Immigration~

Vivian Mui/Mina Mahloogi
Period 7/ Storck
Honors US History
May 24, 2012
1) Immigration?

Always wondered how not everyone who lives in the United States is not American? It is all due to immigration. People have immigrated to the United States from all over the world for many different reasons, not all of them are the same. Immigration did not just start within our generation; it started many years ago, probably back in the 1700s (during the first wave of immigration, from 1783-1880). Immigration led to many different acts, policies, and new laws that helped either encourage or discourage people to immigrate to the United States. With all these people coming into our nation, it has changed, helped, and shaped the world that we live in today.
2) Background Knowledge:
In the past generations, there were many different types of immigrates and why they came over. One “type” of immigrants, who came to the United States, was called the “Bird of Passage.” The “Bird of Passage” was an immigrant during the second wave, (in other words, a group of immigrants during the 1880-1945) into the United States with the intention of returning home as soon as he or she had made money. These immigrants were usually young males from Eastern and Southern Europe. Additionally, there were “boat people.” These people were immigrants who flee their country in small boats into the United States. Most of them fled from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War or from Cuba to escape from the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro. Lastly, there was the “Chain Migration” in which there is a process of immigration which an initial group of people from one location in the “Old World” migrates to a location in the New World then bring people from their family. Unfortunately, the chain migration process also including force immigration such as African slaves. These different processes of immigration shape our world today because it gave ideas to innovators on different types of transportation. Such as, boats, ships, airplanes, vehicles, and more.
3) How Immigrants Affected the Past:
In the past few generations, new laws, acts, and policies have been made due to massively large amount of people coming into the United States. In 1882 and 1943, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese Exclusion Act is the act in which it prohibited all Chinese except students, teachers, merchants, tourists and government officials from entering the United States. This act was made because there were too many people emigrating from China into the United States which took over jobs of the Americans. In addition, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (also known as the IRCA). In the Almanac of Immigration Textbook it states that the IRCA is, “the act [that] provided amnesty (pardon to a group of people) for undocumented immigrants who could prove they had entered the United States before 1982” (9). The IRCA act helped shape the world we live in today because three million undocumented aliens who had been living in the country obtained U.S. citizenship from this act.
4) How Immigration Shaped the World Today:
Many of the immigration acts, laws, and policies have affected the world we live in today. For example, the current President of the United States, President Barack Obama, passed an Immigration Amnesty that would benefit the 12 to 20 million undocumented aliens currently living in the United States like the IRCA act from President Reagan. According to http://usamnesty.org, the official website of the United States Immigration Amnesty, it clearly states that “[the] amnesty for illegal aliens forgives their acts of illegal immigration and implicitly forgives other illegal acts…” The similarity between this act and President Reagan’s act reveals how the immigration process in the 1970s-1980s affected the world we live in today. In other words, the actions that the President made in the 1980s shape how we will make our world a better place for not just for U.S. citizens, but for everyone in general.
In conclusion, the massively large immigration that occurred during the first and second wave, or during the late 1900s, helped shape the decisions that the President makes today. The actions that we take in the past, will affect us in the future. 