"The large immigrant population of the United States came from places that had sent few people in earlier years. America’s population at its beginning consisted mainly of people from northern and western Europe and people of African heritage, and newcomers in the first century of the nation’s existence continued to come primarily from northern and western Europe. As recently as 1882, 87 percent of immigrants came from the northern and western European countries. By the end of the century, though, economic hardship in southern Europe and political oppression combined with poverty in eastern Europe, together with the improved transportation, led to a geographic shift. By 1907, 81 percent of immigrants to the United States came from southern and eastern Europe. According to the statistics of the Dillingham Commission, of the 1,285,349 foreign-born people who arrived in the United States in 1907, 285,943 (22 percent) came from the Russian Empire and 338,452 (26 percent) came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eastern European Jews, fleeing persecution in the two empires, made up many of these arrivals. Italy alone sent 285,731 people (22 percent of total U.S. immigrants) during that year, most of them coming from impoverished southern Italy. The southwestern part of the United States had been part of Mexico until the middle of the nineteenth century, and many Spanish-speaking people of the same ethnic backgrounds as Mexicans lived in that part of the country. However, the United States had been attempting to anglicize the Spanish-speaking parts of the country since it took possession of this area. After the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, refugees from south of the Rio Grande began to move northward. Between 1910 and 1920, more than 890,000 legal Mexican immigrants arrived in the United States. Increasing numbers of immigrants arriving from countries that were alien to many native-born Americans and to English-speaking officials raised concerns in the public and among policy makers. Many of those reaching American shores settled in low-income sections of the growing cities in the traditionally rural nation. Perceptions of immigration as a social problem led to a string of new laws, resulting, by the 1920’s, in highly restrictive immigration policies."