Immigration in 20th-Century America

After the war, revelations about the full extent of Nazi racism in Europe led to reevaluations of American immigration policy and to special legislative exemptions to the quota system. More than 93,000 Jews immigrated to the United States from 1946 to 1949. War brides, displaced persons, refugees, orphans, and other people caught in postwar political changes or in the later conflicts of the Cold War were also granted permission to enter the country. At first these were Russians, Czechs, and Belorussians, but later they included Cubans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Hmong, Iranians, and others. The number of immigrants was relatively small, and Americans thought of themselves as relatively homogeneous in the 1950s and 1960s, a feeling bolstered by the all-white images dominating the nation’s television screens. In 1960, 83 percent of Americans were native-born whites.

The civil rights movement, which peaked from 1955 to 1965, renewed concerns about racism and issued a clear call to fulfill constitutional guarantees of human equality. Racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholic sentiment, and other forms of discrimination became less acceptable, as did the image of the true American as white, northern European, and Protestant. This change in attitude helped bring an end to national quotas for immigrants. In 1965 family members of those already living in the United States were given priority in immigrating without regard to national origin, as were highly skilled individuals, but migration from Asia was placed under a separate quota system that applied only to the Far East. By 1978 this provision was lifted, and all immigrants were treated equally.

Because of changes in U.S. immigration law and in economic and political conditions worldwide, the number of immigrants to America resurged in the last quarter of the 20th century. Immigrants from the Pacific Rim, including Filipinos, Chinese, and Koreans, as well as immigrants from American dependencies in the South Pacific, arrived on the West Coast and settled throughout the United States. Mexicans, Guatemalans, Costa Ricans, Caribbean peoples, and South Americans sought asylum and opportunity in the United States, particularly in the Southeast and Southwest and in large cities. Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Iranians, and others sought an outlet for their skills. These new flows of immigrants added Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism to the mix of religious beliefs in America. Hispanic Americans became the fastest-growing segment of the population by the end of the 20th century. The effect of immigration was not felt uniformly throughout the United States. Immigrants tended to congregate in the more densely populated areas of the United States: California, Florida, Texas, and the Northeast.

Although most immigrants entered the country legally, some did not. According to official estimates, approximately 5 million illegal immigrants resided in the United States in 1996, most from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Canada. Concern over immigration, particularly illegal immigration, increased during the 1980s and 1990s. In the last decades of the 20th century, immigration laws were amended to restrict the flow of all immigrants, to deport illegal aliens, and to deny benefits to those already living in the country legally. This wave of antiforeign sentiment was based on fears of tax increases for schooling immigrant children, for social services, and for health care, although illegal immigrants who work (albeit without legal status) pay wage and sales taxes that help support education and social services. Some citizens were also concerned about increased competition for jobs, even though immigrants frequently fill positions that American citizens do not want.

Other Americans, however, welcomed these new additions to American culture. Some employers depended on immigrants to harvest the nation’s crops, sew garments, or wash dishes in restaurants, jobs that many U.S. citizens found unattractive. Doctors and health professionals recruited from overseas were often hired to staff small-town hospitals in places where American professionals felt socially isolated. Businesses and universities welcomed foreign-born engineers and computer programmers because relatively few American students pursued these fields of study. A lottery system for entrance visas was designed to maintain the diversity of the immigrant pool by selecting a limited number of migrants by chance rather than by national origin.

According to the 2000 census, 70.9 percent of Americans were non-Hispanic whites, and the populations of blacks, Hispanics (who may be of any race), Native Americans, and Asian and Pacific Islanders were increasing. The Native American and African American populations grew, reversing 19th-century declines in their share of the total population. Migration from the Caribbean and smaller flows from various parts of Africa created the first substantial influx of free people of African descent in the nation’s history.

Racism

These broad categories only hint at the full ethnic and racial diversity of the American population; conversely, the use of separate categories masks the many characteristics Americans share. The United States has been described as a melting pot where ethnic and racial groups shed their specific traits and join with other Americans to create a new identity. The nation has also been described as a salad bowl where people of different backgrounds mingle at work and school, in civic responsibilities, and as consumers, but where cultural traits remain distinct.

In the 18th century American statesman Benjamin Franklin feared that Germans could never be assimilated because of their foreign ways. In the middle of the 19th century many thought that Irish Catholics would subvert the American way of life. At the end of the 19th century the Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Italians, and others were mistrusted. Yet these groups eventually became part of mainstream America. At the end of the 20th century, many people consider newer Asian immigrants, Spanish-speaking peoples, and Muslims as permanently alien presences. If the past is a guide, these groups too will meld into the general American citizenry.

The main exceptions to full acceptance remain Native Americans and African Americans. Native Americans have a dual status based both on the existence of reservations and vibrant tribal traditions, and on the prejudices of many non-Native Americans. African Americans bear the brunt of the oldest and most deeply rooted of American prejudices.

Initial contacts between Africans and Europeans often began with misunderstanding. Africans at first thought white-skinned people were ghosts looking for people to eat, since white was the color of death in much of Africa. Europeans sometimes assumed black-skinned peoples were followers of the devil and therefore sinful, since black was the traditional color associated with lies, sin, and evil in the Western world. Differences in religion, language, and customs also led to misunderstandings, even while economic similarities favored trade between African kingdoms and European empires.

When European merchants brought the first enslaved Africans to work in their New World, they justified the enslavement on the premise that Africans were not Christian and were supposedly not civilized—in other words, the Africans were considered culturally inferior. By the 18th century, many enslaved African Americans had converted to Protestant Christianity, spoke English, and expressed a desire for freedom. A few people of African descent had, against all the odds, become poets, doctors, almanac publishers, plantation owners, and antislavery activists. It became harder for whites to claim that Africans would always be culturally inferior. Pro-slavery whites then began to justify permanent enslavement by asserting that Africans were somehow biologically inferior to Europeans. Whites claimed that anything accomplished by people with black skin was inferior, that blacks were intellectually and morally incapable of self-government, and that blacks needed to be controlled by whites. This so-called scientific racism based on presumed biological differences was useful in slaveholding areas for protecting the economic interests of slaveholders and useful in non-slaveholding areas for uniting all the different, and potentially conflicting, European ethnicities under the label “white.”

Racial discrimination grew out of the practice of enslavement but outlasted the institution of slavery. European newcomers could find common ground with the majority of Americans by joining in the denigration of African Americans. Poorer whites or socially marginal whites could feel superior by virtue of their skin color, even if they were not economically successful or fully accepted by their peers. Racism helped to create a sense of unity among white Americans by defining who was a full citizen. Racism also united African Americans through shared experiences of discrimination and suffering. As a consequence, white racism also promoted a sense of unity among black Americans, no matter what their backgrounds.

Freedom in the wake of the Civil War was a first step in eradicating this prejudice. The civil rights era of the mid-20th century saw even more advancement, but prejudice against black Americans has not been entirely eliminated. At the beginning of the 21st century, a relatively small number of white people still opposed a race-blind America that would deny them a feeling of racial superiority. Some of these people form militia, fascist, and vigilante groups that use violence against African Americans, the federal government, and others who challenge their restrictive views. The majority of Americans, however, while sometimes reluctant to change, believe that all people are created equal.

Americans tend to think in terms of a biracial, separated society, even though whites and blacks have jointly built the United States, and even though the family histories of whites, blacks, and other races are often intermixed. In addition, the two groups share many beliefs (such as freedom, liberty, and civil rights) and customs (from poetry to sports and from work to holidays). Yet the idea of racial difference, of superiority and inferiority, still provides the basis for many social, cultural, political, economic, and religious divisions in the United States.

1.2 Growth through Natural Increase: Births

While the influx of immigrants contributed to the growth of the American population and helped build American society, the major factor affecting population growth in the United States has always been the surplus of births over deaths, or the natural increase of the population. American women at the beginning of the 21st century bear an average of two children over the course of their lives. Their great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers in 1890 had an average of four children, because in the 19th century fewer women had access to reliable methods for controlling fertility. A century earlier, around 1790, women might expect seven births throughout their lives, if they survived into their late 40s.

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