PEOPLE ON THE MOVE - Department of Geography

The numbers were large: over 1 million immigrants arrived annually in 6 of the
first 14 years of the 20th century. By the time of the 1910 Census, foreign-bom
residents made up nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population and about 24
percent of the U.S. Labor force.
The 20th-century Trough: 1915-1964. Immigration ceased as war erupted in
Europe, and remained low throughout World War I. When immigration started to
revive in the 1920s, it was cut back again, first by sharp immigration restrictions
and then by the Great Depression. Easing of legal restrictions began after World
War n, but legal immigration stayed at about 250,000 per year until the 1960s,
when changes in immigration law allowed larger flows. Immigrants from Mexico
and other Western Hemisphere nations accounted for one-third of the 1 million
immigrants who arrived officially during the 1940s. Between 1940 and
1960,360,000 legal Mexican immigrants were admitted, and another 1 to 2
million worked temporarily as Braceros in U.S. agriculture. The number of illegal
entries from Mexico during this period is not known. The U.S. border patrol
located and deported over 1 million Mexicans in the infamous "Operation
Wetback in the mid 1950s. However, some of those deported were later found
to be U.S. citizens or legal residents.
The Fourth Wave: 1965 to the Present. The fourth wave of immigrants began
arriving in the United States after 1965, when a new law altered the preference
system from one that selected immigrants on me basis of their national origins,
reserving most places for northern and western Europeans, to one that gave
priority to people with family members already in the United States or who had
skills needed in the U.S. Labor market. This change, coupled with prosperity in
Europe, changed the composition of U.S. immigration. During the 1970s, Europe
sent less than 20 percent of U.S. immigrants; Mexico contributed nearly the same
share. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Europeans were about 10 percent of
legal immigrants, while Asians made up about one-third and Hispanics nearly onehalf
of the decade's immigrants.
The immigration waves at the beginning and end of the 20th century have many
similarities, even though the national origins of immigrants differ. Over 1 million
immigrants arrived annually during the peak immigration years in the early
1900s, about the same level as in the early 1990s. Both waves brought large
numbers of people whose national origins, religions, languages, and cultures are
significantly different from those of the American majority. Deep-seated concerns
about the newcomers during the third and fourth waves prompted reassessments
and reforms of U.S. immigration policies. Now one in every 11 Americans is
foreign-born.