G. Casey Cassidy
During the 1980’s, more than half of the world’s immigrants entered the United States legally. Many Americans today feel that the U.S. has reached its saturation point in that the present economy and environment cannot support additional people. “A Time/CNN poll in September, 1993, found that 73% of respondents wanted the government to limit all immigration, legal and illegal.” (3) Over the past two hundred years, U.S. policy on immigration has been shaped by political pressure, certain interest groups and foreign policy concerns. Migration to the U.S. during its growing years was limited only by the cost of the voyage and the distance traveled. During those early years, the English dominated the 1600’s while the Scots, the Irish and the Germans arrived in the 1700 and 1800’s. In the 1840’s, the Irish (fleeing the potato famine) and the Germans began to enter the U.S. in large numbers. Formal restrictions began about 1870. By the end of the 19th century, millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, including Italians, Slavs, Greeks and Jews, had arrived on America’s shores. Some twenty-five million people entered the United States during the period between 1880-1924.
As people from Europe were arriving on America’s eastern shores, Chinese laborers working in mines and helping to build the transcontinental railroad were arriving in the west. Immigration from Mexico was not considered crucial until this century, and especially most recently as the state of California has enacted Proposition 187 to cut off benefits, including education, welfare and non-emergency health care to illegal aliens and requires public employees, including teachers, to report anyone suspected of being an illegal alien to immigration authorities.
