Immigration to the United States is a complex demographic phenomenon that has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior. In 2006 the United States accepted more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. After ethnic quotas on immigration were removed in 1965 the number of actual (first-generation) immigrants living in the United States eventually quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007. Over one million persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The leading countries of origin of immigrants to the United States were Mexico, India, the Philippines, and China. Nearly 14 million immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to 2010.
Family reunification accounts for approximately two-thirds of legal immigration to the US every year. The number of foreign nationals who became legal permanent residents (LPRs) of the U.S. in 2009 as a result of family reunification (66%) exceeded those who became LPRs on the basis of employment skills (13%) and for humanitarian reasons (17%).
Migration is difficult, expensive, and dangerous for those who enter the US illegally across the Mexico–United States border. Participants in debates on immigration in the early twenty-first century called for increasing enforcement of existing laws governing illegal immigration to the United States, building a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) U.S.-Mexico border, or creating a new guest worker program. Through much of 2006 the country and Congress was immersed in a debate about these proposals. As of April 2010 few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence had been approved and subsequently canceled.
Read more about Immigration To The United States: History, Contemporary Immigration, Demography, Public Opinion, Immigration in Popular Culture, Documentary Films, Legal Perspectives, Interpretive Perspectives
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“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
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—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)