But the cracks in that story began to show as soon as we hit the schoolyard, where kids of different backgrounds played together, but also hurled insults that stung because they had the weight of centuries of American law and rhetoric behind them. In , the Chinese Exclusion Act blocked Chinese immigrants—and in , it was expanded to block most Asians living between Afghanistan and the Pacific. Adolf Hitler hailed the law as a model to emulate. The historic Immigration and Nationality Act of did away with the quotas based on national origin and instead allowed citizens of the United States to petition for family members to join them.

But the overtly race-blind language in the new system belied its intent. For his book Dividing Lines , Daniel Tichenor, a scholar at the University of Oregon, scrutinized the Congressional Record and found that legislators designed the system the way they did because they believed that people of European origin, who made up the majority of the population at the time, would also make up the majority of those petitioning to bring in new immigrants.

In the s, the so-called diversity-visa program was created to help the thousands of Irish immigrants who were coming into the country illegally each year enter instead as legal residents. However, since the flow of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa has, as ever, outpaced expectations—to the point where America is on track to become a majority-minority nation sometime in the next few decades.

Various attempts have been made to acknowledge the enduring presence of immigrants of color by granting them legal status: In , President Ronald Reagan ushered in an amnesty policy that allowed nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Mexican, to become citizens. And in , President George H. Bush amplified the demographic effects of the law by increasing the visa caps it had established. As a reporter covering these issues for the past several years, I have seen how discrimination against immigrants of color has been meted out not just in the ways the laws are written but in the ways they are enforced, sometimes as a consequence of policies not explicitly tied to race.

Previous iterations of racialized enforcement practices were more explicit, putting the power of government behind stereotypes. At various points, immigrant groups were associated with specific illnesses, resulting in enhanced screenings by American authorities that were degrading and unnecessary. The Jews were seen as people that carried tuberculosis; the Chinese had cholera. Well into the midth century, while Mexicans were being bathed in kerosene, sprayed with DDT, and subjected to Jim Crow laws in the American South , Northern and Western European immigrants were being given periodic opportunities to legalize their immigration status.

One such program, called pre-examination, allowed tens of thousands of Europeans to gain residency. Mexicans were ultimately not eligible for these programs.

Instead, their communities were policed with increasing ferocity. Mae Ngai, a historian at Columbia University, notes that in the s, the earliest Border Patrol agents were instructed to act with civility toward white immigrants only. 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.

Increased prevalence of immigrants is associated with lower crime rates—the opposite of what many Americans fear. Among men ages , 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. Immigrant divorce rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates start out much lower than the rates for native-born Americans generally,.

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. 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. 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 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.

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 mids, U. An estimated Their number rose rapidly from the s through , reaching a peak of 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. 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. 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.

Today, 5. The vast majority of these. Included in this total are almost 7 percent of students in kindergarten through high school K , 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.

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. 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.

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 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.

Further research is needed to clearly identify the barriers to naturalization. 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.

In , 83 percent of the U. Hispanics have grown from just over 4. 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 but are 6 percent today. Black immigration has also grown. In , blacks were just 2. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Some Americans weren't used to interacting with people who spoke different languages, practiced a different religion, or were a different race. Racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia fear and hatred of foreigners were the unfortunate result.

In , Congress passed the National Origins Act. It placed restrictions and quotas on who could enter the country. The annual quotas limited immigration from any country to 3 percent of the number of people from that country who were living in the United States in The effect was to exclude Asians, Jews, blacks, and non-English speakers.

In the s, the country was going through the Great Depression, a terrible period of economic hardship. People were out of work, hungry, and extremely poor. Few immigrants came during this period; in fact, many people returned to their home countries. Half a million Mexicans left, for example, in what was known as the Mexican Repatriation. Unfortunately, many of those Mexicans were forced to leave by the U. It still exists today. America was again concerned about protecting itself.

Fears about foreign-born people continued to grow. As a result of the turmoil in the s, immigration figures dropped dramatically from where they had been in previous decades. In the s, approximately 4,, immigrants came to the United States; in the s, fewer than , arrived. During the war, immigration decreased. There was fighting in Europe, transportation was interrupted, and the American consulates weren't open. Fewer than 10 percent of the immigration quotas from Europe were used from to In many ways, the country was still fearful of the influence of foreign-born people.

Resident aliens are people who are living permanently in the United States but are not citizens. Oftentimes, there was no reason for these people to be detained, other than fear and racism. Beginning in , the government even detained American citizens who were ethnically Japanese.

The government did this despite the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which says "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without the due process of law. Also because of the war, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in China had quickly become an important ally of the United States against Japan; therefore, the U. Chinese immigrants could once again legally enter the country, although they did so only in small numbers for the next couple of decades.

Many people wanted to leave war-torn Europe and come to America. President Harry S. Truman urged the government to help the "appalling dislocation" of hundreds of thousands of Europeans. In , Truman said, "everything possible should be done at once to facilitate the entrance of some of these displaced persons and refugees into the United States. I believe that the admission of these persons will add to the strength and energy of the Nation. It allowed for refugees to come to the United States who otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to enter under existing immigration law.

The Act marked the beginning of a period of refugee immigration. It also allowed non-Europeans to come to the United States as refugees. The Refugee Relief Act also reflected the U. The Soviet Union was also controlling the governments of other countries.

The Act allowed people fleeing from those countries to enter the United States. When he signed the Act, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "This action demonstrates again America's traditional concern for the homeless, the persecuted, and the less fortunate of other lands. It is a dramatic contrast to the tragic events taking place in East Germany and in other captive nations.

In , there was a revolution in Hungary in which the people protested the Soviet-controlled government. Many people fled the country during the short revolution. They were known as "fifty-sixers".

About 36, Hungarians came to the United States during this time. Some of their countrymen also moved to Canada. In , Cuba experienced a revolution, and Fidel Castro took over the government. His dictatorship aligned itself with the Soviet Union. More than , Cubans left their country in the years after the revolution; many of them settled in Florida. In , President Lyndon B. This act repealed the quota system based on national origins that had been in place since This was the most significant change to immigration policy in decades.

Instead of quotas, immigration policy was now based on a preference for reuniting families and bringing highly skilled workers to the United States. This was a change because in the past, many immigrants were less skilled and less educated than the average American worker.

In the modern period, many immigrants would be doctors, scientists, and high-tech workers. Because Europe was recovering from the war, fewer Europeans were deciding to move to America. But people from the rest of world were eager to move here. Asians and Latin Americans, in particular, were significant groups in the new wave of immigration.

Within five years after the act was signed, for example, Asian immigration had doubled. During the s and s, America was involved in a war in Vietnam.

Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia, on the Indochina peninsula. From the s into the s there was a great deal of conflict in the area. After the war, Vietnamese refugees started coming to the United States. During the s, about , Vietnamese came, and hundreds of thousands more continued to arrive during the next two decades.

In , the government passed the Refugee Act, a law that was meant specifically to help refugees who needed to come to the country. Refugees come because they fear persecution due to their race, religion, political beliefs, or other reasons. The United States and other countries signed treaties, or legal agreements, that said they should help refugees. The Refugee Act protected this type of immigrant's right to come to America.

During the s, waves of immigrants arrived from Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Hundreds of thousands of people came just from Cuba, fleeing the oppressive dictatorship of Fidel Castro.

This was a significant new wave of immigrants: During the s, 8 million immigrants came from Latin America, a number nearly equal to the total figure of European immigrants who came to the United States from to , when European immigration was at a high point.

The new immigrants changed the makeup of America: By , Latinos in the United States were about Since , immigration has been increasing. It is at its highest point in America's history.

In both the s and s, around 10 million new immigrants came to the United States. The previous record was from to , when around 8 million immigrants arrived. In , the foreign-born population of the United States was Also in that year, California became the first state in which no one ethnic group made up a majority. By comparison, as recently as the s, two-thirds of all immigrants to the United States came from Europe or Canada.

The main countries of origin for immigrants today are Mexico, the Philippines, China, Cuba, and India. About 1 in 10 residents of the United States is foreign-born.

Today, the United States is a truly multicultural society. Most of the immigrants who came to America through Ellis Island were from eastern and southern Europe. In many cases, they came to escape the poverty and religious intolerance that existed in small towns in countries such as Italy, Poland, and Russia.

They began their journey to America on foot, horseback, or train. Many trekked hundreds of miles across Europe to get to a seaport. When they arrived at the coast, they boarded a steamship. The trip across the Atlantic Ocean lasted one to two weeks.

The ships divided passengers by wealth and class. First- and second-class passengers stayed in staterooms and cabins. But most people were in third class, called "steerage. As many as 3, people crowded the ships. They often came from different countries, spoke different languages, and belonged to different religions. Traveling in Europe was often difficult. People sometimes had to walk far distances, carrying their possessions with them. Immigrants traveled from Europe to America by steamship.

Ships were crowded with thousands of passengers. Passengers make time for dancing aboard the ship. An emigrant is someone who leaves her home country to settle in another country. An immigrant is someone who has come from another country to settle in a new place, usually permanently. Before the invention of steamships, people took sailing ships to come to America.

The trip could take anywhere from one to six months! On steamships, tickets were less expensive and the trip was shorter, which helped prevent diseases from spreading onboard.