Immigration: A Melting Pot of Dysfunction

Immigration: A Melting Pot of Dysfunction

Throughout its storied history, the “American Dream” has captivated outsiders from all around the world. America owes much of its success to these immigrants, and, hand-in-hand, the two sides have coexisted in a very successful relationship. But for every immigrant striving for change, there is an American hoping for continuity. Because of this, now, more than ever before, immigration is a hot-button issue. According to a 2007 report from the Department for Immigration studies, immigrants now make up one eighth of the American population, a bigger percentage than ever before. This in itself may not be a huge issue, but consider the fact that about every one in three of these immigrants is illegally living in the country. The common belief is that these illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from hard working Americans while hiding from the IRS. This anxiety from the Americans has led to irrational decisions from the White House and a general dislike of immigrants from working-class Americans. However, this dislike is filled with misconceptions about all immigrants. While many Americans feel that not allowing any more immigrants would maintain American sanctity while helping weed out the illegal immigrants, the opposite would be true. The ideal plan would be to let in more immigrants legally while strengthening the defense on illegal immigration. This would allow the country to deal specifically with the immigrants (legal and illegal) in the United States and not on maintaining border control. But to understand why more immigrants would be beneficial to the United States, it is important to first know the history behind US immigration policy.

Immigrants have long brought prosperity to American culture and the country has benefited from having heavy amounts of immigration. In Bill Clintons words, “America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants...They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people.” Immigration into America can be traced all the way back to the first civilizations in St.Augustine, Florida, and Roanoke, Virginia. There, Europeans settled and became the white “Americans” we think of today. While America did receive an influx of immigrants as a colony of Britain, it didn’t receive its first real boost until the early 1800s. Because of needs for jobs in a newly industrialized nation, Europeans, specifically the Irish and Germans, came to the United States. While the Germans settled in Wisconsin, the Irish tended to stay in more urban areas where there were more factory jobs available. America felt a rush of immigration in 1849 when gold was discovered in California. Immigrants from all over the world came to the States, but the group that had the biggest lasting impact was the Chinese. The Chinese, along with the Irish, helped build the transcontinental railroad, which was essential to American economic success. However, American animosity grew towards the Chinese over gold and labor. This animosity carried all the way to congress where the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882(which banned immigration from China) became the first law to limit immigration in the history of the United States. At the turn of the century, America began to get immigrants from Russia as people fled the Czar. By the 1920’s the American Dream was a reality and people flocked to the United States. This led to huge restrictions on immigration from Europe. The Immigration Act of 1924 put the immigration levels at 2% of the nations population in America based on the 1890 Census. This led to huge drops in European immigration, especially from countries that hadn’t seen big immigration totals until after 1900, specifically Asia. Ironically, there were no restrictions set towards Latin America. From this point on, despite an eventual repeal of the act, immigration from Central and Eastern Europe was fairly limited. In the 1970s the United States began to see immigration from Vietnam (and pretty much everywhere else in Asia) as a result of the Vietnam War and finally from Latin America as labor became a necessity in the States. This immigration led to huge spikes in population that continues today. Currently Latin Americans, and in particular Mexicans, account for almost one third of the nations total immigrants. Overall, the highest population of immigrants typically comes from Latin America and Asia, while the lowest number generally comes from the Middle East and Africa. The fact that there is such a disparity of immigrants from these two sections of the world means that America is essentially not allowing more culture into the melting pot and trying to maintain the status quo. The problem with this is that many of the people in these sections of the world (specifically the Sudan region