’t go beyond community college but is probably the smartest person I know. He sells movie memorabilia and sneakers on EBay as a side hustle, once offering a slew of $1 white T-shirts online for $25 apiece.

New floorboards, cabinets, fixtures, lights and walls gleamed. The granite countertops were on their way.

“My dad came in, and he began to tear things out immediately,” Plas said. “My two handles for this drawer,” he continued, sheepishly shaking his head, “took an hour and a half to install.”

Ten languages, thousands of phone calls: Accurately polling immigrants posed unprecedented challenges

Carrying out the KFF/L.A. Times survey of immigrants required work far beyond the normal survey, but the result provides a unique source of information about America’s immigrant population.

We moved on to his backyard, where mi tío had trimmed hedges that the previous owner let overgrow. He’s now 70 but looks decades younger. I asked mi tío how he felt about how life turned out in the U.S.

“I go to one street, there’s one of my kids. Go to another, another,” he said in Spanish. He’s usually gregarious but now was soft-spoken. “I worked for 50 years. This is my dream.”

“The reason people don’t feel [the American dream] is attainable is because everything is just more expensive,” Plas said. “They almost resign themselves to saying, ‘I can’t buy a house.’

“But when you grow up with dirt floors and laminate roofs, that motivates you to reach for more. When we went to McDonald’s growing up, it was a special occasion. When my parents would buy ice cream, we’d all get just one spoonful and knew to appreciate it.”

“Now,” Plas concluded with his usual sly smile, “my daughters leave cereal in their bowl.”

The L.A. Times/KFF survey might not be news to you. It might even seem boring. But its findings are vital. It’s the template for how this country can move forward from the chaos and division that have afflicted us since the rise of Trump.

To adapt a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, the tree of liberty must be refreshed with immigrant hope.

The doom and gloom that too many Americans screech about on social media and in their personal lives — on both sides of the red-blue divide — is a betrayal of what brought their ancestors here, and what continues to attract people from across the world. Pessimism, not political differences, is what’s bringing down this country; the optimism of newcomers is our best shot to survive.

When I think about the American dream, I think about the bus that arrived Sept. 9 at Union Station from Brownsville, Texas . It’s the 13th such one-way trip since June arranged by the administration of Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

He signed off on them shortly after L.A. declared itself a sanctuary city , meaning city personnel and resources can’t be used to help federal officials deport immigrants.

Abbott says he’s sending us migrants to protest the supposed lax security at the U.S.-Mexico border, but he’s really mocking the American dream . His moves are descended from Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for immigrants without legal status but was eventually ruled unconstitutional.

I grew up in that era, and its rank xenophobia propelled me to not just devote my life to fight back, but also to look for the good in this country instead of the bad. Because if my parents could do it, why not me?

Proposition 187 had the same effect on Angelica Salas , the longtime head of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her group is part of a coalition of nonprofits and faith groups called L.A. Welcomes Collective , which has helped to connect the migrants Abbott has kicked out of Texas with housing and relatives in the United States.

“They are the most patriotic individuals in our country because they’re always hoping that America’s ideals and purported values will happen in their lives,” Salas said of the immigrants she works with. “If it doesn’t, then they hope it happens in the lives of their children. And if it doesn’t for them? Then their grandchildren. Their tenacity to not give up is contagious. ”

That’s the spirit Americans need anew. Immigrants now, immigrants tomorrow, immigrants forever.

More to Read

Opinion: How anti-immigrant bigotry hugely misunderstands our economy

April 9, 2024

Letters to the Editor: America’s immigration hypocrisy is shown in the Baltimore bridge disaster

April 3, 2024

Op Comic: My Mexican grandfather’s infinite garden

March 18, 2024

Start your day right

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Newsom called it a ‘gimmick.’ Now he’s using the trick to lower California’s massive deficit

April 11, 2024

New Iowa law gives state authority to arrest and deport migrants

April 12, 2024

Impeached Homeland Security secretary navigates working with Republicans who want him out

April 10, 2024

A California border town’s first transgender mayor faces recall. Is gender the reason?

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Immigration

Essays on Immigration

Immigrant parents: a journey of resilience, characters in the novel refugee, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Migration of Immigrants and Immigration

Argumentative why immigration should be legal, old vs new immigration, summary of "mericans" by sandra cisneros, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Syrian Refugees: Examining The Pros and Cons

The devil's highway: a summary and analysis, analysis of mohsin hamid's exit west, bread givers: book summary, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Analyzing Jhumpa Lahiri’s My Two Lives

Gary shteyngart’s "sixty-nine cents", research paper on illegal immigration, pro immigration, illegal immigration persuasive speech, the necessity of upholding and expanding daca, causes of the syrian refugee crisis, third and final continent, what makes someone an american, topics in this category.

• Syrian Refugee Crisis
• Immigration Reform
• Illegal Immigration
• Human Migration
• Immigration to America
• Brain Drain

Popular Categories

• Discrimination and Prejudice
• Social Inequality

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Student Opportunities

About Hoover

Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nation’s preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance. 

• The Hoover Story
• Hoover Timeline & History
• Mission Statement
• Vision of the Institution Today
• Key Focus Areas
• About our Fellows
• Research Programs
• Annual Reports
• Hoover in DC
• Fellowship Opportunities
• Visit Hoover
• David and Joan Traitel Building & Rental Information
• Newsletter Subscriptions
• Connect With Us

Hoover scholars form the Institution’s core and create breakthrough ideas aligned with our mission and ideals. What sets Hoover apart from all other policy organizations is its status as a center of scholarly excellence, its locus as a forum of scholarly discussion of public policy, and its ability to bring the conclusions of this scholarship to a public audience.

• Scott Atlas
• Thomas Sargent
• Stephen Kotkin
• Michael McConnell
• Morris P. Fiorina
• John F. Cogan
• China's Global Sharp Power Project
• Economic Policy Group
• History Working Group
• Hoover Education Success Initiative
• National Security Task Force
• National Security, Technology & Law Working Group
• Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group
• Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group
• Renewing Indigenous Economies Project
• State & Local Governance
• Strengthening US-India Relations
• Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group
• Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region

Books by Hoover Fellows

Economics Working Papers

Hoover Education Success Initiative | The Papers

• Hoover Fellows Program
• National Fellows Program
• Student Fellowship Program
• Veteran Fellowship Program
• Congressional Fellowship Program
• Media Fellowship Program
• Silas Palmer Fellowship
• Economic Fellowship Program

Throughout our over one-hundred-year history, our work has directly led to policies that have produced greater freedom, democracy, and opportunity in the United States and the world.

• Determining America’s Role in the World
• Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
• Empowering State and Local Governance
• Revitalizing History
• Confronting and Competing with China
• Revitalizing American Institutions
• Reforming K-12 Education
• Understanding Public Opinion
• Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
• Energy & Environment
• Health Care
• Immigration
• International Affairs
• Key Countries / Regions
• Law & Policy
• Politics & Public Opinion
• Science & Technology
• Security & Defense
• State & Local
• Books by Fellows
• Published Works by Fellows
• Working Papers
• Congressional Testimony
• Hoover Press
• PERIODICALS
• The Caravan
• China's Global Sharp Power
• Economic Policy
• History Lab
• Hoover Education
• Global Policy & Strategy
• National Security, Technology & Law
• Middle East and the Islamic World
• Military History & Contemporary Conflict
• Renewing Indigenous Economies
• State and Local Governance
• Technology, Economics, and Governance

Hoover scholars offer analysis of current policy challenges and provide solutions on how America can advance freedom, peace, and prosperity.

• China Global Sharp Power Weekly Alert
• Email newsletters
• Hoover Daily Report
• Subscription to Email Alerts
• Periodicals
• California on Your Mind
• Defining Ideas
• Hoover Digest
• Video Series
• Uncommon Knowledge
• Battlegrounds
• GoodFellows
• Hoover Events
• Capital Conversations
• Hoover Book Club
• AUDIO PODCASTS
• Matters of Policy & Politics
• Economics, Applied
• Free Speech Unmuted
• Secrets of Statecraft
• Pacific Century
• Libertarian
• Library & Archives

Support Hoover

Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoover’s mission and values.

What is MyHoover?

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at  Hoover.org . In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests.

Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover.

Log In to MyHoover

Forgot Password

Don't have an account? Sign up

Have questions? Contact us

• Support the Mission of the Hoover Institution
• Subscribe to the Hoover Daily Report
• Follow Hoover on Social Media

Make a Gift

Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society.

• About Hoover Institution
• Meet Our Fellows
• Focus Areas
• Research Teams
• Library & Archives

Library & archives

Events, news & press.

The Debate in the United States over Immigration

These essays examine economic, political, social, and legal issues related to immigration into the United States—from compelling arguments for limited immigration to forceful arguments for open borders. They assess the benefits and costs of immigration and its impact on education, social welfare, and health care.

With the annual number of immigrants to the United States at an all-time high, the debate over immigration has reached a fevered pitch. Do today's immigrants come to this country just to go on welfare? Will immigration forever change America's ethnic, cultural, and political landscape? Some see unrestrained immigration as the lifeblood of the world's most successful society, while others have called for closing the borders entirely. After the introduction, which examines the historical debate over immigration, the book looks at the current spectrum of economic, political, social, and legal issues related to immigration into the United States—from compelling arguments for limited immigration to forceful arguments for open borders. As part of the program on American Institutions and Economic Performance, leading scholars and business experts convened at the Hoover Institution in October 1996. Amid swirling controversy over passage of California's Proposition 187, which denies welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, conference participants discussed current state and federal immigration policies and the strengths and weaknesses of proposed changes. Presented here is a powerful cross section of papers from that conference, each covering a major aspect of the overall immigration issue. The distinguished participants offer assessments of the benefits and costs of immigration, along with its impact on education, social welfare, and health care, and then presents appraisals of the widely publicized subject of undocumented immigration and employer sanctions. With immigration becoming a personal issue for millions of Americans, The Debate in the United States over Immigration illuminates fundamental, individual truths crucial to making policy decisions that will ultimately best serve American society.

Copyright 1997.

CLICK HERE TO BUY »

View the discussion thread.

Join the Hoover Institution’s community of supporters in ideas advancing freedom.

The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (2015)

Chapter: summary.

The United States prides itself on being a nation of immigrants, and the nation has a long history of successfully absorbing people from across the globe. The successful integration of immigrants and their children contributes to economic vitality and to a vibrant and ever-changing culture. Americans have offered opportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fully incorporated into U.S. society, and in exchange immigrants have become Americans —embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting the United States through service in its military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, and enriching everything from the nation’s cuisine to its universities, music, and art.

2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which began the most recent period of mass immigration to the United States. This act abolished the restrictive quota system of the 1920s and opened up legal immigration to all the countries in the world, helping to set the stage for a dramatic increase in immigration from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. At the same time, it limited the numbers of legal immigrants coming from countries in the Western Hemisphere, thus establishing restrictions on immigrants across the U.S. southern border and setting the stage for the rise in undocumented border crossers. Although the Immigration Act of 1965 exemplified the progressive ideals of the 1960s, the system it engendered may also hinder some immigrants’ and their descendants’ prospects for integration.

Today, the 41 million immigrants in the United States represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S.-born children of immigrants, the

second generation, represent another 37.1 million people, or 12 percent of the population. Thus, together the first and second generations account for one out of four members of the U.S. population. Whether they are successfully integrating is therefore a pressing and important question.

To address this question, the Panel on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society was charged with (1) summarizing what is known about how immigrants and their descendants are integrating into American society; (2) discussing the implications of this knowledge for informing various policy options; and (3) identifying any important gaps in existing knowledge and data availability. Another panel appointed under the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will be publishing its final report later this year; that report will examine the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration and present projections of immigration and of related economic and fiscal trends in the future. That report will complement but does not overlap with this panel’s work on immigrant integration.

The panel defines integration as the process by which members of immigrant groups and host societies come to resemble one another. That process, which has both economic and sociocultural dimensions, begins with the immigrant generation and continues through the second generation and beyond. The process of integration depends upon the participation of immigrants and their descendants in major social institutions such as schools and the labor market, as well as their social acceptance by other Americans. Greater integration implies movement toward parity of critical life opportunities with the native-born American majority. Integration may make immigrants and their children better off and in a better position to fully contribute to their communities, which is no doubt a major objective for the immigrants themselves. If immigrants come to the United States with very little education and become more like native-born Americans by getting more education, they are considered more integrated. They are also considered better off, because more education improves their well-being. However, integration does not always improve well-being. For example, immigrants on average come to the United States with better health than native-born Americans, but as they integrate in other ways, they also become less healthy. Therefore, their well-being (as measured by health) declines. So, to the extent that available data allow, the panel measured two separate dimensions of change—integration and well-being. The first dimension, integration, speaks to whether immigrants and the native-born become more like one another; the second dimension, well-being, examines whether immigrants are better or worse off over time.

Integration is a two-way process: it happens both because immigrants experience change once they arrive and because native-born Americans change in response to immigration. The process of integration takes time, and the panel measured the process in two ways: for the first generation,

by examining what happens in the time since arrival; for the second and third generations—the children and grandchildren of immigrants—by comparisons across generations.

PATTERNS OF INTEGRATION

Overall, the panel found that current immigrants and their descendants are integrating into U.S. society. This report documents the course and extent of integration, and the report’s chapters draw 18 formal conclusions with regard to integration. Across all measurable outcomes, integration increases over time, with immigrants becoming more like the native-born with more time in the country, and with the second and third generations becoming more like other native-born Americans than their parents were.

For the outcomes of educational attainment, income, occupational distribution, living above the poverty line, residential integration, and language ability, immigrants also increase their well-being as they become more similar to the native-born and improve their situation over time. Still, the well-being of immigrants and their descendants is highly dependent on immigrant starting points and on the segment of American society—the racial and ethnic groups, the legal status, the social class, and the geographic area—into which they integrate. There are three notable outcomes where well-being declines as immigrants and their descendants converge with native-born Americans: health, crime, and the percentage of children growing up with two parents. We discuss these outcomes below.

Despite large differences in starting points among the first generation, there has been strong intergenerational progress in educational attainment. Second generation members of most contemporary immigrant groups meet or exceed the schooling level of typical third+ generation native-born Americans. This is true for both men and women.

However, this general picture masks important variations between and within groups. One difference from earlier waves of immigration is the large percentage of highly skilled immigrants now coming to the United States. More than a quarter of the foreign-born now has a college education or more, and they contribute a great deal to the U.S. scientific and technical workforce. These immigrants’ children also do exceptionally well educationally and typically attain the top tiers of the occupational distribution.

Other immigrants start with exceptionally low levels of education. This is particularly true for foreign-born Mexicans and Central Americans, who on average have less than 10 years of education. These immigrants’ children progress a great deal relative to their parents, with an average education of

more than 12 years, but they do not reach parity with the general population of native-born. This outcome mostly reflects the low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other forms of human capital their parents bring to the United States.

Employment and Earnings

Immigrant men have higher employment rates than the second and higher generations. This employment advantage is especially dramatic among the least educated immigrants, who are much more likely to be employed than comparably educated native born men, indicating that they are filling an important niche in our economy. For second+ generation men, the trajectories vary by ethnicity and race. By this measure, Asian men are successfully integrating with the non-Hispanic white population, and Hispanic men are making gains once their lower education is taken into account. However, second generation blacks appear to be integrating with the general black native-born population, where higher education does not translate into higher employment rates. Among women the pattern is reversed, with a substantially lower employment rate for immigrants than for the native-born, but employment rates for second and higher generation women moving toward parity with the general native-born population, regardless of race.

Foreign-born workers’ earnings improve relative to the native-born the longer they reside in the United States. These overall patterns, however, are still shaped by racial and ethnic stratification. Earnings assimilation is considerably slower for Hispanic (predominantly Mexican) immigrants than for other immigrants. And although Asian immigrants and their descendants appear to do just as well as native-born whites, these comparisons become less favorable after controlling for education. Asian Americans’ schooling advantage can obscure the fact that, at least among men, they tend to earn somewhat less than third+ generation non-Hispanic whites with the same level of education.

Occupations

The occupational distributions of the first and second generations reveal a picture of intergenerational improvement similar to that for education and earnings. The groups concentrated in low-status occupations in the first generation improve their occupational position substantially in the second generation, although they do not reach parity with third+ generation Americans. Second generation children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America have made large leaps in occupational terms: 22 percent of second generation Mexican men and 31 percent of second generation

men from Central America in 2003-2013 were in professional or managerial positions. Like their foreign-born fathers, second generation men were overrepresented in service jobs, although they have largely left agricultural work. Second generation Mexican men were also less likely than their immigrant parents to take jobs in the informal sector and were more likely to receive health and retirement benefits through their employment. The occupational leap for second generation women for this period was even greater, and the gap separating them from later generation women narrowed greatly.

The robust representation of the first and second generations across the occupational spectrum in these analyses implies that the U.S. workforce has been welcoming immigrants and their children into higher-level jobs in recent decades. This pattern of workforce integration appears likely to continue as the baby boom cohorts complete their retirement over the next two decades.

Immigrants are more likely to be poor than the native-born, even though their labor force participation rates are higher and they work longer hours on average. The poverty rate for foreign-born persons was 18.4 percent in 2013, compared to 13.4 percent for the native-born. However, the poverty rate declined over generations, from over 18 percent for first generation adults (immigrants) to 13.6 percent in the second generation and 11.5 percent by the third+ generation. These overall patterns vary by race and ethnic group, with a troubling rise in poverty for the black second+ generations relative to the black first generation. The panel’s analysis also shows progress stalling among Asian Americans between the second and third generations. Overall, first generation Hispanics have the highest poverty rates, but there is much progress from the first to the second generation.

Residential Integration

Over time most immigrants and their descendants gradually become less segregated from the general population of native-born whites and more dispersed across regions, cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Earnings and occupation explain some but not all of the high levels of foreign-born segregation from other native-born residents. Length of residence also matters: recently arrived immigrants often choose to live in areas with other immigrants and thus have higher levels of residential segregation from native-born whites than immigrants who have been in the country for 10-20 years. Race plays an independent role—Asians are the least segregated

in metropolitan areas from native-born whites, followed by Hispanics and then black immigrants, who are the most segregated from native-born whites. New research also points to an independent effect of legal status, with the undocumented being more segregated than other immigrants.

Language diversity in the United States has grown as the immigrant population has increased and become more varied. Today, about 85 percent of the foreign-born population speaks a language other than English at home. The most prevalent language (other than English) is by far Spanish: 62 percent of all immigrants speak Spanish at home.

However, a more accurate measure of language integration is English-language proficiency, or how well people say they speak English. There is evidence that integration is happening as rapidly or faster now than it did for the earlier waves of mainly European immigrants in the 20th century. Today, many immigrants arrive already speaking English as a first or second language. Currently, about 50 percent of the foreign-born in surveys report they speak English “very well” or “well,” while less than 10 percent say they speak English “not at all.” There are significant differences in English proficiency by region and country of birth: immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean generally report lower rates of English-language proficiency than immigrants from other regions, and they are most likely to say they speak English “not at all.”

The second+ generations are generally acquiring English and losing their ancestors’ language at roughly the same rates as their historical predecessors, with English monolingualism usually occurring within three generations. Spanish speakers and their descendants, however, appear to be acquiring English and losing Spanish more slowly than other immigrant groups. Yet even in the large Spanish-speaking concentration in Southern California, Mexican Americans’ transition to English dominance is all but complete by the third generation; only 4 percent still speak primarily Spanish at home, although 17 percent reported they can speak Spanish very well.

Despite the positive outlook for linguistic integration, the barriers to English proficiency, particularly for low-skilled, poorly educated, residentially segregated, and undocumented immigrant populations, are cause for concern. Funding for English-as a second-language classes has declined even as the population of English-language learners (ELL) has grown. The number of children who are ELL has grown substantially in recent decades, presenting challenges for many school systems. Since 1990, the school-age ELL population has grown at a much faster rate than the school-age population overall. Today, 9 percent of all students in the K-12 system are ELL. Their relative concentration varies widely by state and district. Overall

resources for education in English as a second language are limited for both adults and children.

Foreign-born immigrants have better infant, child, and adult health outcomes than the U.S.-born population in general and better outcomes than U.S.-born members of their ethnic group. In comparison with native-born Americans, the foreign-born are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and all cancers combined; they experience fewer chronic health conditions, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of obesity, and fewer functional limitations. Immigrants also have a lower prevalence of depression and of alcohol abuse.

Foreign-born immigrants live longer, too. They have a life expectancy of 80.0 years, 3.4 years more than the native-born population, and this immigrant advantage holds across all the major ethnoracial categories. Over time and generations, these advantages decline as their health status converges with the native-born.

Even though immigrants generally have better health than native-born Americans, they are disadvantaged when it comes to receiving health care to meet their preventive and medical health needs. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) seems likely to improve this situation for many poor immigrants, but undocumented immigrants are specifically excluded from all coverage under the ACA and are not entitled to any nonemergency care in U.S. hospitals.

Increased prevalence of immigrants is associated with lower crime rates—the opposite of what many Americans fear. Among men ages 18-39, the foreign-born are incarcerated at a rate that is one-fourth the rate for the native-born. Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower rates of crime and violence than comparable nonimmigrant neighborhoods. This phenomenon is reflected not only across space but also over time. There is, however, evidence that crime rates for the second and third generation rise to more closely match the general population of native-born Americans. If this trend is confirmed, it may be an unwelcome aspect of integration.

Family Patterns

The panel’s analysis indicates that immigrant family-formation patterns change over time. Immigrant divorce rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates start out much lower than the rates for native-born Americans generally,

but over time and over generations these rates increase, while the likelihood of living in extended families with multiple generations under one roof declines. Thus immigrant children are much more likely to live in families with two parents than are third generation children. This is true overall and within all of the major ethnic and racial groups. Two-parent families provide children with a number of important advantages: they are associated with lower risks of poverty, more effective parenting practices, and lower levels of stress than are households with only one or no parents. The prevalence of two-parent families continues to be high for second generation children, but the percentage of children in two-parent families declines substantially between the second and third generations, converging toward the percentage for other native-born families. Since single-parent families are more likely to be impoverished, this is a disadvantage going forward.

CAUSES FOR CONCERN

The panel identified three causes for concern in the integration of immigrants: the role of legal status in slowing or blocking the integration of not just the undocumented but also their U.S.-citizen children; racial patterns in immigrant integration and the resulting racial stratification in the U.S. population; and the low percentage of immigrants who naturalize, compared with other major immigrant-receiving countries.

Legal Status

As the evidence examined by the panel made clear, an immigrant’s legal status is a key factor in that individual’s integration trajectory. Immigration statuses fall into four rough categories: permanent, temporary, discretionary, and undocumented. These statuses lie on a continuum of precariousness and security, with differences in the right to remain in the United States, rights to benefits and services from the government, ability to work, susceptibility to deportation, and ability to participate fully in the economic, political, social, and civic life of the nation. In recent decades, these statuses have multiplied due to changes in immigration policy, creating different paths and multiplying the roadblocks to integration into American society.

People often transition between different immigration statuses. Over half of those receiving lawful permanent resident (LPR) status in 2013 were already residing in the United States and adjusted their status to permanent from a visa that allowed them to work or study only temporarily in the United States. Many immigrants thus begin the process of integration into American society—working, sending their children to school, interacting with neighbors, and making friends—while living with a temporary status

that does not automatically put them on the path to LPR or citizenship. Likewise, some undocumented immigrants live here for decades with no legal status while putting down deep roots in American society. Currently, there are insufficient data on changes in the legal status of immigrants over time to measure the presumably large effects of those trajectories on the process of integration.

Since the mid-1990s, U.S. immigration policy has become more punitive toward the undocumented, and interior enforcement policies have attempted to prevent their employment and long-term residence in this country. An estimated 11.3 million (26%) of the foreign-born in the United States are undocumented. Their number rose rapidly from the 1990s through 2007, reaching a peak of 12.2 million, but then fell with the Great Recession in 2008 and a sharp decline in immigration from Mexico, plateauing at 11.3 million since then. Although undocumented immigrants come from all over the globe and one in ten undocumented immigrants come from Asia, more than three-quarters are from North and Central America. The majority of the undocumented residents in the United States today—about 52 percent—are from Mexico.

It is a political, not a scientific, question whether we should try to prevent the integration of the undocumented or provide a path to legalization, and thus not within this panel’s purview. However, the panel did find evidence that the current immigration policy has several effects on integration. First, it has only partially affected the integration of the undocumented, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades. The shift in recent years to a more intense regime of enforcement has not prevented the undocumented from working, but it has coincided with a reduction in their wages. Undocumented students are less likely than other immigrants to graduate from high school and enroll in college, undermining their long-term earnings capacity.

Second, the immigration impasse has led to a plethora of laws targeting the undocumented at local, state, and federal levels. These laws often contradict each other, creating variation in integration policies across the country. Some states and localities provide in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants, some provide driver’s licenses, and some are declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities. In other localities, there are restrictive laws, such as prohibitions on renting housing to undocumented immigrants or aggressive local enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Finally, the current system includes restrictions on the receipt of public benefits, and those restrictions have created barriers to the successful integration of the U.S.-citizen children of the undocumented, even though, as citizens, it is in the country’s best interest that these children integrate successfully. Today, 5.2 million children in the United States reside with at least one undocumented immigrant parent. The vast majority of these

children—4.5 million—are U.S.-born citizens. Included in this total are almost 7 percent of students in kindergarten through high school (K-12), presenting important challenges for schools, including behavioral issues among these children. Policies designed to block the integration of undocumented immigrants or individuals with a temporary status can have the unintended effect of halting or hindering the integration of U.S. citizens and LPRs in mixed-status families. Laws are often designed to apply to individuals, but their effects ripple through households, families, and communities, with measurable long-term negative impacts on children who are lawful U.S. citizens.

The panel found that patterns of immigrant integration are shaped by race. Although there is evidence of integration and improvement in socioeconomic outcomes for blacks, Latinos, and Asians, their perceived race still matters, even after controlling for all their other characteristics. Black immigrants and their descendants are integrating with native-born non-Hispanic whites at the slowest rate. Asian immigrants and their descendants are integrating with native-born non-Hispanic whites most quickly, and Latinos are in between. The panel found some evidence of racial discrimination against Latinos and some evidence that their overall trajectories of integration are shaped more by the large numbers of undocumented in their group than by a process of racialization. At this time, it is not possible with the data available to the panel to definitively state whether Latinos are experiencing a pattern of racial exclusion or a pattern of steady progress that could lead to a declining significance of group boundaries. What can be reasonably concluded is that progress in reducing racial discrimination and disparities in socioeconomic outcomes in the United States will improve the outcomes for the native-born and immigrants alike.

Naturalization Rates

Birthright citizenship is one of the most powerful mechanisms of formal political and civic inclusion in the United States. Yet naturalization rates in the United States lag behind other countries that receive substantial numbers of immigrants. The overall level of citizenship among working-age immigrants (15-64 years old) who have been living in the United States for at least 10 years is 50 percent. After adjustments to account for the undocumented population in the United States, a group that is barred by law from citizenship, the naturalization rate among U.S. immigrants rises slightly but is still well below many European countries and far lower than other traditional receiving countries such as Australia and Canada. This

is surprising since the vast majority of immigrants, when surveyed, report wanting to become a U.S. citizen. Moderate levels of naturalization in the United States appear to stem not from immigrants’ lack of interest or even primarily from the bureaucratic process of applying for citizenship but from somewhere in the process by which individuals translate their motivation to naturalize into action. Further research is needed to clearly identify the barriers to naturalization. Low naturalization rates have important implications for political integration because the greatest barriers to immigrants’ political participation, especially participation in elections, are gaining citizenship and registering to vote after becoming a citizen.

EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION ON SOCIETY

Previous immigration from around the globe changed the United States. It is much more difficult to see and to measure the ways in which immigration is changing the country now because it is notoriously hard to measure cultural changes while they are occurring. It is also difficult because the United States is a very heterogeneous society already, and new immigration adds to that diversity. It is difficult to measure the society that immigrants are integrating into when the society itself does not remain static. The major way in which the panel outlines how immigration has affected American society is by documenting the growth in racial, ethnic, and religious diversity in the U.S. population, which has resulted in increased intergroup contact and the transformation of American communities and institutions. 1

In 1970, 83 percent of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white; today, that proportion is about 62 percent, and immigration is responsible for much of that change, both directly through arrival of foreign-born immigrants and indirectly through the higher birth rates of immigrants and their children. Hispanics have grown from just over 4.5 percent of the total U.S. population in 1970 to about 17 percent today. Asians are currently the fastest-growing immigrant group in the country, as immigration from Mexico has declined; Asians represented less than 1 percent of the population in 1970 but are 6 percent today. Black immigration has also grown. In 1970, blacks were just 2.5 percent of the foreign-born; today, they are 9 percent of immigrants residing in the United States.

Ethnic and racial diversity resulting from immigration is no longer limited to a few states and cities that have histories of absorbing immigrants. Today, new immigrants are moving throughout the country, including into areas that have not witnessed a large influx of immigrants for centuries.

___________________

1 As discussed above, this report does not examine the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy. That is the charge of the other National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel.

This new pattern has changed the landscape of immigration. The states with the fastest growth rates of immigrant population today are primarily in the South. The presence of racial- and religious-minority immigrants in new localities and in nonmetropolitan areas raises new challenges of integration and incorporation for many communities and small towns that are unaccustomed to substantial minority and immigrant populations. At the same time, there are many localities in new destination areas that have adopted welcoming strategies to encourage immigrant workers and foster their integration into the community.

In urban areas across the country, immigrants and descendants have been “pioneer integrators” of previously all-white or all-black spaces. The result is that many neighborhoods are more diverse now than they have ever been, and the number of all-white census tracts has fallen. Yet racial segregation is still prevalent throughout the country, with blacks experiencing the most segregation from whites, followed by segregation of Hispanics and then Asians from the non-Hispanic white population.

While three-quarters of all immigrants are Christian, immigration is also bringing new religious diversity to the United States. Four percent of the foreign-born are Muslim, and although Muslim immigrants are doing better than the national average in education and income, they do report encountering high levels of prejudice and discrimination. Religious diversity is especially notable among Asian immigrants, with sizable numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, and those who do not identify with any religion. Participation in religious organizations helps immigrants and may shore up support for the religious organizations they support, even as native-born Americans’ religious affiliation declines.

Immigrants have also contributed enormously to America’s shifting patterns of racial and ethnic mixing in intimate and marital relationships. Marriages between the native-born and immigrants appear to have increased significantly over time. Today, about one of every seven new marriages is an interracial or interethnic marriage, more than twice the rate a generation ago. Perhaps as a result, the social and cultural boundaries between native-born and foreign-born populations in the United States are much less clearly defined than in the past. Moreover, second and third generation individuals from immigrant minority populations are far more likely to marry higher generation native-born partners than are their first generation counterparts. These intermarriages also contribute to the increase in mixed-race Americans.

An additional important effect of intermarriage is on family networks. A recent survey reported that more that 35 percent of Americans said that one of their “close” kin is of a different race. Integration of immigrants and their descendants is a major contributor to this large degree of intermixing. In the future, the lines between what Americans today think of as separate

ethnoracial groups may become much more blurred. Indeed, immigrants become Americans not just by integrating into our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, but also into our families. Very quickly, “they” become “us.”

THE NEED FOR BETTER DATA

The panel was handicapped in its work by the dearth of available longitudinal data to measure immigrant integration. This is a long-standing problem that has become increasingly critical as immigration to the United States has increased and as immigrants have become dispersed throughout the country. The panel made several specific recommendations for data collection that are outlined in detail in Chapter 10 . These include the following:

• That the federal government collect data on generational status by adding a question on birthplace of parents to the American Community Survey, in order to measure the integration of the second generation.
• That the Current Population Survey test and if possible add a question on legal statuses at entry or at present, leaving those in undocumented status to be identified by process of elimination, and that other major national surveys with large numbers of immigrants also add a question of this type to identify legal status.
• That any legislation to regularize immigrant status in the future for the undocumented include a component to survey those who apply and to follow them to understand the effects of legalization.
• That administrative data held by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on visa type be linked to census and other government data, as other countries have done, and that such data be made available to researchers in secure data enclaves. Such data would significantly help federal, state, and local officials understand and develop policies to improve the integration of immigrants into U.S. society.

This page intentionally left blank.

The United States prides itself on being a nation of immigrants, and the country has a long history of successfully absorbing people from across the globe. The integration of immigrants and their children contributes to our economic vitality and our vibrant and ever changing culture. We have offered opportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fully incorporated into our society and in exchange immigrants have become Americans - embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting our country through service in our military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, and enriching everything from the nation's cuisine to its universities, music, and art.

Today, the 41 million immigrants in the United States represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S.-born children of immigrants, the second generation, represent another 37.1 million people, or 12 percent of the population. Thus, together the first and second generations account for one out of four members of the U.S. population. Whether they are successfully integrating is therefore a pressing and important question. Are new immigrants and their children being well integrated into American society, within and across generations? Do current policies and practices facilitate their integration? How is American society being transformed by the millions of immigrants who have arrived in recent decades?

To answer these questions, this new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine summarizes what we know about how immigrants and their descendants are integrating into American society in a range of areas such as education, occupations, health, and language.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

I’m a First-Generation American. Here’s What Helped Me Make It to College

• Share article

My father is an immigrant from Mexico who decided to sacrifice his home to give me a better life. He grew up with the notion that the United States had one of the best education systems in the world and he saw that education as my ticket to participate in the pursuit of happiness.

When he moved to America, he chose Flushing, Queens, in New York City—which this year became an epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis—because the public elementary school was highly regarded for its academics and safety. But navigating the public school system was extremely difficult, marked with constant reminders that the system was not designed for students like me. These difficulties and inequities have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis and will continue to impact students if they remain unaddressed.

My father always lived with the fear that if people found out I was the son of a Mexican immigrant, I would be ostracized in the classroom. From the first day of elementary school, he prayed that no one would bother me for being Mexican American, and that I would learn English quickly so I could defend against attacks on my identity. I have gone through all my academic career fighting the stereotypes that Mexicans are all “lazy” and “undocumented.”

I have experienced an interesting duality as a Mexican American, one that has played a formative role in my education and development. I have two languages, two countries, two identities. I learn in English but live in Spanish. I am Mexican at home but American at school.

I first became aware of this code-switching in middle school. The ways I interacted with my white, wealthy peers were far different from with my Latinx friends. I understood that English held more power than Spanish. Many people associate an accent or different regional variants of English to be unsophisticated, so I worked to be perceived as “articulate” and “well-spoken” at my local elementary and middle schools. In fact, it was my attention to coming across as “articulate” that helped me get into the high school that I attended.

I wanted to attend a high-achieving high school, but I did not perform well on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) and therefore failed to be admitted into one of New York City’s specialized high schools. But the principal of Millennium High School, a selective public high school in Manhattan, offered me a spot—and gave me a shot. Principal Colin McEvoy saw more than the student who failed to get into a SHSAT school. He saw a well-spoken kid who was determined to find a school that would have the resources to achieve his goal of graduating and going to college. My father had sacrificed everything so I could go to college, and I saw Millennium as the means to get there.

Not every student can have the same opportunity I did, but every school community and educator can take certain steps to support students who feel at odds within a system that was not designed for them. Here are three steps that will help students like me:

1. Play an active role in their students’ lives outside of academics. While this is important during “normal” times, it is even more important now during the global pandemic when students are worried about their family, cut off from friends, and unsure what the future holds. Each student should be assigned a teacher who also serves as adviser, an additional adult figure in their life to help guide and assist them—even if this is done virtually. At Millennium, each student in the beginning of the high school experience is assigned an adviser and meets in advisory class three days a week to complete college-preparatory activities and check in with their adviser about academics and their personal life.

2. Acknowledge how political developments may affect students. Schools should provide students who may be affected by a policy decision with the tools to protect their education. I have many friends who have been affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy and had to go through the complex process of ensuring they could study in the country without their parents. This June, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind DACA, but immigrants’ fight for protection under the law is far from over. It is important for teachers to understand how politics can impact the well-being of students—and how the fear of those impacts often take a toll on students’ academics.

3. Offer guidance on how to apply to college and options aside from college. My former high school requires every student to meet with the college guidance counselor at least twice, once each in their junior and senior years. As the first in my family to apply to college, these meetings were essential for me to figure out the application process, as well as for navigating financial aid and scholarships. It was only with this guidance that I applied for a Posse Foundation scholarship and earned a full scholarship to Middlebury College—opportunities that I would not have even known about otherwise.

As the COVID-19 vaccine gets rolled out more widely, there remain a lot of unknowns in higher education and in many families’ financial futures. Educators can help students explore alternate opportunities during this difficult time, including community college, internships, apprenticeships, gap years, or service-learning options.

Students of marginalized communities are both fighters and academics. Going through the American education system is difficult, and there are active ways that schools and educators can help their students navigate it. This is not a matter of doing the work for the students but acknowledging that there are several challenges present in students’ lives—challenges that may be exacerbated during a pandemic—and helping them navigate them.

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

Apr 10, 2023

How To Write Essays About Immigration (With Examples)

Immigrants bring diverse perspectives and skills that can enrich our societies and economies. If you want to gain insight into the impact of immigration on society and culture, keep reading!

Immigration, a subject deeply woven into the fabric of global discussions, touches on political, economic, and social nuances. As globalization propels many to seek new horizons, understanding the multifaceted impacts of migration is crucial. Crafting a compelling essay on such a vast topic requires more than just research; it demands the delicate weaving of insights into a coherent narrative. For those keen on delivering a polished essay on immigration, considering assistance from a reliable essay writing tool can be a game-changer. This tool not only refines the craft of writing but ensures your perspectives on immigration are articulated with clarity and precision.

Here are our Top 5 Essay Examples and Ideas about Immigration:

The economic impact of immigration on host countries, introduction.

In many nations, immigration has been a hotly debated issue, with supporters and opponents disputing how it would affect the home nation. The economic impact of immigration on host countries is one of the essential components of this discussion. Immigration's economic effects may be favorable or harmful, depending on many circumstances.

This article will examine the economic effects of immigration on the receiving nations, examining both the advantages and disadvantages that immigration may have. You will better know how immigration impacts a nation's economy and the variables that influence it after this article.

Immigration's effects on labor markets

An essential component of the total economic impact of immigration is how it affects labor markets. Immigration may affect labor markets, including shifting labor supply and demand, opening new job possibilities, and perhaps affecting local employees' earnings and prospects. This section will examine how immigration affects labor markets in receiving nations.

The shift in the labor supply is one of immigration's most apparent effects on labor markets. When more employees are available in the host nation due to immigration, there may be more competition for open positions. In fields that serve immigrant populations, such as ethnic food shops or language schools, immigrants can also generate new jobs.

Another significant impact of immigration on labor markets is its effect on wages and income distribution. Some studies have suggested that immigration can reduce wages for native workers, particularly those who are less educated or have lower skill levels. 

Immigrants can also contribute to economic growth and innovation, which can positively impact labor markets. Immigrants often have unique skills, experiences, and perspectives that can help drive innovation and create new job opportunities in the host country. Furthermore, immigrants are often more entrepreneurial and more likely to start businesses, which can generate new jobs and contribute to economic growth.

The effect of immigration on wages and income distribution

The effect of immigration on wages and income distribution is a crucial area of concern in the overall economic impact of immigration. Immigration can affect wages and income distribution in various ways, which can have significant implications for both native workers and immigrants. In this section, we will explore the effect of immigration on wages and income distribution in host countries.

One of the primary ways that immigration can impact wages and income distribution is by changing the supply and demand of labor. With an influx of immigrants, the labor supply increases, which can lead to increased competition for jobs. Some studies suggest that immigration harms wages for native workers, while others offer no significant effect.

Another way that immigration can impact wages and income distribution is through its effect on the composition of the workforce. Immigrants often fill low-skilled jobs in industries such as agriculture, construction, and hospitality, which tend to pay lower wages. 

Immigration can also impact income distribution by contributing to the overall level of economic inequality in a host country. While immigration can lead to lower wages for some native workers, it can also lead to higher wages and increased economic mobility for some immigrants. Furthermore, immigrants may face various barriers to upward mobility, such as discrimination or lack of access to education and training. This can lead to increased income inequality between native and immigrant workers.

The contribution of immigrants to economic growth and innovation

Immigrants have historically played a significant role in driving economic growth and innovation in host countries. In this section, we will explore the contribution of immigrants to economic growth and innovation and the factors that enable them to do so.

One of the primary ways that immigrants contribute to economic growth is through their entrepreneurial activities. Immigrants are often more likely to start their businesses than native-born individuals, and these businesses can create jobs and drive economic growth. Immigrant entrepreneurs have contributed to developing industries such as technology, healthcare, and hospitality. Additionally, immigrants are often overrepresented in STEM fields, which is critical to driving innovation and economic growth.

Another way that immigrants contribute to economic growth is through their impact on the labor force. Immigrants tend to be more mobile than native-born individuals, which can lead to a more flexible and adaptable workforce. Immigrants also tend to fill critical roles in industries such as healthcare and agriculture, which are essential to maintaining the functioning of the economy. By filling these roles, immigrants contribute to the overall productivity and growth of the economy.

The costs and benefits of social welfare programs for immigrants

The issue of social welfare programs for immigrants has been a controversial topic in many host countries. In this section, we will explore the costs and benefits of social welfare programs for immigrants and the policy implications.

One of the primary benefits of social welfare programs for immigrants is that they can help reduce poverty and promote social inclusion. Immigrants often face significant barriers to economic mobility, such as language barriers and discrimination. Social welfare programs can help provide a safety net for those struggling to make ends meet and promote social cohesion by reducing inequalities.

However, social welfare programs for immigrants also come with costs. One concern is that these programs may attract immigrants primarily seeking to access social welfare benefits rather than contributing to the economy. This can strain public finances and create resentment among native-born individuals who feel their tax dollars are being used to support immigrants.

Another concern is that social welfare programs may create disincentives for immigrants to work and contribute to the economy. If the benefits of social welfare programs are too generous, some immigrants may choose to rely on them rather than seek employment. This can create long-term dependence and reduce overall economic productivity.

The impact of immigration on public finances and fiscal policies

The effect of immigration on public finances and fiscal policies is a topic of significant interest and debate. This section will explore how immigration affects public finances and how host countries can implement budgetary policies to manage the impact.

One way that immigration can impact public finances is through taxes. Immigrants who are employed and pay taxes can contribute to the tax base of the host country, which can provide additional revenue for public services and infrastructure. However, immigrants who are not employed or earn low wages may contribute fewer taxes, which can strain public finances. 

Fiscal policies can be used to manage the impact of immigration on public finances. One guideline is to increase taxes on immigrants to offset the costs of public services they use. However, this can create a disincentive for highly skilled and educated immigrants to migrate to the host country. Another policy is to increase spending on public services to accommodate the needs of immigrants. However, this can strain public finances and lead to resentment among native-born individuals who feel their tax dollars are being used to support immigrants.

In conclusion, the economic impact of immigration is a complex issue with both costs and benefits for host countries. Immigration can impact labor markets, wages and income distribution, economic growth and innovation, social welfare programs, public finances, and fiscal policies. 

The social and cultural implications of immigration

Immigration has social and cultural implications that affect both immigrants and host countries. The movement of people from one place to another can result in a blending of cultures, traditions, and ideas. At the same time, immigration can also result in social and cultural tensions as different groups struggle to integrate and adjust to new environments. 

The social and cultural implications of immigration have become increasingly important in today's globalized world as the movement of people across borders has become more common. In this article, we will explore the various social and cultural implications of immigration and how they impact immigrants and host communities.

The impact of immigration on social cohesion and integration

Immigration has a significant impact on social cohesion and integration in host countries. Social cohesion refers to the degree to which members of a society feel connected and share a sense of belonging. In contrast, integration refers to the process by which immigrants become a part of the host society. Immigration can either enhance or hinder social cohesion and integration, depending on how it is managed and perceived by the host society.

Another factor that can impact social cohesion and integration is the level of diversity within the host society. Increased diversity can lead to greater cultural exchange and understanding but also social tensions and the formation of segregated communities. Promoting social interaction and cooperation among diverse groups can help mitigate these tensions and promote social cohesion.

The perception of immigrants by the host society also plays a significant role in social cohesion and integration. Negative stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes can hinder integration and create barriers to social cohesion. On the other hand, positive attitudes towards immigrants and their contributions to society can facilitate integration and promote social cohesion.

The role of language and communication in the integration of immigrants

Language and communication play a crucial role in integrating immigrants into host societies. Immigrants may need the ability to communicate effectively with others to overcome significant barriers to social and economic integration. Language and communication skills are essential for accessing education, finding employment, and participating in civic life.

Language is one of the primary barriers immigrants face when integrating into a new society. Without proficiency in the host country's language, immigrants may struggle to understand instructions, participate in conversations, and access essential services. This can lead to social isolation and hinder economic opportunities.

Language training programs are one way to address this issue. Effective language training programs can help immigrants learn the host country's language and develop the communication skills necessary for successful integration. These programs can also give immigrants the cultural knowledge and understanding essential to navigate the host society.

The effect of immigration on cultural diversity and identity

Immigration can significantly impact the cultural diversity and identity of both host societies and immigrant communities. The cultural exchange resulting from immigration can enrich societies and provide opportunities for learning and growth. However, immigration can also pose challenges to preserving cultural identities and maintaining social cohesion.

One of the primary ways in which immigration affects cultural diversity and identity is through the introduction of new customs, traditions, and beliefs. Immigrant communities often bring unique cultural practices, such as food, music, and art, that can enhance the cultural landscape of the host society. Exposure to new cultures can broaden the perspectives of individuals and communities, leading to greater tolerance and understanding.

The challenges and benefits of multiculturalism in host countries

Multiculturalism refers to the coexistence of different cultural groups within a society. It is a concept that has become increasingly important in modern societies characterized by race, ethnicity, religion, and language diversity. 

Multiculturalism is often promoted to promote tolerance, social cohesion, and the celebration of diversity. 

Challenges of multiculturalism

Multiculturalism presents a range of challenges that can impact host societies. These challenges include social division, discrimination, language barriers, and cultural clashes. For example, when immigrants share different values or traditions than the host society, this can lead to misunderstandings and conflict. Similarly, language barriers can limit communication and make it difficult for immigrants to integrate into the host society.

Benefits of multiculturalism

Multiculturalism can also bring a range of benefits to host societies. These benefits include increased cultural awareness and sensitivity, economic growth, and exchanging ideas and perspectives. For example, cultural diversity can provide opportunities for host societies to learn from different cultural practices and approaches to problem-solving. This can lead to innovation and growth.

Social cohesion

Social cohesion refers to the ability of a society to function harmoniously despite differences in culture, ethnicity, religion, and language. Multiculturalism can pose a challenge to social cohesion, but it can also promote it. Host societies can foster social cohesion by promoting the acceptance and understanding of different cultural groups. This can be achieved through policies and programs that promote intercultural dialogue, education, and community-building.

Discrimination and prejudice

Multiculturalism can also increase the risk of discrimination and prejudice. Discrimination can take many forms, including racial, religious, and cultural bias. Host societies can combat discrimination by implementing anti-discrimination laws and policies and promoting diversity and inclusion.

Economic benefits

Multiculturalism can also bring economic benefits to host societies. The presence of a diverse range of skills and talents can lead to innovation and economic growth. Immigrants can also get various skills and experiences contributing to the host society's economic development.

In conclusion, immigration has significant social and cultural implications for both host countries and immigrants. It affects social cohesion, integration, cultural diversity, and identity. Host countries face challenges and benefits of multiculturalism, including economic growth, innovation, and social change.

The role of immigration in shaping national identity

Immigration has always been a significant driver of cultural and social change, with immigrants often bringing their unique identities, values, and traditions to their new homes. As a result, immigration can play a crucial role in shaping national identity, as it challenges existing cultural norms and values and introduces new ideas and perspectives. 

In this article, we will explore the role of immigration in shaping national identity, including its effects on cultural diversity, social cohesion, and political discourse. We will also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by immigration to national identity and the importance of embracing a diverse and inclusive national identity in today's globalized world.

Immigration and the evolution of national identity

The relationship between immigration and national identity is complex, as immigration can challenge and reinforce existing national identities. As immigrants bring new cultural practices and values, they challenge the existing norms and values of the host society, prompting a re-evaluation of what it means to be part of that society. This can create a more inclusive and diverse national identity as different cultural traditions and practices are recognized and celebrated.

At the same time, the influx of new immigrants can also create a sense of fear and anxiety among some members of the host society, who may view the changes brought about by immigration as a threat to their cultural identity. This can lead to calls for stricter immigration policies and a more limited definition of national identity, which can exclude or marginalize certain groups.

The role of immigrants in shaping cultural diversity

Immigrants have played a significant role in shaping cultural diversity in many countries. Their arrival in a new land brings their customs, traditions, beliefs, and practices, which contribute to society's richness and vibrancy. 

One of the key ways in which immigrants have shaped cultural diversity is through their contributions to the local community. Immigrants bring a wealth of knowledge, skills, and talents that can benefit the societies they move to. For example, they may introduce new cuisines, music, art, and literature that add to the cultural landscape of their new home. This can create a more diverse and inclusive society where different cultures are celebrated and appreciated.

Another important aspect of cultural diversity is the challenges immigrants face when adapting to a new culture. Moving to a new country can be a daunting experience, especially if the culture is vastly different from one's own. Immigrants may struggle with language barriers, cultural norms, and social customs that are unfamiliar to them. This can lead to feelings of isolation and exclusion, which can negatively impact their mental health and well-being.

The challenges of maintaining social cohesion amidst diversity

Strengthening social cohesion amidst diversity is a complex challenge many societies face today. Cultural, ethnic, religious, and language diversity can lead to tensions and conflicts if managed poorly. 

One of the main challenges of maintaining social cohesion amidst diversity is the need to balance the interests of different groups. This involves recognizing and respecting the cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity of society while also promoting a sense of shared identity and common values. This can be particularly challenging in contexts with competing interests and power imbalances between different groups.

Another challenge is the need to address discrimination and prejudice. Discrimination can take many forms, including unequal access to education, employment, housing, hate speech, and violence. Prejudice and stereotypes can also lead to social exclusion and marginalization of certain groups. Addressing these issues requires a concerted effort from the government, civil society, and individuals to promote tolerance and respect for diversity.

Promoting inclusive policies is another crucial factor in maintaining social cohesion amidst diversity. This includes policies promoting equal opportunities for all, regardless of background. This can involve affirmative action programs, targeted social policies, and support for minority groups. Inclusive policies can also create a sense of belonging and ownership among different groups, which helps foster social cohesion.

In conclusion, immigration profoundly influences the formation of national identity. As individuals from various backgrounds merge into a new country, they not only introduce their distinct cultural and ethnic traits but also embark on a journey of personal growth and adaptation. This process mirrors the development of key skills such as leadership, character, and community service, essential for thriving in diverse environments. These attributes are not only vital for immigrants as they integrate into society but are also exemplified in successful National Honor Society essays , where personal growth and societal contribution are celebrated. Thus, the experiences of immigrants significantly enrich the societal tapestry, reflecting in our collective values, beliefs, and practices.

To sum it all up:

To recapitulate writing a five-paragraph essay about immigration can be challenging, but with the right approach and resources, it can be a rewarding experience. Throughout this article, we have discussed the various aspects of immigration that one can explore in such an essay, including the economic impact, social and cultural implications, and the evolution of national identity. 

If you're looking for an AI-powered writing assistant to help you with your next writing project, sign up for Jenni.ai today. With its advanced language models and intuitive interface, Jenni.ai can provide you with personalized suggestions and feedback to improve your writing. Give it a try, Sign up for free and take your writing to the next level!

Try Jenni for free today

Create your first piece of content with Jenni today and never look back

The Hard Truth About Immigration

If the United States wants to reduce inequality, it’s going to need to take an honest look at a contentious issue.

“T his bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said as he put his signature on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, at the base of the Statue of Liberty. “It does not affect the lives of millions.” All that the bill would do, he explained, was repair the flawed criteria for deciding who could enter the country. “This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.”

Edward Kennedy, the 33-year-old senator who had shepherded the bill through the Senate, went even further in promising that its effects would be modest. Some opponents argued that the bill would lead to a large increase in immigration, but those claims were false, Kennedy said. They were “highly emotional, irrational, and with little foundation in fact,” he announced in a Senate hearing, and “out of line with the obligations of responsible citizenship.” Emanuel Celler, the bill’s champion in the House, made the same promises. “Do we appreciably increase our population, as it were, by the passage of this bill?” Celler said. “The answer is emphatically no.”

Johnson, Kennedy, Celler and the new law’s other advocates turned out to be entirely wrong about this. The 1965 bill sparked a decades-long immigration wave. As a percentage of the United States population, this modern wave has been similar in size to the immigration wave of the late 1800s and early 1900s. In terms of the sheer number of people moving to a single country, the modern American immigration wave may be the largest in history. The year Johnson signed the immigration bill, 297,000 immigrants legally entered the United States . Two years later, the number reached 362,000. It continued rising in subsequent decades, and by 1989 exceeded 1 million.

How could the law’s advocates have been so wrong about their own policy? One explanation is that they engaged in motivated reasoning. They believed, justly, that they were righting a historical wrong by remaking the racist immigration system that the country had adopted in the 1920s, which allocated almost all of its slots to Western Europeans. The new law created a first-come-first-served system that treated all parts of the world equally, and it made the United States a fairer society. In their eagerness to achieve that victory, however, the reformers dismissed almost any criticism of the bill as unreasonable and even hateful.

In part, they were reacting to the identity of the bill’s critics: Many were opponents of the civil-rights movement who indeed made racist arguments against the immigration bill. Yet skeptics also raised legitimate questions about the bill, pointing to potential loopholes, including that its annual worldwide quota did not apply to many immigrants. These immigrants were considered “nonquota” entries, allowed to enter the country without being counted. The most consequential nonquota entries proved to be family members, including extended family. The law declared that immigrants who were coming to join relatives already in the United States would not count toward the quota. That loophole was not wholly new. But it had not mattered much before 1965, because the overall system was so restrictive. The new law opened the doors to the entire world without solving the nonquota problem.

The critics’ predictions—that annual immigration might soon triple, as one conservative congressman forecast, and eventually surpass 1 million, as another anticipated—ended up being more accurate. The advocates of the 1965 law also incorrectly promised that any increase in immigration would come from white-collar professionals filling specific job shortages. Willard Wirtz, Johnson’s labor secretary, went so far as to tell Congress that the bill offered “complete protection” against increased labor competition. In truth, many arrivals have been blue-collar workers, admitted as extended family, seeking a broad range of jobs.

I realize that some readers may be feeling a little uncomfortable about the history described here. The celebration of immigration has become core to the political beliefs of many Americans, on both the left and the right. Immigrants are underdogs, heroes, and—for most of us—ancestors. Many opponents of immigration are xenophobes. In the 21st century, the contours of the immigration debate can seem binary: Somebody is either in favor of immigration or opposed to it.

Historically, however, the debate was more nuanced. It included many people who were comfortable distinguishing between the issues of who should be admitted and how many should be admitted. Separating these two makes clear that it is possible to honor immigrants and decry bigotry without believing that more immigration is always better. The people who wrote the 1965 law claimed to hold precisely these beliefs.

That law deserves to be remembered as a monumental civil-rights achievement. It ended decades of discrimination against Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and disabled people. In other respects, though, the law represents a failure of democracy: It was sold to the American public with repeated promises that it would not do what, in fact, it did. In particular, it was sold with the false claim that there would be no increase in the number of immigrants seeking low-wage jobs.

In 1965, the United States already had a more open immigration system than many other countries, with a higher percentage of foreign-born residents than most of Europe, and a far higher share than Japan. The 1965 bill went further, and became what the journalist Margaret Sands Orchowski has called arguably the world’s most liberal immigration law. Theodore White, the chronicler of 1960s political history, described the law as “noble, revolutionary—and probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.”

From the November 1983 issue: Immigration–how it’s affecting us

My goal is not to convince you that any specific view of immigration policy is correct. But I hope to demonstrate that every piece of evidence does not line up neatly to support the conclusion that more immigration is always good or always bad. The advocates of the 1965 law did such a poor job of anticipating its effects partly because they tried to ignore facts that they found inconvenient. The rest of us do not need to repeat their mistakes.

A t a moment when immigration has returned to political prominence, it helps to think about the continuing post-1965 immigration wave through three empirical questions. First, how have the immigrants fared in this country? Second, what have been the economic effects for people who were already in the United States? And third, how has the immigration wave altered American politics?

Many Americans—across the political spectrum—think they know the answer to the first question. They believe that immigrant families in recent decades have been less likely to climb the country’s ladder than those of earlier generations. But that bit of conventional wisdom is inaccurate.

Children of post-1965 immigrants have ascended at a pace strikingly similar to their predecessors, as two economists—Leah Boustan of Princeton and Ran Abramitzky of Stanford— have documented . As in the past, immigrants themselves tend to remain poor if they arrive poor. And as in the past, their children tend to make up ground rapidly. Overall, most children of the recent immigration wave have grown up to earn at least a middle-class income. “The American Dream is just as real for immigrants from Asia and Latin America now as it was for immigrants from Italy and Russia one hundred years ago,” Abramitzky and Boustan write . There is no permanent underclass of American immigrants.

There are certainly caveats. In a country as large as the United States, averages hide a lot of variation. Some immigrant families suffer discrimination and remain in poverty for multiple generations, much as some native-born American families do. It is also worth pointing out that intergenerational research necessarily comes with a lag. Many recent immigrants have indeed been poorer than earlier immigrants were, and perhaps their children will struggle. The children of undocumented immigrants face particular hardships.

In the big picture, however, past patterns seem likely to continue: Many immigrants themselves will remain poor, but their children will do considerably better. This may also be true for most children of undocumented immigrants, given that anybody born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen. In their research, Abramitzky and Boustan examine not only income but also other measures of assimilation, such as where immigrants live, whom they marry, and whether they speak English. On these metrics, recent immigrants look similar to those from past generations. And by some measures, like intermarriage, the current wave is assimilating more rapidly than previous generations.

T HE SECOND BIG question about immigration is how it has affected the living standards of people who were already in the United States. On the surface, the facts look damning.

The decades when the American masses enjoyed their fastest income gains—in the middle of the 20th century—were also the decades when immigration was near historic lows. The 1965 law ended this era and caused a sharp rise in the number of immigrants entering the workforce. Shortly afterward, incomes for poor and working-class Americans began to stagnate. The 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s were a time of low immigration and rapidly rising mass living standards. The period since the ’70s has been neither.

Correlation and causation, obviously, are not the same thing. To distinguish between the two, economists have devoted extensive effort to figuring out how much immigration has affected the living standards of native-born Americans. One finding from these studies is that immigration has not been the dominant cause of post-1970s wage stagnation, despite the suspicious timing. You do not need to be able to read peer-reviewed articles in an academic journal to grasp this conclusion, although those articles support it. You simply need to notice that the regions attracting the largest number of immigrants are not the ones suffering the worst wage stagnation.

But the story does not end here. The same evidence suggests that immigration has played a meaningful, if secondary, role in holding down wages. In 2017, the National Academy of Sciences released a 600-plus-page report on immigration, produced by a committee of prominent scholars. The committee reviewed the relevant research, including studies of surges of immigration to specific metropolitan areas. The report included a table summarizing the estimated effect of immigration on native wages, from each of the relevant studies since the 1990s. The table is dominated by negative numbers. Immigration does have costs.

Logic and history point to the same conclusion as the economic data. That is why CEOs long favored high levels of immigrants and labor leaders such as A. Philip Randolph and Samuel Gompers long opposed them. It is also why the architects of the 1965 law vowed that it would not allow more manual workers to enter the country. When immigration increases, employers often have the upper hand. When immigration is low, the economist Sumner Slichter explained a century ago, employers are forced “to adapt jobs to men rather than men to jobs.” People sometimes claim that immigrants work in jobs that native-born Americans do not want. But Christopher Jencks, a social-policy professor at Harvard University, has pointed out that this statement is incomplete: Immigrants typically work in jobs that native-born Americans do not want at the wages that employers are offering. One reason that employers can offer such wages, Jencks adds, is the availability of so many immigrant workers.

The post-1965 immigration wave has had both benefits and costs. On the plus side, it has probably accelerated economic growth, mostly by expanding the labor force. With a larger population, the United States has been able to produce more goods and services. Immigration also appears to have benefited many high-earning, native-born professionals. The costs of immigration for these workers have been fairly low because they face relatively little competition from immigrant workers. Few of the highly educated immigrants who come to the U.S. are lawyers or doctors, partly because some professions have created barriers that restrict entry. In medicine, foreign doctors are required to complete a multiyear residency program in the United States, regardless of their prior experience. Professionals who have enough political influence to shape labor-market rules, like doctors, understand that a larger labor pool can reduce incomes.

For many lower-earning workers, there are no such protections. In retail, construction, and child care, more immigrants have been able to compete for jobs. Their entry has had two separate effects that have increased inequality. For the lower end of the income distribution, the expansion of the labor pool has held down wages. For the higher end of the income distribution, these lower wages have held down the prices of frequently used services such as restaurant meals and landscaping. Still, several other forces, including the decline of labor unions and the rise of trade with China, have almost certainly had a larger impact on depressing wages.

If the United States wanted to keep immigration high and ameliorate the effects on inequality, it could do so—say, by cutting taxes for low-earning workers and raising taxes on high-earning professionals. The problem is that the country has not used government policy to reverse the growth of inequality; the tax system has instead exacerbated inequality. For all the benefits of the post-1965 immigration wave, American workers are not delusional to think that it has had costs—and that they, rather than more affluent Americans, have borne those costs.

T he third big question involves the political effects of immigration—and the discipline of economics is less helpful than psychology in answering it.

In the 1990s, an American psychologist named Jonathan Haidt was thinking about how notions of morality differed from one culture to another. Together with Brazilian psychologists, he designed a survey based on very short stories in which somebody violated what Haidt called a “harmless taboo.” In each anecdote, a fictional person took an action that did not hurt anybody else but that might nonetheless seem wrong. The survey’s respondents had to judge whether the behavior was immoral or simply a matter of individual choice.

From the May 2022 issue: Wh y the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

In one story, a boy refused to wear a required school uniform. In another, a woman cut up a national flag that she no longer needed and used the pieces as cleaning rags. The researchers conducted the survey in two Brazilian cities, and Haidt repeated it in Philadelphia, where he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In all three cities, the psychologists surveyed people in two different social classes, one higher and one lower.

As Haidt expected, the answers varied by city. In Philadelphia, people were less likely to judge the violation of a social convention—like refusing to wear a uniform or cutting up a flag—as immoral. Philadelphians were more individualistic: If nobody was harmed, what was the problem? In Recife, a poor Brazilian city, more respondents judged violations of social convention as wrong: Society has rules and traditions, and defying those norms is immoral. In Porto Alegre, a relatively affluent, European-influenced city, the responses fell in the middle.

But the data also contained a surprise. The class differences within each country were larger than the differences between Brazilians and Americans. In all three cities, lower-income people were much more likely than upper-class people to judge the violation of social conventions as wrong. The working-class respondents emphasized communal standards and traditions. The professionals emphasized individual notions of freedom. “I had flown five thousand miles south to search for moral variation when in fact there was more to be found a few blocks west of campus, in the poor neighborhood surrounding my university,” Haidt wrote .

In the years that followed, Haidt and his colleagues created a broader version of the survey, known as the Moral Foundations Questionnaire . Around the world, educated professionals emphasize two values above all: care for others, especially the vulnerable, and fairness. Working-class people put significant weight on those values, too, but not quite as much. And working-class respondents emphasize values that are of little import to college graduates, such as respect for authority, appreciation of tradition, and loyalty to family and community. Other researchers have come to use the terms universal and communal to describe the two belief sets.

Both universalism and communalism have important advantages. The universalist passion for fairness and harm prevention has undergirded every great social-justice movement of the past century. While some communalists defended racial segregation and sexism as cultural traditions, universalists refused to accept them. In foreign policy, universalism helped lead to the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Universalism has made the world both freer and more equal.

Communalism can claim its own accomplishments, though. Without loyalty, tradition, and respect, human beings would not have been able to form groups that allowed them to survive. In modern times, communalism has inspired Americans to enlist in the military and become teachers at local elementary schools. The same outlook helps explain why working-class households tend to give a greater percentage of their income to charity (often their churches) than upper-income households. Communalism also played a central role in social-justice movements: Religious groups, and the loyalty they inspire, were crucial to both abolitionism and civil-rights activism. Today, communalism continues to promote equality of opportunity: According to research by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues, children are more likely to escape poverty if they grow up in a place where people have strong social connections.

Immigration policy presents a distillation of the tensions between the two worldviews. To communalists, a government should limit arrivals and prioritize its own citizens. To universalists, national loyalties can be dangerous, and immigration can lift global living standards by allowing more people to share in a rich country’s prosperity. In recent decades, this debate has become part of the growing political polarization in many Western countries, including the United States. Surveys show that liberals tend to be universalists who support higher levels of immigration, and conservatives tend to be communalists who favor less immigration.

This polarization is relatively recent. Across American history, communalism has not been simply a synonym for conservatism. Many communalists were progressives who emphasized fairness and equality within a community. When they had to choose between protecting neighbors who were vulnerable and others who were vulnerable, they were comfortable focusing on the needs of their vulnerable neighbors.

A lmost 30 years ago, President Bill Clinton asked former Representative Barbara Jordan to lead a federal commission studying immigration. Jordan, a Houston native, had become famous during the Watergate hearings for a stirring speech that denounced Richard Nixon and celebrated the Constitution. For many Americans, it was the first time they had heard a major speech from either a female or a Black member of Congress. The speech also put Jordan’s communalism on display. She believed that loyalty, tradition, and social connection were crucial to the struggle for a fairer world. She knew that human beings had a natural urge to be part of a group and feel pride in that group. “We are all in this little village called America together,” she once told a group of schoolchildren.

As she studied immigration policy, Jordan came to believe that being strongly pro-immigrant and strongly pro-immigration were not the same thing. Americans needed to make decisions about whom they would and would not admit, as every other nation did. They had to decide what forms of immigration were in the national interest and what forms were not. The drafters of the 1965 law had claimed to be prioritizing the national interest, but the law’s loopholes had come to dominate the immigration system. As a result, that system did not maximize the well-being of Americans, immigrant and native-born alike. The country had an immigration system that almost nobody had meant to create.

Unlike the authors of the 1965 law, Jordan tried to separate the issues of who should be admitted and how many people should be admitted. She decried the long history of racist opposition to immigration and denounced the immigrant-bashing of the 1990s. “There have always been those who despised the newcomers,” she said. Borrowing John F. Kennedy’s phrase, she described the United States as a nation of immigrants. To her, though, both parts of his phrase— immigrants and nation —were vital.

From the May 2021 issue: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses

The United States had been such a successful society, where millions of people aspired to move, because it was a distinct nation. It was a community, with traditions and bonds that fostered trust among citizens and investments in their shared future. Immigrants had become a part of this community, first by choosing to leave their home for a new land and then by embracing their new home. Jordan’s preferred word for this process was Americanization . “That word earned a bad reputation when it was stolen by racists and xenophobes in the 1920s,” Jordan said, “but it is our word, and we are taking it back.”

To nurture the American community, the federal government first needed to regain control of its immigration system, Jordan believed. Her commission called for a major effort to reduce illegal immigration, by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. “Any nation worth its salt must control its borders,” she said. On legal immigration, the commission pushed for some increases, including a temporary rise in the admission of immediate family members, to reunite families, as well as an annual floor on refugee admission to ensure that the United States remained a haven of freedom. On net, however, the commission called for a large reduction—by roughly one-third—in legal immigration from about 800,000 annual entrants the year before down to about 550,000. “The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete with the most vulnerable parts of our labor force,” Jordan said. Her commission effectively tried to undo the unintended consequences of the 1965 law.

But by the 1990s, a powerful bipartisan coalition had come to support the status quo, and the commission’s recommendations quickly came under attack. Business lobbyists and Republican leaders in Congress favored high immigration partly because it restrained wage growth. Liberal groups saw immigration as a human-rights issue and pointed out that any reductions would especially affect Latin American and Asian immigrants. Clinton, after initially embracing Jordan’s recommendations, backed away from them. Congress instead passed several provisions to reduce illegal immigration, though they were less aggressive than the commission’s proposals. The laws governing legal immigration remained largely the same. The few members of Congress who complained tended to be conservative Republicans.

To many Democrats, support for immigration had come to feel like a moral imperative. Immigration lifted people out of poverty. It enhanced the country’s cultural diversity. It reflected a universalist belief in equality, regardless of a person’s country of origin. Democrats cherished the legacy of the 1965 law, accidental though it may have been.

In the 2000s, the Democratic Party has moved even closer to a universalist position. Democrats now speak more positively about immigration than any party has in the country’s history, according to an analysis of the Congressional Record. Many liberals have grown uncomfortable talking about restrictions and criticize both Clinton and Barack Obama for their positions. Obama combined full-throated support for immigrants, including legalization for many who were undocumented, with support for border security. When “an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers,” Obama said , it violates America’s promise.

Top Democrats would not make such an argument today. They are also unlikely to revere assimilation, as Jordan did. To universalists, glorifying American culture is jingoistic.

This new Democratic approach, however, is not popular with most Americans. Polls have long shown that most Americans oppose very high levels of immigration, as the authors of the 1965 law knew. Americans, to be clear, are not opposed to immigration. Most believe that it has strengthened the country, but they favor it in moderation. If immigration policy reflected public opinion, it would have been very different over the past half century.

The new Democratic consensus on immigration is part of the rise of what the economist Thomas Piketty has called “the Brahmin left”—the shift of progressive parties in both the United States and Western Europe toward the views of highly educated professionals. For much of the 20th century, left-leaning parties attracted the bulk of their support from working-class voters. Today, college graduates make up a growing share of these parties, and their upscale voters have pushed the parties further to the left on social and cultural issues than on economic issues. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Democratic Party actually moved to the right on economics, as it adopted pro-market positions on global trade and regulation that were often described as neoliberal (a word that echoes the classical definition of liberal , which implies skepticism of government). Although the party has since tacked back to the left on economics, especially on trade, the Democratic economic agenda is not significantly more progressive than it was in the postwar decades.

Immigration is a fascinating part of this story. If you think about immigration as a social issue—a question of human rights—you might say that Democrats have moved to the left by favoring more immigration. If you think about it as a domestic economic issue—one that affects the power dynamic between American employers and workers—you would instead say that a policy of more immigration is a right-wing position. After all, the conservative intellectual giant Milton Friedman also favored high levels of immigration. Either way, the Democratic Party’s shift on immigration policy is consistent with Brahminism, in which the party has become more progressive on social issues than economic ones.

Today, immigration is the one issue on which even the left flank of the Democratic Party continues to support the neoliberal position. Democrats have grown more skeptical of deregulation and the free flow of trade than they were during the Clinton years. But they have grown even more supportive of the deregulated flow of people across borders. Many liberals are passionately universalist on the subject.

Most voters take a more communalist view, which makes sense when you consider that most are not highly educated professionals. The American majority is a working-class, communalist majority. Most people without a four-year degree say that the United States is the greatest country in the world; most college graduates (and most Democrats) do not. Most Americans also believe that the country should prioritize its own citizens while welcoming a limited number of immigrants each year and taking steps to reduce unlawful immigration.

The universalists may have won the struggle over government policy, but their victory has come with a political cost. The high level of immigration since the 1960s helped move the working class to the political right. A rich stream of social-science research has documented the phenomenon, and not only in the United States. Immigration helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016 and helps explain why many working-class voters distrust Democrats.

Racism, of course, is part of this story. In both the United States and Europe, right-wing politicians like Trump have tried to raise fears of immigrants by using xenophobic stereotypes and lies. This racism can be anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-Black, or anti-Muslim, depending on the time and place. The tactic has proved distressingly effective at winning working-class voters.

But the distinction between communalism and universalism is important partly because it highlights the fact that immigration is not only about race. There are good reasons that every country in the modern world maintains borders. Some high-income countries, such as Japan and South Korea, have maintained very restrictive policies. Once a country has established borders, it must confront the unavoidably thorny issue of which outsiders it should admit and which it should not. In the United States—a nation of immigrants, where most of us, me included, live here only because of previous immigration—the question raises poignant tensions.

“For those who believe in a multicultural America, this question can be uncomfortable to confront, because any system short of open borders invariably requires drawing distinctions that declare some people worthy of entry and others unworthy,” Jia Lynn Yang, a journalist, wrote in her history of immigration law . Because of this discomfort, the modern Democratic Party has struggled to articulate an immigration policy beyond what might be summarized as: More is better, and less is racist . The party has cast aside the legacies of Jordan and other progressives who made finer distinctions.

In response, many working-class voters have decided that the Democratic Party does not share their values. Notably, some of these voters are not white and are themselves the descendants of recent immigrants. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the Republican Party made gains among Latino voters, especially in Texas and Florida, as well as Asian American voters. Polls showed that a sizable chunk of both Latino and Black voters who otherwise leaned toward the Democratic Party preferred the Republican position on illegal immigration. “Immigration,” Haidt, the psychologist, told me, “is one of the top few blind spots of the left, which causes right-wing parties to win all over the Western world.”

In the United States of the mid-20th century, immigration was so low that it disappeared as a major political issue. Polls found that Americans’ view of immigrants became more positive. Many native-born Americans saw immigrants primarily as fellow citizens, rather than outsiders or recent arrivals. Americanization, in other words, described more than just the assimilation of immigrants; it described a national process of binding. A slowdown in the diversification of the country made Americans more comfortable with their newfound diversity. This cohesion fostered a progressive economic consensus, making possible high taxes on the affluent, large government investments in infrastructure and science, and modern welfare state programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Low immigration numbers in the mid-1900s improved the lives of recent immigrants by fostering a stronger safety net for everybody. The modern era of high immigration levels, by contrast, has hardly been a golden age for progressive politics.

P ERHAPS THE MOST important point about immigration is that it involves trade-offs. For centuries, opponents of immigration have portrayed it as inherently bad, and their claims have been disproved again and again. More recently, universalists have portrayed immigration as inevitably positive, an argument that depends partly on wishful thinking. Immigration can be wonderful, but good things are rarely free, as Jordan said.

The post-1965 immigration wave has had large benefits. Most important, it has helped lift millions of people out of poverty and allowed them to experience the American dream. Most immigrant families have both assimilated into their new country and changed it for the better. They have contributed to scientific breakthroughs, started businesses and community organizations, and enriched American culture, in literature, film, music, sports, and food.

Read: The immigration act that inadvertently changed America

On universalist grounds, a relatively open immigration system is easy to support. But the other side of the ledger matters. Immigration tends to impose costs on lower-wage workers and to alter the political atmosphere in ways that make government policy less generous to those same workers. The past century suggests that there are trade-offs between immigration levels and progressive policy goals. Reducing immigration would probably make reducing economic inequality in the United States easier. Lower levels could make Americans more amenable to policies that would benefit immigrants who are already here, such as a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.

What might an ideal system look like? That is a difficult question, but Jordan’s basic principles still seem relevant. The United States should treat immigrants with decency. This decency includes the admission of immediate family members—but only immediate family members, such as spouses and young children. The country should embrace its role as a beacon of political freedom and prioritize the admission of refugees fleeing persecution, a group that in recent years has included Iranians, Cubans, Sudanese, Ukrainians, and Uyghurs from China. The United States should also make clear that it is a nation of laws, as Jordan said, and do more to reduce illegal immigration than it has in the past. When citizens of other countries believe that they will be allowed to remain in the United States so long as they manage to enter it, the country’s laws have little meaning. And high levels of undocumented immigration are a political gift for right-wing parties.

There is another theme from Jordan’s recommendations, one that was also part of the promises that the authors of the 1965 law made. Both called for a system focused on the admission of people with specific job skills that the American economy needed. Both argued against the wide-scale admission of workers who could compete for most jobs. Canada did adopt such a system in the 1960s, and the politics of immigration there are more muted partly for that reason. This approach tends to reduce economic inequality. It expands the labor pool for professionals, making them less scarce and holding down their future wage increases, rather than focusing the wage effect on lower-income workers. Professionals also tend to pay more in taxes, which suggests that the admission of more high-earning immigrants can improve the country’s fiscal situation as the population ages and more Americans retire.

The U.S. immigration system is always going to be complex, full of difficult decisions and trade-offs. But the system we have today is not the only option, nor is it the one that political leaders promised us. It has instead become one more way that the economy and political system have drifted from the interests and values of many working people.

This article was adapted from David Leonhardt’s new book , Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

U.S. Immigration Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 23, 2022 | Original: December 21, 2018

The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, but attitudes toward new immigrants by those who came before have vacillated over the years between welcoming and exclusionary. Thousands of years before Europeans began crossing the vast Atlantic by ship and settling en masse, the first immigrants arrived in North America from Asia. They were Native American ancestors who crossed a narrow spit of land connecting Asia to North America at least 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age .

By the early 1600s, communities of European immigrants dotted the Eastern seaboard, including the Spanish in Florida, the British in New England and Virginia, the Dutch in New York, and the Swedes in Delaware. Some, including the Pilgrims and Puritans, came for religious freedom. Many sought greater economic opportunities. Still others, including hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, arrived in America against their will.

Below are the events that have shaped the turbulent history of immigration in the United States since its birth.

White People of 'Good Character' Granted Citizenship

January 1776: Thomas Paine publishes a pamphlet, “ Common Sense ,” that argues for American independence. Most colonists consider themselves Britons, but Paine makes the case for a new American. “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe,” he writes.

March 1790: Congress passes the first law about who should be granted U.S. citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows any free white person of “good character,” who has been living in the United States for two years or longer, to apply for citizenship. Without citizenship, nonwhite residents are denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court.

August 1790: The first U.S. census takes place. The English are the largest ethnic group among the 3.9 million people counted, though nearly one in five Americans are of African heritage.

Irish Immigrant Wave

1815: Peace is re-established between the United States and Britain after the War of 1812 . Immigration from Western Europe turns from a trickle into a gush, which causes a shift in the demographics of the United States. This first major wave of immigration lasts until the Civil War .

Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish —many of them Catholic—account for an estimated one-third of all immigrants to the United States. Some 5 million German immigrants also come to the United States, many of them making their way to the Midwest to buy farms or settle in cities including Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

1819: Many of newcomers arrive sick or dying from their long journey across the Atlantic in cramped conditions. The immigrants overwhelm major port cities, including New York City , Boston , Philadelphia and Charleston. In response, the United States passes the Steerage Act of 1819 requiring better conditions on ships arriving to the country. The Act also calls for ship captains to submit demographic information on passengers, creating the first federal records on the ethnic composition of immigrants to the United States.

1849: America’s first anti-immigrant political party, the Know-Nothing Party forms, as a backlash to the increasing number of German and Irish immigrants settling in the United States.

1875: Following the Civil War, some states passed their own immigration laws. In 1875 the Supreme Court declares that it’s the responsibility of the federal government to make and enforce immigration laws.

Chinese Exclusion Act 

1880: As America begins a rapid period of industrialization and urbanization, a second immigration boom begins. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrive. The majority are from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe, including 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews . Many of them settle in major U.S. cities and work in factories.

1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act passes, which bars Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. Beginning in the 1850s, a steady flow of Chinese workers had immigrated to America.

They worked in the gold mines,and garment factories, built railroads and took agricultural jobs. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew as Chinese laborers became successful in America. Although Chinese immigrants make up only 0.002 percent of the United States population, white workers blame them for low wages.

The 1882 Act is the first in American history to place broad restrictions on certain immigrant groups.

1891: The Immigration Act of 1891 further excludes who can enter the United States, barring the immigration of polygamists, people convicted of certain crimes, and the sick or diseased. The Act also created a federal office of immigration to coordinate immigration enforcement and a corps of immigration inspectors stationed at principle ports of entry.

Ellis Island Opens

January 1892 : Ellis Island , the United States’ first immigration station, opens in New York Harbor. The first immigrant processed is Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork in Ireland. More than 12 million immigrants would enter the United States through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.

1907 : U.S. immigration peaks, with 1.3 million people entering the country through Ellis Island alone.

Photos: Immigration at Ellis Island

February 1907: Amid prejudices in California that an influx of Japanese workers would cost white workers farming jobs and depress wages, the United States and Japan sign the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Japan agrees to limit Japanese emigration to the United States to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, President Theodore Roosevelt urges San Francisco to end the segregation of Japanese students from white students in San Francisco schools.

1910: An estimated three-quarters of New York City’s population consists of new immigrants and first-generation Americans.

New Restrictions at Start of WWI

1917: Xenophobia reaches new highs on the eve of American involvement in World War I . The Immigration Act of 1917 establishes a literacy requirement for immigrants entering the country and halts immigration from most Asian countries.

May 1924: The Immigration Act of 1924 limits the number of immigrants allowed into the United States yearly through nationality quotas. Under the new quota system, the United States issues immigration visas to 2 percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States at the 1890 census. The law favors immigration from Northern and Western European countries. Just three countries, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany account for 70 percent of all available visas. Immigration from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe was limited. The Act completely excludes immigrants from Asia, aside from the Philippines, at the time an American colony.

1924 : In the wake of the numerical limits established by the 1924 law, illegal immigration to the United States increases. The U.S. Border Patrol is established to crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States. Many of these early border crossers were Chinese and other Asian immigrants, who had been barred from entering legally.

Mexicans Fill Labor Shortages During WWII

1942: Labor shortages during World War II prompt the United States and Mexico to form the Bracero Program , which allows Mexican agricultural workers to enter the United States temporarily. The program lasts until 1964.

1948: The United States passes the nation’s first refugee and resettlement law to deal with the influx of Europeans seeking permanent residence in the United States after World War II.

1952: The McCarran-Walter Act formally ends the exclusion of Asian immigrants to the United States.

1956-1957 : The United States admits roughly 38,000 immigrants from Hungary after a failed uprising against the Soviet Union . They were among the first Cold War refugees. The United States would admit over 3 million refugees during the Cold War.

1960-1962 : Roughly 14,000 unaccompanied children flee Fidel Castro ’s Cuba and come to the United States as part of a secret, anti-Communism program called Operation Peter Pan.

Quota System Ends

1965: The Immigration and Nationality Act overhauls the American immigration system. The Act ends the national origin quotas enacted in the 1920s which favored some racial and ethnic groups over others.

The quota system is replaced with a seven-category preference system emphasizing family reunification and skilled immigrants. Upon signing the new bill, President Lyndon B. Johnson , called the old immigration system “un-American,” and said the new bill would correct a “cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.”

Over the next five years, immigration from war-torn regions of Asia, including Vietnam and Cambodia , would more than quadruple. Family reunification became a driving force in U.S. immigration.

April-October 1980 : During the Mariel boatlift , roughly 125,000 Cuban refugees make a dangerous sea crossing in overcrowded boats to arrive on the Florida shore seeking political asylum.

Amnesty to Undocumented Immigrants

1986: President Ronald Reagan signs into law the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which grants amnesty to more than 3 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

2001 : U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) propose the first Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would provide a pathway to legal status for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children. The bill—and subsequent iterations of it—don’t pass.

2012 : President Barack Obama signs Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which temporarily shields some Dreamers from deportation, but doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.

2017: President Donald Trump issues two executive orders aimed at curtailing travel and immigration from six majority Muslim countries (Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia) as well as North Korea and Venezuela. Both of these so-called Muslim travel bans are challenged in state and federal courts.

2018: In April 2018, the travel restrictions on Chad are lifted. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court uphold a third version of the travel ban on the remaining seven countries.

Immigration Timeline, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation . LBJ on Immigration, LBJ Presidential Library . The Nation's Immigration Laws, 1920 to Today, Pew Research Center . 1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Library of Congress .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Times Insider

Showing Migrants Through a New Lens: Their Own

As many waited on the U.S.-Mexican border, hoping to enter the United States despite the government’s message to stay away, a photographer let them be seen on their own terms.

By Sarah Bahr

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Migrants seeking to enter the United States today find themselves in a difficult position: They have been told by the government not to come, but many feel they need to flee the conditions they face in their home countries. To add context to this complicated issue, the Brooklyn-based freelance photographer Adam Ferguson asked migrants at shelters on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border to take self-portraits this spring (with some guidance from him), giving them a chance to express themselves visually.

The migrants were waiting to cross and hoping to be allowed to stay. Mr. Ferguson talked with them about his vision, explained how the equipment worked and handled technical details like lighting and composition, but the final shots ultimately were of their own making. The outcome was a photo essay published online Monday.

In a recent conversation, Mr. Ferguson discussed the genesis of the project, the challenges of navigating a language barrier and how he, a white, English-speaking foreigner, gained his subjects’ trust.

How did you get the idea to have migrants take self-portraits?

I’d seen so many photos of poor, marginalized migrants scrambling across the river in makeshift watercraft, crying and being detained. I wanted to make a set of photos of people we so often see as victims and make them more human and relatable.

How many people did you ask?

I spent nine days in shelters and on the street over the end of May and the beginning of June. I conducted 27 portrait sittings, with subjects ranging from a one-month-old baby to a 57-year-old woman.

You don’t speak Spanish. How did you navigate the language barrier?

I was working with local journalists, and I can’t sing their praises enough. They were integral in developing trust with people.

How do you develop trust with someone?

I interviewed everyone for 30 to 45 minutes before I ever asked them to make a portrait. Most of the migrants were willing to participate. Once they saw what was happening, I think the technical process intrigued them. But ultimately, they all just wanted to be heard, to be listened to.

Were the people who did participate nervous?

This was probably the first time many of them had used an analog camera, and there were a bunch of people standing there watching them take their own photo. To defuse that, my translator and I would turn our backs and tell them they could have a private moment to look however they wanted to.

What was your biggest challenge?

It was a bit naïve for me to try to get people who’d just been released from cartels or ejected by the United States invested in a collaborative process, because a lot of migrants, quite frankly, didn’t care what I was doing. And why should they? They’d just been through this incredible life trauma.

How was the experience different than you expected?

My aims were a little squashed because I thought the migrants would have more ideas about how they wanted to be portrayed. While I surrendered control of the photographic capture, I still chose the technology, the film, where they’d stand if they didn’t have any ideas. As the author, I still had a lot of control over the narrative. And of course I edited the photos once I returned home.

You used an analog camera and a manual cable release, meaning the subjects pushed a button wired to the camera. Why do it the hard way?

I felt using an analog camera would slow it down. And having the physical object would make them feel more connected to the process, versus having a digital trigger.

And the black-and-white film?

I knew that there would be a chaotic medley of colors in the backgrounds and clothing, and photographing in black and white stripped the images down to their emotional value and would allow the audience to engage directly with the subjects and their stories.

It must have been nerve-racking not to be able to see any of the photos on site.

I was terrified that I would fail. But it would’ve changed the way people posed if they had the opportunity to review themselves in real time. I just wanted the portraits to feel very honest and simple. And I didn’t want to see the photos, either, because I knew that, as a professional photographer, that might influence some creative decisions I was making.

What was the editing process like?

I had only 10 to 20 photos for each person, so it was not extensive. The biggest issue was maintaining the sense of power and authorship for the migrants. I found myself choosing photos that were softer, more intimate and more emotional than perhaps I normally would.

The photo of Stephany Solano, who’s a 17-year-old girl sitting in a tent looking at the camera. I had photos that were more distraught and distressed where she looked more like a victim, but I chose this photo because Stephany looked dignified, hopeful and quite beautiful. I had to check myself in some instances and choose the photo that was more dignified over images that I might have perceived as stronger, or even sadder.

What impact do you hope this project has?

I simply wanted to make a body of work that wasn’t being made — migrants having the power to see themselves — and let this be part of an important conversation about poverty and migration.

Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW

Home > Faculty > Working Papers > 5

Georgetown Law Faculty Working Papers

The idea of humanity: human rights and immigrants' rights.

David Cole , Georgetown University Law Center

This Faculty Working Paper has been updated and posted within the Georgetown Law Faculty Publications series in the Scholarly Commons. It is currently available at http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/417/

This essay asks whether international human rights arguments are likely to be effective in advancing immigrants' rights in the United States. There are certainly reasons to be pessimistic. Despite its history as a nation of immigrants and the ever-increasing diversity of its populace, the United States remains a deeply parochial and nationalist culture. International human rights arguments are often seen as the advocates' last refuge. In the absence of an international forum that can hold the United States accountable, and in the face of Congressional directives that the international human rights treaties it has ratified are not self-executing, international human rights often seem only aspirational. International human rights arguments are rarely advanced in domestic U.S. courts, where they are broached, they are as often as not ignored or dismissed.

Yet there are also reasons to be hopeful about the potential for advancing immigrants' rights through international human rights. Human rights are just that - human rights - and therefore generally do not acknowledge distinctions in fundamental rights between citizens and noncitizens. Human rights offers a common language and standard for global pressure. And international law has always been an integral part of immigration law. Accordingly, human rights discourse offers tremendous normative power and potential for advancing social justice on behalf of foreign nationals in the United States.

Analogizing to the New Deal revolution in the role of the federal government vis-à-vis the economy and rights protection, this essay argues that we may be living in a similar global revolution marked by the simultaneous rise of a global economy and an international human rights regime. I propose a three-pronged strategy: advancing modest claims of statutory construction and constitutional interpretation in the courts; advocating more expansive conceptions of international human rights in the political and popular realms; and pushing for the creation of institutions and processes to bring international human rights considerations into domestic policymaking at the outset, before disputes arise

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Law Library
• Faculty Profiles
• Faculty Scholarship Database
• Collections

Author Corner

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Handout A: Background Essay – The History of Immigration Law in the United States

Background Essay—The History of Immigration Law in the United States

Directions: Read the background essay and answer the critical thinking questions at the end. In addition, formulate your own questions about the content discussed.

In the modern era, nation-states are defined as much by their borders as by their unique laws, forms of government, and distinct national cultures. Since the early years of the United States’ history, the federal government has sought, with varying degrees of success, to limit and define the nature and scale of immigration into the country. In the first seventy years of the nation’s history, immigration was left largely unchecked; Congress focused its attention on defining the terms by which immigrants could gain the full legal rights of citizenship. Beginning in the 1880s, however, Congress began to legislate on the national and ethnic makeup of immigrants. Lawmakers passed laws forbidding certain groups from entering the country, and restricted the number of people who could enter from particular nations. In the 1920s, Congress enacted quotas based upon immigrants’ national origin, limiting the number of immigrants who could enter from non-Western European countries. In the 1960s, immigration policy was radically transformed and the policies of the preceding generations were abolished. Through these reforms, which still determine the United States’ immigration policy today, greater numbers of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans are permitted to enter the country than immigrants of European background, giving preferred status to these immigrant groups.

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers the Congress to “Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization.” The first national law concerning immigration was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which stated that any free white person who had resided in the U.S. for at least two years could apply for full citizenship. Congress also required applicants to demonstrate “good character” and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Blacks were ineligible for citizenship.

In 1795, naturalization standards were changed to require five years’ prior residence in the U.S., and again in 1798 to require 14 years’ residence. The 1798 revision was passed amidst the anti-French fervor of the Quasi-War and sought to limit the influence of foreign-born citizens in federal elections. During Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the 1798 standards were repealed to require five years’ residence once more. As immigration patterns changed over time, especially in the late 1840s and early 1850s as Irish and Germans replaced the British as the primary immigrant groups, federal immigration law remained largely unchanged. Despite anti-immigrant agitation in the 1850s and the rise of nativist political groups, no limits or quotas were imposed on immigration.

Questions still lingered about the nature of citizenship for black Americans. In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in all of the states. Were emancipated slaves citizens, or not? Through the end of the Civil War, slaves had not been considered citizens and possessed none of the rights of their white countrymen. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 established that freedmen were indeed citizens. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution confirmed the position set forth in the Civil Rights Act. The amendment stated that “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.” The amendment prohibited the states from curtailing the privileges of federal citizenship. The construction of the citizenship clause indicates that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen, and this is what federal law has maintained ever since. However, there is disagreement as to the meaning of the citizenship clause, and whether it was intended to clarify the status of emancipated slaves, or whether it was written to apply to all peoples regardless of context.

During the congressional ratification debates, members made clear the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. Senator and Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens argued in 1866 that the Fourteenth Amendment was the final fulfillment of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, a law designed to ensure equal rights for all Americans no matter their race or prior status under the law. Senator Jacob Howard, one of the chief authors of the citizenship clause, reassured Congress by saying the amendment “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens” or had been born to foreign diplomats. Senator John Bingham echoed his colleague’s remarks and said the citizenship clause reasserts “that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of our Constitution itself, a natural-born citizen.”

The question remains whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause should be interpreted as a protection of the rights of citizenship of former slaves, or if it is a blanket protection for all persons born in the United States no matter their parents’ national allegiance or legal status. Current law favors the latter interpretation, and there is ongoing controversy whether children born of unnaturalized or illegal immigrants should be granted automatic citizenship.

After the Civil War, the American economy boomed as industry grew and the American West was settled and organized into new states. On the Pacific coast, the high demand for labor drew thousands of Chinese immigrants into the country to work in a variety of capacities. Most often, they worked building railroads or in mines. Others farmed or ran businesses in California’s growing cities. By the late 1870s, opposition to Chinese laborers had grown substantially, stemming from a combination of racism and the belief that Chinese laborers unfairly competed with white American laborers and stole economic opportunities from workers more deserving. Eventually, Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barring virtually all new immigration from China. The act was extended in 1892 and on a permanent basis beginning in 1902. Other laws further restricted the rights and privileges of Chinese immigrants already in the United States. The Scott Act of 1888, for example, forbade Chinese immigrants who left the United States from returning. It was not until World War II, when China was a military ally of the United States, that the ban on Chinese immigration was lifted.

For most of the 1800s, the main sources of immigrants to the United States were British, Irish, German, Scandinavian, and Central European peoples. By the 1880s, immigration patterns shifted toward Eastern and Southern European groups, especially Italians, Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples. Most were pulled to the United States by the promise of better opportunities and improved quality of life. The dramatic change in the ethnic makeup of this “new wave” of immigrants caused alarm among nativists, racialists, and pro-Protestant interests. One legislative response to this was the Immigration Act of 1917 which created the Asiatic Barred Zone, a vast area of Asia from which no person could immigrate to the U.S. The prohibited areas included most of the Middle East, South Asian countries like Persia and British-ruled India, as well as central Asia and Southeastern Asia.

In another response to the growing number of immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern European countries, Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, which placed limits on the number of people entering the country based upon prescribed quotas. The law used the 1910 Federal Census to determine existing numbers of foreign-born citizens already living in the U.S. It then required that a number equivalent to only 3% of the already resident population from a certain country could be admitted. Therefore, for example, if 100,000 Bulgarians already lived in the U.S., only 3,000 Bulgarian immigrants could enter annually thereafter. This scheme became known as the National Origins Formula. The goal of federal policy sought to ensure that new waves of immigrants from outside western and central Europe could slowly integrate into American society and so could better embrace American notions of civic virtue, self-government, and productivity.

This law was followed a few years later by the Immigration Act of 1924 which decreased the quota from 3% to 2% and used the 1890 census instead of the 1910 census as the reference point for its quotas. Because Congress chose to utilize the 1890 census, which showed a higher proportion of residents from more desirable European countries like Germany and Great Britain, the law created artificially low quotas for the new immigrants. Furthermore, it placed low caps on arrivals from majority non-white nations, like those in Africa and the Middle East. In the first year of its enactment, the law permitted 51,000 German immigrants, for example, but only 100 from the Arabian Peninsula.

Latent anti-immigrant hostility erupted during both World Wars. Anti-immigrant antagonism has not always been racially motivated. In World War I, German-Americans (even those born in the United States) were subjected to discrimination and harassment for their national background. In some communities, German-Americans were lynched by mobs while others had their businesses boycotted or closed. Americans born in Germany were forced to register with the government as “enemy aliens,” and some states prohibited the use of the German language in school instruction. Most Lutheran churches ceased conducting services in the German language and adopted English instead. During World War II, Japanese-Americans were subjected to even worse treatment and were forced into internment camps for the duration of the war. In February 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 requiring Japanese-Americans to report for forced relocation to prisoner camps away from the Pacific coast. Fred Korematsu challenged the legality of Roosevelt’s directive, but in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional.

The quotas and restrictions of the 1920s remained largely in place until the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, who undertook a sweeping reform project of many of the most important public policy sectors. As part of his reform agenda, Johnson signed into law the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended use of the National Origins Formula. Under the new law, 120,000 immigrants were to be admitted annually from Western Hemisphere nations in Latin and South America. 170,000 people per year would be admitted from Asia, Africa, and Europe combined. The reforms of 1965 initiated a substantial change in the ethnic and national origin of immigrants and this accounts for the rapid growth of the non-European population seen today. Instead of a movement of people almost solely from Europe, immigration today is dominated by non-European peoples from all parts of the world. Further, the 1965 reform provided an avenue for immigrants’ families to come to the United States after them, as family immigration is usually not counted in the overall quota. With minor revisions, the standards set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 remain in effect today and still determines from which countries the United States draws its new citizens.

CRITICAL THINKING OR HOMEWORK QUESTIONS

• Describe the Naturalization Act of 1790. According to this law, who could become citizens of the United States? What racial boundaries to citizenship did the law define? What were the conditions of gaining full citizenship?
• What is naturalization and why were law makers in the years around 1800 concerned with defining how long citizens must be in the country to become naturalized?
• Describe the debate over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. How do most Americans in the present day interpret the law? How did its framers explain the law at the time?
• What were some of the reasons that the Chinese were forbidden to immigrate? When were these immigration restrictions lifted?
• Describe the challenges faced by immigrants and the descendants of recent immigrants during World War I and World War II. What did the Supreme Court rule in Korematsu v. U.S. ?
• What were the primary changes brought about in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965? How was this law different from the laws enacted in 1921 and 1924?

18 Essays About The Immigrant Experience You Need To Read

These stories illuminate what it takes, and what it means, to uproot your life in one country and begin it again in a new one.

BuzzFeed Staff

Growing Up American In Gaza Taught Me What We Owe To Refugees — Rebecca Peterson Zeccola

"In Palestine, we could so easily have been treated as the enemy, but we were welcomed like family."

I’m Not OK With Being One Of The Lucky Muslims — Romaissaa Benzizoune

"This weekend’s immigration order doesn’t apply to me or my family; I’ll be fine. But so many others I know and love will not."

I Grew Up In The Rust Belt, But I'm Not In Any Of The Stories About It — Alia Hanna Habib

"It’s strange to see the media turn its attention to places like my hometown in coal-country Pennsylvania and find that my experience there, as part of the non -white working class, is still invisible."

Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America — Mira Jacob

"Sometimes I wish I could ask America when, exactly, it made its mind up about us. The myth, of course, is that it hasn’t, that there is still a chance to mollify those who dictate the terms of our experience here, and then be allowed to chase success unfettered by their paranoia. To live, as it’s more commonly known, the American dream."

There’s No Recipe For Growing Up — Scaachi Koul

"My mom’s Kashmiri cooking has always tethered me to home. So it’s no wonder she won’t give me (all) the secrets to doing it myself."

How I Learned That Beauty Doesn’t Have To Hurt — Sonya Chung

"Growing up in a Korean American family, I absorbed the idea that any feeling of pleasure comes at a cost. But as I get older, I’m realizing it doesn’t have to work that way."

Why Brexit Has Broken My Heart — Bim Adewunmi

"As a child of immigrants, I am deeply ashamed that this is who we are."

I Found A Home In Clubs Like Pulse, In Cities Like Orlando — Rigoberto González

"I cherish the time I have spent in clubs like Pulse in cities like Orlando, where gay Latinos — the immigrants, the undocumented, and the first-generation Americans alike — gravitate because we love men and we love our homelands, and that’s one of the places our worlds converge."

Making Great Pho Is Hard, But Making A Life From Scratch Is Harder — Nicole Nguyen

"After fleeing Vietnam, my parents turned to food to teach us about what it means to be Vietnamese."

When Home Is Between Different Countries And Genders — Meredith Talusan

"I moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when I was 15, where I had been raised as a boy. About a decade later, I started to live as a woman and eventually transitioned. I think of migration and transition as two examples of the same process – moving from one home, one reality, to another."

I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947 — Ahmed Ali Akbar

"So many Americans go to India to find themselves. But I went to find the history my family lost in the subcontinent’s Partition."

How I Became A Southern-Fried Nigerian — Israel Daramola

"I once felt torn between Nigeria and Florida, between jollof rice and fried alligator, but there is no real me without both."

Learning To Mourn In My Father's Country — Reggie Ugwu

"After my brother died and my father was partially paralyzed, my family traveled 7,000 miles in search of an old home, a new house, and the things we’d lost on the road in between."

How To Get Your Green Card In America — Sarah Mathews

"When you perform the act of audacity that is consolidating an entire life into a couple of suitcases and striking out to make your way, what is not American about that? When you leave the old country so that your daughters can have a good education and walk down their streets without fear, what is not American about that? When you flee violence and poverty to come to a land of plenty, when you are willing to learn new languages, to haul ass, to do twice as much work, what is not American about that?"

A Childhood Spent Inside A Chinese Restaurant — Susan Cheng

"Being one of the few Asians in my school was hard enough. Working at my parents’ Chinese restaurant didn’t make it any easier."

How I Learned To Celebrate Eid Al Adha In America — Zainab Shah

"I bent over backward to explain myself. 'From Pakistan,' I would say. 'Not a terrorist,' I almost added. But I didn’t — the joke would only be funny if racial profiling didn’t exist."

Texts From My Parents: What It Was Like To Leave Vietnam — Nicole Nguyen

"They did it for us, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make the most of it."

What It’s Like Speaking A Different Language From Your Parents — Zakia Uddin

"My parents and I communicate in an incomplete mash-up of Bengali and English. I sometimes wonder what we are missing."

Topics in this article

• Immigration

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( A locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Create Account

Search all USCIS forms. File your form online for a more convenient and secure experience. For forms available only in paper, select the Form Details button to download the form and instructions. USCIS forms and USCIS online accounts are always free.

FBI Privacy Notice

USCIS may use your biometrics to obtain the criminal history records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for identity verification, to determine eligibility, to create immigration documents (for example, Permanent Resident Card, Employment Authorization Document), or any purpose authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended and any other applicable statute. You may obtain a copy of your own FBI record using the procedures outlined at 28 CFR 16.30-16.34. For more information, please visit: www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/compact-council/guiding-principles-noncriminal-justice-applicants-privacy-rights .

For information regarding how the FBI will use your fingerprints, please visit www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/compact-council/privacy-act-statement .

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• March Madness
• AP Top 25 Poll
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession

A feed truck is loaded at dawn at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Workers tend to cows in the milking parlor at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Jenni Tilton-Flood poses for a photograph in a dairy barn at Flood Brothers Farm, Wednesday, March 27, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Dairy cows await feeding time at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A worker drives a tractor to the feed silos at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Dawn light colors the sky over a dairy cow barn at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A worker tends to cows in the milking parlor at the Flood Brothers Farm, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Clinton, Maine. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons every day. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

• Copy Link copied

MIAMI (AP) — Having fled economic and political chaos in Venezuela, Luisana Silva now loads carpets for a South Carolina rug company. She earns enough to pay rent, buy groceries, gas up her car — and send money home to her parents.

Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7-year-old daughter braved the treacherous jungles of Panama’s Darien Gap , traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, they received a work permit last year and found jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

“My plan is to help my family that much need the money and to grow economically here,” Silva said.

Her story amounts to far more than one family’s arduous quest for a better life. The millions of jobs that Silva and other new immigrant arrivals have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year:

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs , month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants — whether living in the United States legally or not. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs to their customers via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.

“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’

While helping fuel economic growth, immigrants also lie at the heart of an incendiary election-year debate over the control of the nation’s Southern border. In his bid to return to the White House, Donald Trump has attacked migrants in often-degrading terms, characterizing them as dangerous criminals who are “poisoning the blood” of America and frequently invoking falsehoods about migration . Trump has vowed to finish building a border wall and to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Whether he or President Joe Biden wins the election could determine whether the influx of immigrants, and their key role in propelling the economy, will endure.

The boom in immigration caught almost everyone by surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was more than triple that estimate: 3.3 million.

Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The economy — and consumer spending — had roared back from the pandemic recession. Companies were struggling to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.

The problem was compounded by demographic changes: The number of native-born Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — was dropping because so many of them had aged out of that category and were nearing or entering retirement. This group’s numbers have shrunk by 770,000 since February 2020, just before COVID-19 slammed the economy.

Filling the gap has been a wave of immigrants. Over the past four years, the number of prime-age workers who either have a job or are looking for one has surged by 2.8 million. And nearly all those new labor force entrants — 2.7 million, or 96% of them — were born outside the United States. Immigrants last year accounted for a record 18.6% of the labor force, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of government data.

And employers welcomed the help.

Consider Jan Gautam, CEO of the lodging company Interessant Hotels & Resort Management in Orlando, Florida, who said he can’t find American-born workers to take jobs cleaning rooms and doing laundry in his 44 hotels. Of Interessant’s 3,500 workers, he said, 85% are immigrants.

“Without employees, you are broken,” said Gautam, himself an immigrant from India who started working in restaurants as a dishwasher and now owns his own company.

“If you want boost the economy,” he said, “it definitely needs to have more immigrants coming out to this country.”

Or consider the workforce of the Flood Brothers farm in Maine’s “dairy capital’’ of Clinton. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm’s staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons each day.

“We cannot do it without them,” said Jenni Tilton-Flood, a partner in the operation.

For every unemployed person in Maine, after all, there are two job openings, on average.

“We would not have an economy, in Maine or in the U.S. if we did not have highly skilled labor that comes from outside of this country,” Tilton-Flood said in a phone interview with The Associated Press from her farm.

“Without immigrants — both new asylum-seekers as well as our long-term immigrant contributors — we would not be able to do the work that we do,” she said. “Every single thing that affects the American economy is driven by and will only be saved by accepting immigrant labor.”

A study by Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson, economists at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, has concluded that over the past two years, new immigrants raised the economy’s supply of workers and allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating and accelerating inflation.

In the past, economists typically estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 60,000 to 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But when Edelberg and Watson included the immigration surge in their calculations, they found that monthly job growth could be roughly twice as high this year — 160,000 to 200,000 — without exerting upward pressure on inflation.

“There are significantly more people working in the country,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week in a speech at Stanford University . Largely because of the immigrant influx, Powell said, “it’s a bigger economy but not a tighter one. Really an unexpected and an unusual thing.’’

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden’s immigration policy over the surge in migrants at the Southern border. Only about 27% of the 3.3 million foreigners who entered the United States last year did so through as “lawful permanent residents’’ or on temporary visas, according to Edelberg and Watson’s analysis. The rest — 2.4 million — either came illegally, overstayed their visas, are awaiting immigration court proceedings or are on a parole program that lets them stay temporarily and sometimes work in the country.

“So there you have it,’’ Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director who is president of the conservative American Action Forum, wrote in February. “The way to solve an inflation crisis is to endure an immigration crisis.”

Many economists suggest that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy in several ways. They take generally undesirable, low-paying but essential jobs that most U.S.-born Americans won’t, like caring for children, the sick and the elderly. And they can boost the country’s innovation and productivity because they are more likely to start their own businesses and obtain patents.

Ernie Tedeschi, a visiting fellow at Georgetown University’s Psaros Center and a former Biden economic adviser, calculates that the burst of immigration has accounted for about a fifth of the economy’s growth over the past four years.

Critics counter that a surge in immigration can force down pay, particularly for low-income workers, a category that often includes immigrants who have lived in the United States longer. Last month, in the most recent economic report of the president , Biden’s advisers acknowledged that “immigration may place downward pressure on the wages of some low-paid workers” but added that most studies show that the impact on the wages of the U.S.-born is “small.”

Even Edelberg notes that an unexpected wave of immigrants, like the recent one, can overwhelm state and local governments and saddle them with burdensome costs. A more orderly immigration system, she said, would help.

The recent surge “is a somewhat disruptive way of increasing immigration in the United States,” Edelberg said. “I don’t think anybody would have sat down and said: ‘Let’s create optimal immigration policy,’ and this is what they would come up with.”

Holtz-Eakin argued that an immigration cutoff of the kind Trump has vowed to impose, if elected, would result in “much, much slower labor force growth and a return to the sharp tradeoff’’ between containing inflation and maintaining economic growth that the United States has so far managed to avoid.

For now, millions of job vacancies are being filled by immigrants like Mariel Marrero. A political opponent of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, Marrero, 32, fled her homeland in 2016 after receiving death threats. She lived in Panama and El Salvador before crossing the U.S. border and applying for asylum.

Her case pending, she received authorization to work in the United States last July. Marrero, who used to work in the archives of the Venezuelan Congress in Caracas, found work selling telephones and then as a sales clerk at a convenience store owned by Venezuelan immigrants.

At first, she lived for free at the house of an uncle. But now she earns enough to pay rent on a two-bedroom house she shares with three other Venezuelans in Doral, Florida, a Miami suburb with a large Venezuelan community. After rent, food, electricity and gasoline, she has enough left over to send $200 a month to her family in Venezuela.

“One hundred percent — this country gives you opportunities,’’ she said.

Marrero has her own American dream:

“I imagine having my own company, my house, helping my family in a more comfortable way.”

Wiseman and Rugaber reported from Washington, Salomon from Miami.

How immigrants are helping boost the U.S. job market without affecting inflation

Blockbuster job growth continues to power the U.S. economy, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting 303,000 payrolls added in March .

Usually, such strong growth might signal that inflation could pick up. If employers see more demand for goods and services, they need to hire more workers — and if there aren’t enough workers, they have to increase pay, which increases the overall cost of running the business.

But while annual price growth, at more than 3%, remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, it is still well below the 9% peak seen in the summer of 2022.

Economists increasingly believe that the post-pandemic surge in immigration is a key reason the economy has been able to grow steadily without pushing inflation higher, as the new arrivals have helped employers fill roles at levels of pay that have kept a lid on overall price growth.

In a note to clients published Friday, titled “Why we have both strong growth and lower inflation,” Goldman Sachs chief U.S. economist David Mericle said rising immigration had boosted labor force growth. As a result, the strong demand that consumers continue to exhibit elsewhere is unlikely to raise prices by much, “if at all,” he said.

In fact, so far, measures of labor market “tightness,” like wages, “have continued to fall or move sideways, not rise,” Mericle said.

“Won’t stronger growth prevent inflation from falling or even reignite it?” he wrote. “We don’t think so.”

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency, was the first to cite the immigration surge that began in 2022 as the primary factor helping to expand the overall size of the U.S. labor force.

This year, the agency increased its projection of how large the U.S. labor force could be in 2033 by 5.2 million people. Most of that increase is expected to be a result of higher projected net immigration.

The Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, came to a similar conclusion earlier this month, saying the economy can now tolerate a more brisk pace of job growth without adding to cost concerns.“Faster population and labor force growth has meant that employment could grow more quickly than previously believed without adding to inflationary pressures,” Brookings said.

Wendy Edelberg, a former Federal Reserve economist now serving as director of Brookings’ Hamilton Project, told NBC News the net effect of immigration on inflation is not entirely obvious — but is likely marginal. Indeed, Fed Chair Jay Powell has expressed similar observations, saying the effect of the new wave of arrivals is “broadly neutral.”

What is clear, Edelberg said, is that the immigration surge will allow the economy to tolerate higher levels of job growth without overheating.

“Without immigration, if I’d seen an increase of 300,000, I would have been utterly baffled that wages were not higher,” she said, citing the March jobs report released on Friday.

Wage data shows the annual pace of average hourly pay growth has declined to 4.1% in March after hitting a post-pandemic peak of 5.9% in March 2022.

If the supply and demand for labor were truly out of sync, the pace of wage growth would be much higher, likely translating into higher overall inflation.

Instead, thanks to the immigration surge, businesses in the aggregate can tap into the newly growing labor pool to meet continued demand for their goods and services, without having to raise wages significantly to compete for workers.

For many parts of the economy, from federal Social Security payments all the way down to local businesses that may be looking for workers or new customers, immigration is usually a net good, Edelberg said.

At the same time, it tends to put a strain on state and local budgets , she said.

Immigration now ranks as the most volatile domestic issue facing President Joe Biden, with Gallup survey respondents ranking it as the country’s “most important problem,” the first time it has held that position since 2019. Republicans have called on Biden to take extreme measures to stem the entry of migrants, while former President Donald Trump has referred to them as “not humans” and “animals.”

Big cities like New York and Chicago, meanwhile, have faced crises stemming in part from political stunts by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that have involved sending migrants to those cities at a pace they’re not equipped to handle.

But while the focus of the debate has been on undocumented immigration, the majority of immigrants arriving are actually authorized to work in the U.S., Edelberg said.

Plus, they’re more likely to spend a greater share of their labor income.

“So they’re increasing the demand for goods and services, and helping to supply labor,” she said. “So the net effect on inflation is actually small.”

Rob Wile is a breaking business news reporter for NBC News Digital.

How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession

Millions of jobs that new immigrants have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year: How has the U.S. economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after mont...

MIAMI -- Having fled economic and political chaos in Venezuela, Luisana Silva now loads carpets for a South Carolina rug company. She earns enough to pay rent, buy groceries, gas up her car — and send money home to her parents.

Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7-year-old daughter braved the treacherous jungles of Panama’s Darien Gap, traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, they received a work permit last year and found jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

“My plan is to help my family that much need the money and to grow economically here,” Silva said.

Her story amounts to far more than one family’s arduous quest for a better life. The millions of jobs that Silva and other new immigrant arrivals have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year:

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants — whether living in the United States legally or not. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs to their customers via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.

“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’

While helping fuel economic growth, immigrants also lie at the heart of an incendiary election -year debate over the control of the nation's Southern border. In his bid to return to the White House, Donald Trump has attacked migrants in often-degrading terms, characterizing them as dangerous criminals who are “poisoning the blood” of America and frequently invoking falsehoods about migration. Trump has vowed to finish building a border wall and to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Whether he or President Joe Biden wins the election could determine whether the influx of immigrants, and their key role in propelling the economy, will endure.

The boom in immigration caught almost everyone by surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was more than triple that estimate: 3.3 million.

Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The economy — and consumer spending — had roared back from the pandemic recession. Companies were struggling to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.

The problem was compounded by demographic changes: The number of native-born Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — was dropping because so many of them had aged out of that category and were nearing or entering retirement. This group's numbers have shrunk by 770,000 since February 2020, just before COVID-19 slammed the economy.

Filling the gap has been a wave of immigrants. Over the past four years, the number of prime-age workers who either have a job or are looking for one has surged by 2.8 million. And nearly all those new labor force entrants — 2.7 million, or 96% of them — were born outside the United States. Immigrants last year accounted for a record 18.6% of the labor force, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of government data.

And employers welcomed the help.

Consider Jan Gautam, CEO of the lodging company Interessant Hotels & Resort Management in Orlando, Florida, who said he can’t find American-born workers to take jobs cleaning rooms and doing laundry in his 44 hotels. Of Interessant’s 3,500 workers, he said, 85% are immigrants.

“Without employees, you are broken," said Gautam, himself an immigrant from India who started working in restaurants as a dishwasher and now owns his own company.

“If you want boost the economy," he said, “it definitely needs to have more immigrants coming out to this country.”

Or consider the workforce of the Flood Brothers farm in Maine’s “dairy capital’’ of Clinton. Foreign-born workers make up fully half the farm's staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk — 18,000 gallons each day.

“We cannot do it without them," said Jenni Tilton-Flood, a partner in the operation.

For every unemployed person in Maine, after all, there are two job openings, on average.

“We would not have an economy, in Maine or in the U.S. if we did not have highly skilled labor that comes from outside of this country,” Tilton-Flood said in a phone interview with The Associated Press from her farm.

“Without immigrants — both new asylum-seekers as well as our long-term immigrant contributors — we would not be able to do the work that we do," she said. "Every single thing that affects the American economy is driven by and will only be saved by accepting immigrant labor.”

A study by Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson, economists at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, has concluded that over the past two years, new immigrants raised the economy’s supply of workers and allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating and accelerating inflation.

In the past, economists typically estimated that America's employers could add no more than 60,000 to 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But when Edelberg and Watson included the immigration surge in their calculations, they found that monthly job growth could be roughly twice as high this year — 160,000 to 200,000 — without exerting upward pressure on inflation.

“There are significantly more people working in the country," Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week in a speech at Stanford University. Largely because of the immigrant influx, Powell said, “it’s a bigger economy but not a tighter one. Really an unexpected and an unusual thing.’’

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden's immigration policy over the surge in migrants at the Southern border. Only about 27% of the 3.3 million foreigners who entered the United States last year did so through as “lawful permanent residents’’ or on temporary visas, according to Edelberg and Watson's analysis. The rest — 2.4 million — either came illegally, overstayed their visas, are awaiting immigration court proceedings or are on a parole program that lets them stay temporarily and sometimes work in the country.

“So there you have it,’’ Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director who is president of the conservative American Action Forum, wrote in February. “The way to solve an inflation crisis is to endure an immigration crisis."

Many economists suggest that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy in several ways. They take generally undesirable, low-paying but essential jobs that most U.S.-born Americans won’t, like caring for children, the sick and the elderly. And they can boost the country’s innovation and productivity because they are more likely to start their own businesses and obtain patents.

Ernie Tedeschi, a visiting fellow at Georgetown University's Psaros Center and a former Biden economic adviser, calculates that the burst of immigration has accounted for about a fifth of the economy's growth over the past four years.

Critics counter that a surge in immigration can force down pay, particularly for low-income workers, a category that often includes immigrants who have lived in the United States longer. Last month, in the most recent economic report of the president, Biden’s advisers acknowledged that “immigration may place downward pressure on the wages of some low-paid workers" but added that most studies show that the impact on the wages of the U.S.-born is “small."

Even Edelberg notes that an unexpected wave of immigrants, like the recent one, can overwhelm state and local governments and saddle them with burdensome costs. A more orderly immigration system, she said, would help.

The recent surge “is a somewhat disruptive way of increasing immigration in the United States,” Edelberg said. “I don’t think anybody would have sat down and said: ‘Let’s create optimal immigration policy,' and this is what they would come up with."

Holtz-Eakin argued that an immigration cutoff of the kind Trump has vowed to impose, if elected, would result in “much, much slower labor force growth and a return to the sharp tradeoff’’ between containing inflation and maintaining economic growth that the United States has so far managed to avoid.

For now, millions of job vacancies are being filled by immigrants like Mariel Marrero. A political opponent of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, Marrero, 32, fled her homeland in 2016 after receiving death threats. She lived in Panama and El Salvador before crossing the U.S. border and applying for asylum.

Her case pending, she received authorization to work in the United States last July. Marrero, who used to work in the archives of the Venezuelan Congress in Caracas, found work selling telephones and then as a sales clerk at a convenience store owned by Venezuelan immigrants.

At first, she lived for free at the house of an uncle. But now she earns enough to pay rent on a two-bedroom house she shares with three other Venezuelans in Doral, Florida, a Miami suburb with a large Venezuelan community. After rent, food, electricity and gasoline, she has enough left over to send $200 a month to her family in Venezuela.

“One hundred percent — this country gives you opportunities,’’ she said.

Marrero has her own American dream:

“I imagine having my own company, my house, helping my family in a more comfortable way.”

Wiseman and Rugaber reported from Washington, Salomon from Miami.

Top Stories

'Golden Bachelor' couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announce they are divorcing

• Apr 12, 7:00 AM

Biden's message to Iran about retaliatory strike on Israel: 'Don't'

• 2 hours ago

Mom accused of leaving 2 young children home alone for days to go on cruise

• 4 hours ago

1 dead as man intentionally crashes semi-truck into Texas DPS office: Officials

• 38 minutes ago

Buttigieg visits predominantly Black community following flooding investigation

• Apr 11, 2:56 PM

ABC News Live

24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events

Immigrants Rights in the US Essay

From the book, it is evident that people are forced to seek refuge in foreign countries because of various reasons, including economic reasons, social reasons, and political reasons.

The standards of living might be poor in the home country forcing individuals to shift to places perceived to be with better living standards. In developing countries, the economic conditions tend to be unpredictable, something that makes life difficult for individuals. People might lack employment because companies are compelled to dismiss workers due to continued registration of loses.

Since life might seem comfortable in the host countries, an individual would invite family members to join him or her on temporary or permanent basis. This is often referred to as chain migration. However, political instabilities are the main causes of immigration in the world today. Those perceived to be opposed to the political system of the state are expected to operate outside the state borders. Such individuals are termed as political dissidents because they do not support oppressive policies.

The author of the book goes ahead to suggest that refugees face a serious challenge as regards to human rights. Human beings enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms, irrespective of citizenship, ethnicity, and race.

Immigrants are subjected to unfair treatment and constant discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender. In the book, five types of rights are mentioned suggesting that immigrants are expected to enjoy all of them. The first one is the civil rights, which include freedom from cruelty, torture, harassment, and illegal acts by government. Furthermore, an immigrant has a freedom to move freely from home country to the host country.

While in the host country, the law recognizes the rights of immigrants implying that in the eyes of the law, an immigrant has equal opportunities as the aboriginal citizen. The second category of rights pertains to economic rights, what other scholars term as worker rights. Under this category, an immigrant has the right to be employed in any organization and should be protected from unfair treatment, such as discrimination.

Political rights are the third category of human rights granted to any immigrant. This means that immigrants have the right to vote and to be voted for during any election, as long as they qualify. Immigrants are encouraged to maintain their cultures without being forced to assimilate. Finally, all immigrants have social rights meaning that they have the right to access quality education and quality medical care.

However, immigrants are usually subjected to unfair treatment in various countries. For instance, a report compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union observed that immigrants are subjected to unfair treatment in the detention facilities. The organization undertook a study on four main detention facilities in the US. One of the detention facilities was Stewart Detention Center, which is one of the largest detention facilities in the US.

The organization claimed concluded that the facility violates immigration policies yet the government is reluctant to act. Immigrants are housed in a prisonlike facility whereby human and civil rights are observed. In particular, illegal immigrants are victims of unfair treatment in the detention facilities.

Private organizations operate detention facilities in the US, which is against the international law. The human rights groups have urged the government to deregister the private organizations operating the detention facilities on grounds of abuse. From this perspective, immigrants have no rights in the host countries because they are perceived as desperate individuals who have no option, but to work under difficult conditions.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, August 20). Immigrants Rights in the US. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigrants-rights/

"Immigrants Rights in the US." IvyPanda , 20 Aug. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/immigrants-rights/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Immigrants Rights in the US'. 20 August.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Immigrants Rights in the US." August 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigrants-rights/.

1. IvyPanda . "Immigrants Rights in the US." August 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigrants-rights/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Immigrants Rights in the US." August 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/immigrants-rights/.

• Abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Centers
• Refugees Detention in the U.S. and Australia
• Detention of Asylum Seekers and Their Wellbeing
• Witnessed Domestic Violence and Juvenile Detention Research
• Australia: Being a Multicultural Society
• Pretrial Detention and Trial Outcome
• Preventive Detention: Process, Reasons and Benefits
• Juvenile Detention Centre Design
• War on Terror. 42-Day Detention: An Equitable Solution?
• Alternatives to Juvenile Detention Centers
• Protection of Human Rights of Immigrants
• The Role of Habeas Corpus in the Constitutional Right
• What is the UN Human Rights Council?
• A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
• The Taliban and Human Rights