Immigration To The United States

"Immigrants, as well as manufacturing enterprises, were concentrated in the rapidly growing cities of the Northeast and Midwest during the age of industrialization (Gibson and Jung 2006: 72). In 1900, about three-quarters of the populations of many large cities were composed of immigrants and their children, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Detroit (Carpenter 1927: 27). Immigration and industrialization were correlated, both spatially and temporally in American history (Taeuber and Taeuber 1971: 117), but is there a causal impact? Addressing this question, the objective of this analysis, requires consideration of the counterfactual of what would have been the course of the industrialization process in the United States if there had not been an immigrant workforce. The most commonly cited reasons for the rapid American industrial revolution are the abundance of mineral resources, technological innovation, the evolution of the American system of manufacturing, railroads and lowered costs of transportation, education and human resources, and the rise of the managerial firm (Abramovitz and David 2000; Chandler 1977; Denison 1974; Hounshell 1984; Wright 1990). Among the studies that address the relationship between immigration and industrialization, few go beyond a general or abstract discussion. In a classic survey of the literature on the American industrial revolution in the Cambridge Economic History of the United States, the role of immigration is summarized in a single paragraph, which simply notes the overrepresentation of immigrants in the manufacturing labor force (Engerman and Sokoloff 2000: 387). There are some studies that conclude that the flood of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had an adverse impact on the per-capita economic growth, the wages of native workers, and diverted domestic migration away from industrializing cities (Hatton and Williamson 1998: Chapter 8; Goldin 1994). However, other researchers have questioned these conclusions and suggested that immigrants had a generally positive impact on the American economy and facilitated the economic mobility of native born workers during the age of industrialization (Carter and Sutch 1999; Haines 2000: 202; Muller 1993: 83–85; Thomas 1973: 174)."

"In this study, we address two specific empirical questions, namely: “What was the role of immigration on changes in the industrial structure of the American economy from 1880 to 1920?”, and “How much did immigrants and their descendents (children and grandchildren) contribute to the manufacturing sector in 1920?” The findings reported here show that recent immigrants and their descendents were the primary workforce in the rapidly expanding manufacturing economy of the early 20th century. Demographic and economic pressures on agricultural households in the late 19th and early 20th century pushed an increasing share of the children of farmers off the land, but only a minority were willing to join “the pool of eastern industrial and commercial labor” (Atack, Bateman, and Parker 2000: 322). When immigrant labor was cutoff in the 1920s, the native poor population, especially poor whites and blacks from the South, began migrating to northern industrial cities in much larger numbers. But in the early 20th century, when manufacturing jobs were dirty, dangerous, and heavily regimented, immigrant workers were the mainstay of industrial employment."

"In an ingenious analysis of the potential impact of the differing age composition of immigrants and the native born populations, Neal and Uselding (1972) estimate the savings received by the United States through immigration from 1790 to 1913 relative to the costs that would have been incurred if all immigrants were replaced by children of the native born population (this counterfactual is posed by the “Walker hypothesis” that posits that native born fertility was depressed by the arrival of immigrants). Assuming these savings had been invested (not consumed by social reproduction), Neal and Uselding (1972: 87) conclude that immigration had contributed from 13 to 42 percent of the capital stock of the United States by 1912. Several analysts have noted that the large number of immigrants in the North in the 1860s provided the manpower surplus that allowed the Union to triumph in the Civil War (Gallman 1977: 31, Muller 1993: 78–79)."

"In their study of the impact of immigration on American industrialization and native born workers, Hatton and Williamson (1998: chapter 8) asked whether immigrants accelerated industrialization by solving labor bottlenecks by entering high-wage high-growth occupations faster than native born workers (Hatton and Williamson 1998: 161–164). Based on their findings that immigrants were more likely to be found in less skilled occupations and in slower growth occupations from 1890 to 1900, Hatton and Williamson conclude that immigration did not contribute to economic development and rapid industrialization. However, other analysts report that immigrants were no less skilled than native born workers (Schachter 1972)."

"Assuming that second generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) were as numerous as the foreign born, it seems reasonable to conclude that almost all large American cities were predominantly composed of immigrants and their children as early as 1850 (Gibson and Jung: 2006: 82)."

"In the middle decades of the 19th century, new immigrants were the ready source of labor to unload ships, to build roads and canals, and to transport goods (Carter 2006: I-590-591). With the growth of factories and the demand for unskilled labor, immigrants, primarily young men in the working years, continued to be the ideal source of labor. Immigrants were generally more willing to accept lower wages and inferior working conditions than native born workers (Zolberg 2006: 69). Great efficiencies in production led to higher profits that could be reinvested in new technology, which led to even more production and eventually higher wages for workers. Although the demand for manufactured goods gradually grew to encompass the entire country, the initial demand was from the urban population. Unlike farm families that were largely self sufficient in food and made most of their clothing, urban families needed to purchase everything in the market. The large and growing urban populations, primarily fueled by immigration throughout the second half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, created a huge demand for the increased production of the emerging industrial sector. Carter and Sutch (1999: 330–331) claim that economies of scale in demand and production also stimulated inventive activity and the diffusion of technological knowledge and innovation. In his analysis of long swings, or Kuznets cycles, Easterlin (1968) found that immigration (and population growth) and subsequent family formation stimulated economic growth through increasing demand for housing, urban development, and other amenities. This association was strongest, Easterlin noted, in the century prior to World War II. In the post World War II era, the federal government assumed more responsibility for maintaining aggregate demand regardless of population dynamics."

"The United States is, once again, in the midst of an age of immigration. In 2010, there were 40 million foreign-born persons living in the United States (Grieco et al. 2012). Of the 220 million international migrants in the world in 2010—defined as persons living outside their country of birth—almost one in five were residents in the United States (UN Population Division 2013). An even larger number, upwards of 75 million persons in the United States—almost one quarter of the current resident American population— is part of the immigrant community, defined as foreign born and the children of the foreign born (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2010)."

"It is to be noted that the contemporary presence of immigrants is actually less than it was in the early 20th century. For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the foreign born constituted around 14 to 15 per cent of the American population. Then, during the middle decades of the 20th century, the figure dropped precipitously to below 5 per cent in 1970. With the renewal of mass immigration after 1965, the percent foreign born is currently 13 per cent of the total population. While this figure is high relative to the period from 1950 to 1970, it is slightly below the proportion of foreign born for much of American history. The ‘Post-1965 Immigration Wave,’ was named for the 1965 immigration law that repealed the ‘national origins quotas’ enacted in the 1920s. These quotas were considered discriminatory by the children and grandchildren of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, and the 1965 immigration legislation was part of the reforms of the Civil Rights era. The advocates of reform in the 1960s were not pushing for a major new wave of immigration; they expected a small increase in the number of arrivals from Italy, Greece, and a few other European countries, as families that were divided by the immigration restrictions of the 1920s were allowed to be reunited (Reimrs 1985: Chap. 3). Family reunification and scarce occupational skills were the primary criteria for admission under the 1965 Act (Keely 1979). The new preference system allowed highly skilled professionals, primarily doctors, nurses, and engineers from Asian countries, to immigrate and eventually to sponsor their families. About the same time, and largely independently of the 1965 Act, immigration from Latin America began to rise. Legal and undocumented migration from Mexico surged after a temporary farm worker programme, known as the Bracero Programme, ended in 1964 (Massey, Durand and Malone 2002). There have also been major waves of immigration to the United States with the fall of regimes supported by American political and military interventions abroad, including Cuba, Vietnam, and Central America. Each of these streams of immigrant and refugee inflows has spawned secondary waves of immigration as family members have followed."

"Most of the immigrants who arrived from 1880 to 1920 during the Age of Mass Migration were from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia. Many of these ‘new’ immigrants in the early 20th century were considered to be distinctly different from the older stock of white Americans in terms of language, religion, and in their potential for assimilation into American society. Popular opposition to immigration in the early 20th century led to the laws of the 1920s that sharply restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. There were much smaller waves of immigration from China and Japan, but even stronger opposition ended Asian immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century."

"In the 1970s and 1980s, most ‘new immigrants’ settled in the West and East coast states, and a few other selected states, including Texas, Florida, and Illinois. About 40 per cent of all immigrants lived in California and New York. In the 1990s and 2000s, immigrants increasingly began settling in new destinations including smaller towns in the Midwest and Southeast. The majority of immigrants still live in California, New York, and other traditional destinations, but industries are attracting immigrant labour to many other regions. In addition to the high tech sectors and universities that attract highly skilled immigrants, less skilled immigrants are drawn to agriculture, food processing, and manufacturing industries that are often shunned by native born workers."

"The distribution of education among recent immigrants to the United States is bimodal. The largest group of immigrants, particularly those from Mexico and Central America, has less education, on average, than the native-born American population. Less education, however, is not equivalent to unskilled labour. Many immigrants without a high school degree are able to work in the skilled construction industry, nursing homes caring for the elderly, and in the service sectors in restaurants, hotels, and gardening. At the other end of the educational continuum are the highly educated immigrant streams from Taiwan, India, Iran, and many African countries. Almost half of Asian immigrants have a university degree compared to only a third of native born Americans. Many of these highly skilled immigrants fill key niches in the high tech sector, higher education, and many professional fields."

"Neither the presence of large numbers of immigrants nor the exaggerated claims about the negative impact of immigration are new phenomena. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin complained about the Germans in Pennsylvania and their reluctance to learn English (Archdeacon 1983: 20; Jones 1992: 39–40). Based on a campaign of fear about the political dangers of unchecked immigration, primarily Irish Catholics, the ‘Know-Nothing’ Party' elected six governors, dominated several state legislatures, and sent a bloc of representatives to Congress in 1855. During World War I, Americans who wanted to retain their German-American identity were forced to be ‘100 percent Americans’ and to give up their language and culture (Higham 1988: Chap. 8). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese and Japanese migrants who worked as railroad and agricultural labourers were targeted by nativist groups who feared that Asian immigrants would harm the economic status of native workers and contaminate the ‘racial purity’ of the nation (Hing 1993: 22). The passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first major step toward a closed society. After the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, Japanese migrants became a new source of cheap labour on the West coast and Hawaii. Japanese immigration was targeted by the same groups that opposed Chinese immigrants. Southern and Eastern European groups also faced an increasingly hostile context of reception as their numbers swelled at the turn of the twentieth century. A number of formal organisations sprang up among old line New England elites to campaign against the continued immigration of ‘undesirables’ from Europe (Higham 1988; Jones 1992: Chap. 9). After a long political struggle, Congress passed restrictive laws in the early 1920s that stopped almost all immigration except from Northwestern Europe."

"In spite of the fears that immigrants are resistant to learning English and refuse to join the American mainstream, there is a large body of social science and historical research which concludes that immigrants have, by and large, assimilated to American society (Alba 1990, Alba and Nee 2003; Duncan and Duncan 1968; Lieberson 1980). This does not mean that assimilation was painless, automatic, or immediate. For the first generation of immigrants who arrived as adults, the processes of linguistic, cultural, and social change were painful and usually incomplete. Immigrants tend to settle in ethnic enclaves, prefer to speak their mother tongue, and gravitate to places of worship and social events that provide cultural continuity with their origins (Handlin 1973; Portes and Rumbaut 2006). Many immigrants do learn English and find employment in the general economy, but few feel completely part of their new society. In the early decades of the 20th century, evidence pointed to the slow and incomplete assimilation of the then ‘new’ immigrants (Pagnini and Morgan 1990)."

"With the passage of time, and especially following the emergence of the second generation, there was unmistakable evidence of assimilation among the descendants of early 20th century European immigrants. Acculturated through their attendance at American schools, the children of immigrants did not share the ambivalence of their immigrant parents. The second generation spoke fluent English and was eager to join the American mainstream. By all measures, including socio-economic status, residential mobility, and intermarriage, they left behind the ethnic world of their immigrant parents (Alba and Nee 2003; Lieberson 1980). By the 1950s, patterns of suburbanisation broke down ethnic neighborhoods and intermarriage became more common (Alba and Nee 2003; Lieberson and Waters 1988). Although it is widely assumed that immigrants in the Post-1965 Immigration Wave are less likely to assimilate than those who arrived in the early 20th century, there is growing evidence that the new immigrants, especially their children, are doing remarkably well (Alba and Nee 2003; Kasinitz et al. 2008). On average, second generation immigrants are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to attend college than the average native born American (Hirschman 2001; White and Glick 2009). Intermarriage is also common: recent research estimates that one-third to one-half of second generation Hispanics and Asians marry outside of their community (Duncan and Trejo 2007; Min and Kim 2009). The children of contemporary immigrants are on track for assimilation and upward mobility at about the same pace as the descendants of earlier waves of immigration from Europe."

"There are widespread popular beliefs, including many influential voices within public policy circles, which argue that immigration is harmful to the economic welfare of the country, especially to native born Americans (Borjas 1994; Bouvier 1992; Briggs 1984; Brimelow 1995). The central claim is that immigrants, because they are willing to work for lower wages, take jobs from native born American workers. Competition from immigrant workers is expected to depress wages, especially in the low-skilled labour market (Borjas 1989). Finally, immigrants are thought to be an economic burden because they disproportionately receive public benefits, such as health care, schooling, and welfare without paying their fair share of taxes. These claims, however, are not supported by empirical evidence."

"The most likely reason for a lack of empirical support for the presumed negative impact of immigration is the questionable assumption that the only impact of additional workers (immigrants) on the labour market is through wage competition. The presence of immigrants has broader effects on economic growth, both locally and nationally, that leads to rising wage levels for native born workers. Among the potential mechanisms are increased national savings, entrepreneurship and small business development, a faster rate of inventive activity and technological innovation, and increasing economies of scale, both in the production and consumer markets (Carter and Sutch 1999). There is a long-standing hypothesis in economic history that high levels of immigration stimulates economic growth by increasing demand for housing, urban development, and other amenities (Easterlin 1968). A recent study found that immigration provided the necessary labour supply for the rapid growth of manufacturing during the American Industrial Revolution from 1880 to 1920 (Hirschman and Mogford 2009)."

"The United States has received about 75 million immigrants since record-keeping began in 1820. This relatively open door was due to a confluence of interests, both external and internal. As modernisation spread throughout the Old World during the 18th and 19th centuries, the (relatively) open frontier beckoned the landless and others seeking economic betterment. These patterns culminated in the early 20th century, when more than one million immigrants arrived annually—a level that is only being rivaled by contemporary levels of immigration. American economic and political institutions also gained from immigration. Immigrant settlement helped to secure the frontier as well as to provide labour for nation-building projects, including transportation networks of roads, canals, and railroads. During the era of industrialisation, immigrant labour provided a disproportionate share of workers for the dirty and dangerous jobs in mining and manufacturing (Hirschman and Mogford 2009). In spite of the national tradition of mass immigration, new arrivals have rarely received a welcome reception. The conservative backlash against immigrants has been a perennial theme of American history. During the Age of Mass Migration, the negative reaction against immigrants was not simply a response from the parochial masses, but also a project led by conservative intellectuals. Long before immigration restrictions were implemented in the 1920s, there was a particularly virulent campaign against the ‘new’ immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Most of these immigrants were Catholics and Jews—religious and cultural traditions that were thought to be in conflict with the traditional ascendancy of white Protestants of English ancestry. As most Northeastern and Midwestern cities became dominated by immigrants (both first and second generations) in the late 19th century, many elite old-stock American families and communities created barriers to protect their ‘aristocratic’ status and privileges against newcomers (Higham 1988). Residential areas became ‘restricted,’ college fraternities and sororities limited their membership, and many social clubs and societies only allowed those with the right pedigrees and connections to be admitted (Baltzell 1964). Barriers to employment for minorities, especially Jews, were part of the culture of corporate law firms and elite professions (Auerbach 1975: Chap. 2). In the early 20th century, many elite private universities were notorious for their quotas for Jewish students and their refusal to hire Jews and other minorities (Baltzell 1964: 336; Karabel 2006). In some cases, these quotas persisted until the 1960s."

"Contemporary immigration to the United States, upwards of one million new arrivals per year, is not exceptional. In fact, the relative share of immigrants—about 13 per cent—is a bit lower than the 14 to 15 per cent that characterised much of American history prior to the 1920s. Absorbing large numbers of newcomers has costs as well as benefits. The costs are immediately apparent, but some of the benefits take longer to appear. Schools, hospitals, and social service agencies may have to arrange for translation services and other special programmes for immigrants. But most of the costs of these adjustments are paid by immigrants and their families. Immigrants have given up the familiarity of home in their quest for more rewarding careers and greater opportunities for their children. Immigrants must also contend with a receiving society that is ambivalent, and sometimes hostile, to their presence."

"Perhaps the most important contribution of immigrants is their children. Many immigrants have made enormous sacrifices for their children’s welfare, including the decision to settle in the United States. Immigrant parents often have to work in menial jobs, multiple jobs, and in occupations well below the status they would have earned if they had remained at home. These sacrifices have meaning because immigrant parents believe that their children will have better educational and occupational opportunities in the United States than in their homelands. Immigrant parents push their children to excel by reminding them of their own sacrifices. These high expectations for the children of immigrants generally lead to high motivations for academic and worldly success (Hao and Bonstead-Burns 1998). A large body of research shows that the children of immigrants do remarkably well in American schools. Holding constant their socio-economic status, the second generation obtains higher grades in school and above average results on standardised tests, is less likely to drop out of high school, and is more likely to go to college than the children of native born Americans (Fuligni and Witknow 2004; Perreira, Harris and Lee 2006)."

"The fear of cultural conservatives is that immigrants will change American character and identity. Yet, the definition of American identity is elusive. Unlike many other societies, the United States does not have an identity tied to an ancient lineage. Given the two wars against the British in early American history (in 1776 and 1812), the founders of the new American republic did not make English origins the defining trait of American identity; rather it was acceptance of the Enlightenment ideas expressed in the founding documents of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (Gleason 1980; Vecoli 1966). Even though these ideals were belied by the continuing stain of slavery, a civic identity rather than ancestry has been the distinctive feature of American ‘peoplehood’ from the very start. This trait combined with jus soli (birthright citizenship) has slowed, if not stopped, efforts to define Americans solely on the basis of ancestral origins. Another reason for the broad definition of American identity is that the overwhelming majority of the American population, including white Americans, is descended from 19th and 20th century immigrants. Demographic estimates suggest that less than one-third of the American population in the late 20th century were descended from the 18th century American population (Edmonston and Passel 1994: 61, Gibson 1992)."

"In an often quoted remark, Oscar Handlin, the famous historian, observed that after searching for the place of immigrants in American history, that immigrants are American history. The American experiment in nation building is, in large part, the story of how immigrants have been absorbed into American society and how immigrants have enlarged and transformed America. Immigrants settled the frontier; they participated in constructing canals, roads and railroads, and contributed significant manpower in many American wars. Immigrants provided much of the manufacturing labour for the American industrial revolution as well as a disproportionate share of the contemporary highly skilled scientists and engineers that are central to the modern electronic and biomedical economy. Most interestingly, immigrants and the children of immigrants have been among the most important creative artists who have shaped the development of the cultural arts, including movies, theatre, dance, and music."

"It is a central premise of modern American immigration law that immigrants, by virtue of their non-citizenship, are properly subject to an extra-constitutional regulatory authority that is inherent in national sovereignty and buffered against judicial review. The Supreme Court first posited this constitutionally exceptional authority, which is commonly known as the "plenary power doctrine," in the 1889 Chinese Exclusion Case. There, the Court reconstructed the federal immigration power from a form of commercial regulation rooted in Congress's commerce power, to an instrument of national self-defense against invading hordes of economically and racially degraded foreigners. Today, generations after the United States abandoned overtly racist immigration policies, such as Chinese exclusion and national origins quotas, the Supreme Court continues to reaffirm Congress and the President's virtually unchecked authority over the admission, exclusion, and removal of non-citizens, as though such authority were a logical concomitant of national sovereignty. Accordingly, modern judicial defenders of the plenary power doctrine generally turn a blind eye to the indecorous racial reasoning deployed by its architects. This Article argues that although the language of race and invasion has been purged from the vocabulary, and perhaps worldview, of most modern policy makers and judges, the logic of foreign aggression remains indispensible in accounting for a power unmoored from the Constitution and shielded from judicial scrutiny."

"Throughout the nation's first century, the Supreme Court found nothing constitutionally exceptional about a statute that governed foreigners engaged in the process of immigration. Immigrants' non-citizenship was incidental to the nature of the regulatory authority to which they were subject. Non-citizenship became a trigger for extra-constitutional authority only in the final decades of the nineteenth century, as Chinese and "new" European migrants alike increasingly became understood as fundamentally and permanently alien to the national character. This Article demonstrates that it was precisely this perception of immigrants' essential, indelible foreignness-their racial difference, their inability to assimilate, their corrosive effect on American citizenship-that gave substance to the metaphor of racial invasion, and thus to the Court's analogy between immigration regulation and war. The Court's intemperate defense of American citizenship against invading foreign races cannot, therefore, be swept aside as anachronistic dicta cluttering the otherwise logically sound foundation of immigration exceptionalism; rather, it is the cornerstone of the entire edifice."

"The modem federal immigration power, which is commonly known as the "plenary power doctrine," is defined by two features. First, Congress's authority to regulate immigration derives not from any constitutionally enumerated power, but is rather "an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States." Second, federal laws or enforcement actions that bear on a non-citizen's right to be present within the country are buffered against judicially enforceable constitutional constraints. The extent to which governmental authority is constitutionally constrained is thus contingent on the citizenship status of the person who is subject to that authority, rather than (as would normally be the case) the subject-matter or purpose of the regulation involved. This is true even when the constitutional protection at issue-be it the First Amendment or the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses-makes no distinction between "persons" and "citizens." Indeed, even as Justice Frankfurter upheld Juan Galvan's deportation, he was struck by "a sense of harsh incongruity" between the principle that "the Due Process Clause[normally] qualifies the scope of [Congress's] political discretion" and the deportation of a long-term resident alien who was innocent of any wrong-doing. Ever since the Supreme Court first adopted the plenary power doctrine in the 1889 Chinese Exclusion Case, so it has justified the "constitutional exceptionalism" " of American immigration law with reference to the purportedly intricate connection between the admission and removal of foreigners and "basic aspects of national sovereignty, more particularly our foreign relations and the national security.,""

"This Article challenges the central orthodoxy of modem constitutional immigration law that the regulatory authority to which an immigrant is subject properly hinges on her citizenship status. It argues that, notwithstanding its aura of naturalness, the legal construction of foreignness that underwrites the inherent sovereignty rationale did not take shape in its recognizably modem form until the 1880s. Throughout the nation's first century, immigrants' non-citizenship was incidental, or at least secondary, to the nature of the regulatory authority to which they, as immigrants, were subject. The reasons for this lie largely outside of the law. Until the decades following the Civil War, most Americans shared abroad confidence both in immigrants' moral natures and in the power of American economic and political institutions to transform them into patriotic republicans. During this era of relative confidence, the individual states reserved significant authority over immigrants and immigration under their traditional police powers. State police authority, in turn, depended not on immigrants' status as foreigners, but rather on the purpose of the particular regulation at issue. As the objects of the state police power-as potential paupers or carriers of disease, for example-immigrants were simply persons, whose effect on the health, morals, and welfare of the community was, like that of all persons, native and foreign alike, subject to regulation. Even after the Supreme Court re-branded immigrants as articles of commerce in the 1870s to accommodate the transfer of regulatory authority from the individual states to Congress, it did not distinguish between human commercial goods transported from a neighboring state and those transported across an ocean. The Commerce Clause, like the police power, was indifferent to citizenship."

"Immigration also appears to have a minimal impact on average African American wages and employment. The work of scholars such as Lonnie Stevans, Robert LaLonde, Robert Topel, Franklin Wilson, Gerald Jaynes, and David Card suggests that immigration had little effect on the wages and employment of African American men between 1960 and 2010, regardless of their level of education."

"The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class."

"New York, from her particular situation, is, perhaps more than any other city in the Union, exposed to the evil of thousands of foreign emigrants arriving there ...."

"On Monday evening, President Trump pressed send on a tweet declaring that in the next week, ICE would begin removing “the millions of illegal aliens” who are in the United States. This, of course, was not true. ICE deports about 7,000 immigrants per month, which is rather short of the roughly 10.5 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. The tweet, coming two days before Trump’s big reelection rally, seemed tailor-made to send Democrats into paroxysms of rage and force us into a law-and-order debate in which we stand on the side of the lawbreakers."

"We think it as competent and as necessary for a state to provide precautionary measures against the moral pestilence of paupers, vagabonds, and possibly convicts, as it is to guard against the physical pestilence, which may arise from unsound and infectious articles imported, or from a ship, the crew of which may be laboring under an infectious disease."

"It has yet to be widely recognized that the immigrant population is growing far more slowly than in recent years, and that the unauthorized population has peaked and may even have declined. The makeup of the foreign-born population is also changing: New arrivals in the United States are more likely to be from Asia and less likely to be from than other world regions, and they are on average more educated than previous generations of migrants to the United States. The Mexican immigrant population in the United States has declined by half a million people since the beginning of the decade. And in 2018, the United States ceded its status as the world’s top country for resettling refugees, surpassed by Canada."

"The U.S. government first began collecting data on the nativity of the population in the 1850 census. That year, there were 2.2 million immigrants, representing nearly 10 percent of the population. Between 1860 and 1910, the immigrant share fluctuated between 13 percent and almost 15 percent of the overall population, peaking at 14.8 percent in 1890, largely due to high levels of immigration from Europe. Restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924—which kept permanent immigration open almost exclusively to northern and western Europeans—coupled with the Great Depression and World War II, led to a sharp drop in new arrivals from the Eastern Hemisphere. The foreign-born share steadily declined, hitting a record low of 4.7 percent in 1970."

"The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimated 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the United States in 2016. About half of all unauthorized immigrants resided in three states: California (27 percent), Texas (14 percent), and New York (8 percent). The vast majority (82 percent) lived in 174 counties with 10,000 or more unauthorized immigrants each, of which the top five—Los Angeles County, CA; Harris County, TX; Cook County, IL; Orange County, CA; and Queens County, NY—accounted for 20 percent of all unauthorized immigrants."

"I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats — and some of you won't like it — I voted for 700 miles of fence,… And the reason why I add that parenthetically, why I believe the fence is needed does not have anything to do with immigration as much as drugs. And let me tell you something folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin and it's all coming up through corrupt Mexico."

"Within two months of Biden taking office, thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America started crossing the border. The government didn’t have enough space to hold all of them as it arranged for sponsors to provide housing inside the country. By late March, there were eighteen thousand children in U.S. custody, and more than five thousand of them were being kept in borderland holding cells. It was the first political crisis of Biden’s Presidency. The atmosphere inside the Administration was tense. “There was a real, active debate between people from the advocacy community and the operational teams watching the trend lines,” Ricardo Zúniga, a former State Department official who served as Biden’s envoy to Central America, told me. “This was right in the middle of unwinding Trump-era policy. . . . Every snippet of messaging coming out of the United States was being misused by migrant smugglers.”"

"Stefanik’s resolution condemning Harris deliberately misconstrues the facts of this global shift. In one of the charges, for instance, Harris is blamed for “a record-breaking 31,077 Chinese nationals encountered at the southwest border.” This reference probably says more about China than it does about the U.S. (An earlier version of the resolution described the Chinese nationals as “communist,” presumably because they had fled a communist country.) The resolution also cites “documents” that were “released” by House Republicans showing that the Biden Administration “flew at least 400,000 illegal immigrants into the country.” There is nothing revelatory about the number, although it is inaccurate to call these immigrants “illegal.” They had availed themselves of the Administration’s signature migration program: an effort to provide legal avenues for migrants to be “paroled” into the country so that they don’t have to take their chances illegally crossing at the border. When the Biden Administration first designed the program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, in 2023, it resulted in a ninety-per-cent drop in border arrivals from the four countries."

"While Trump’s proposed tariffs would increase the cost of goods, his pledge to undertake a mass deportation of undocumented migrants would put pressure on the cost of both goods and services. Undocumented migrants are central to the workforce in an array of service industries, such as hospitality, child care, and elder care. But they also fill many jobs in construction, agricultural harvesting, and food production. Removing millions of undocumented workers from the economy at once “would create massive labor shortages in lots of different industries,” Zandi told me. That would force employers to either raise wages to find replacements or, more likely, disrupt production and distribution; both options would raise the prices consumers pay. “If you are talking about kicking 50 percent of the farm labor force out, that is not going to do wonders for agricultural food prices,” David Bier, director of immigration-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told me."

"[T]he unprecedented immigration crackdown Trump has vowed if he returns to the White House could also lead to higher inflation, economists say, despite Trump recently asserting prices would “come down dramatically and come down fast” as a result. If mass deportations occur, businesses could struggle to fill open positions, forcing them to raise wages and pass those costs to consumers. Even deporting 1.3 million workers, which is lower than the 10 to 20 million deportations Trump has advocated for, would be an “inflation shock” that lifts inflation by 1.3 percentage points after three years, according to research presented at the Peterson Institute for International Economics by Australian economist Warwick McKibbin. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the US economy, would be 2.1 percentage points lower – a dramatic decrease. If 7.5 million workers were deported, inflation would be a staggering 7.4 percentage points higher and GDP would be 12 points lower after three years, the research found."

"Representatives from the resettlement agencies meet frequently to review the biographic information and other case records sent by the Department of State’s overseas Resettlement Support Centers (RSC), seeking to match the particular needs of each incoming refugee with the specific resources available in U.S. communities. Through this process, they determine which resettlement agency will sponsor and where each refugee will be initially resettled in the United States. Many refugees have family or close friends already in the United States, and resettlement agencies make every effort to reunite them. Others are placed where they have the best opportunity for success through employment with the assistance of strong community services. Agencies place refugees through a network of approximately 200 local affiliates operating in communities throughout the United States. Through its local affiliates, each agency monitors the resources that each community offers (e.g., interpreters who speak various languages, the size and special features of available housing, the availability of schools with special services, medical care, English classes, employment services, etc.)."

"“These regulations are the final nail in the coffin of ever-increasing barriers to access asylum. If enacted, the rule would treat asylum seekers as nothing more than a nuisance unworthy of consideration or care,” said Richard Caldarone, Tahirih Litigation Counsel. “It would complete the transformation of immigration courts into conveyor belts in a deportation machine that rapidly returns people to violence, torture, and death without the slightest regard for their humanity. The Tahirih Justice Center intends to challenge the rule by any and all possible means.”"

"All Americans… are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens and legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, . . .[and] by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. …We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens arrested for crimes. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws."

"We’ve got to do several things, and I am, adamantly against illegal immigrants. We’ve got to do more at our borders and people need to stop employing illegal immigrants."

"We have to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey."

"Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama sent National Guard troops to the border when they were in the White House. And throughout the history of the borderlands, the military or armed militias have been dispatched there to keep black slaves from fleeing, remove Native Americans from ancestral lands and suppress Mexican-American revolts stemming from anger over white mob violence."

"Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 and the agency slowly grew in size as its mission changed. At first, the agents sought to keep out Asian immigrants and later worked to stall alcohol trafficking in the Prohibition era. Slowly, it evolved into stalling unwanted migration from Mexico."

"“Prosecutors surveyed stated that in prior years, as cooperation between prosecutors and immigrant communities increased, survivors of crime were increasingly willing to come forward and assist law enforcement in prosecuting cases,” the ACLU report said. “However, over the past year, many categories of crimes have become more difficult to prosecute as a result of an increase in fear of immigration consequences.” The ACLU study found that 82 percent of prosecutors reported that since President Donald Trump got into the White House, “domestic violence is now underreported and harder to investigate and/or prosecute.” Similarly, 70 percent of prosecutors reported the same was true for sexual assault, and 55 percent indicated “the same difficulties for human trafficking and 48 percent for child abuse.”"

"The report — “Freezing Out Justice: How Immigration Arrests at Courthouses Are Undermining the Justice System ” — found 67 percent of police officers surveyed reported that immigrants’ fear affected their ability to protect survivors of crime. Sixty-four percent indicated there was “an adverse impact on officer safety.”"

"Immigrants comprise almost 14 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 44 million people out of a total of about 327 million, according to the Census Bureau. Together, immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up about 28 percent of U.S. inhabitants. The figure represents a steady rise from 1970, when there were fewer than ten million immigrants in the United States. But there are proportionally fewer immigrants today than in 1890, when foreign-born residents comprised 15 percent of the population. Mexico is the most common country of origin for U.S. immigrants—constituting 25 percent of the immigrant population—but the proportion of immigrants from South and East Asia—who number about 27 percent—is on the rise."

"In the United States, minority populations were never an indigestible mass—with the major exceptions of the one ethnic group that did not come here voluntarily (African Americans) and those who were here when Europeans arrived (American Indians). The rest all came, clustered and dispersed, and added new cultural layers to the general society. This has always been the strength of the United States."

"While religion has a unifying role in American public life, it also has had a divisive role. Before the 1960s, denominational affiliation, especially whether one was Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, played a defining role in American public identities due to the history of American immigration and the relationship between religion and ethnicity (Herberg 1955). Sociologists have long been interested in the “social sources of denominationalism” and divisions in the American religious field, pointing especially to inequality based in race and class (Niebuhr 1929; Herberg 1955; Roof and McKinney 1987; Darnell and Sherkat 1997; Sherkat 2001; Park and Reimer 2002; Smith and Faris 2005). Although these divides of denominationalism in inequality remain today, the salient symbolic boundaries in the religious field are no longer between denominations as they long have been."