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Introduction: A New Perspective on Immigration, Past and Present

American history is, in part, a history of immigration - of waves of people from other lands making their way to America's shores. Indeed, the most characteristic American holiday, Thanksgiving, celebrates an immigration story, a tale of outcasts fleeing their homes and crossing an ocean to forge new lives in a new world.

Today, after over half a century of massive inflows, the history of U.S. immigration should be particularly relevant. It is surprising, then, that history is not more prominent in studies of contemporary immigration.

One reason is that the social sciences, by virtue of their present-day focus and methodologies, are typically the study of the here and now.1 I will argue, however, that the past can be an extremely useful tool for deepening our understanding of what's happening today; that a new historical perspective may be needed; and that a new perspective that emphasizes the relationship between the immigrant past and immigrant present can shed new light on the experiences and trajectories of today's newcomers and the impact they are having in the current era.

History isn't just what happened in the past; it is shaped by the perceptions of the people who lived through it. And, equally important, it is influenced by the way events in earlier times are seen by later generations. That is why a new, historical, perspective must concern itself with both the realities of immigration and the potent myths and legends that it spawned.

Among these critical concerns: How do the stories of earlier groups color the way today's immigrants are seen? What are the realities behind these earlier tales and myths? Since immigration looms so large in politics today, how have nativists and others distorted and manipulated memories of the past for their own ends?

What do we mean by myths and realities? A few examples may be useful here. Among the best remembered stories are those of the Southern and Eastern Europeans who arrived in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. While they are commonly recalled as making great leaps forward from rags to riches, in fact they generally made modest improvements in smaller steps over time. Nor did Southern and Eastern Europeans immediately fit in because they were legally White. They were widely viewed to be racially inferior to Northern and Western Europeans - and as menacing the very foundations of American civilization.

When it comes to actual historical realities, an additional question arises: What is really new about immigration in the U.S. today and what are long-standing themes? Historical comparisons warn against overemphasizing the uniqueness of the present, on the one hand, and, on the other, exaggerating continuities with the past and ignoring or downplaying new features.

Finally, a historical perspective on immigration can enrich our understanding of the present in another way - revealing how changes introduced by immigrants in the past shape the society that now greets contemporary immigrants. The incorporation and struggles of earlier Jewish and Catholic immigrant groups, to take one example, helped create a more religiously open society that new arrivals find today. Also in the realm of religion, the extensive Roman Catholic parochial school system developed by European immigrants in the past now educates many children of contemporary newcomers. Less happily, a long history of discrimination and prejudice against non-White immigrants left a legacy that continues to have an impact - this, too, is part of the story.

In bringing the immigrant past into the analysis of the immigrant present, the book offers an interpretive synthesis of the existing literature that draws on a broad range of quantitative and qualitative studies. For the contemporary period, these include in-depth ethnographic accounts of particular groups and places as well as census reports and surveys carried out by social science researchers; the discussions of the past rely on historical studies of U.S. immigration in earlier eras. The analysis is also informed by my own research and writings in a long career exploring immigration to the United States, often with a spotlight on New York, the country's quintessential immigrant city, and marked by a deep concern with history as well as the post-1965 period.2 This period is, in fact, what I have in mind in discussing contemporary immigration, since it was after legislation in 1965 that massive immigration to the United States resumed after decades of low inflows, and when the characteristics of the foreign born changed in remarkably dramatic ways. In the context of the broad sweep of American history and distinctive immigration eras, I also often use "today" and "the present" in talking about the post-1965 period.

In considering the contemporary period, I principally focus on Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean immigrants, who by the early 2000s made up more than three-quarters of all immigrants living in the United States; in the past I mainly discuss Europeans, who were the vast majority of newcomers in previous centuries. Europeans made up a whopping 95 percent of the immigrant population between 1820 and 1860, 90 percent between 1861 and 1900, and 85 percent between 1900 and 1920 (Daniels 1990: 122). I pay particular attention to the millions of Italians and Eastern European Jews who were a huge proportion of the mass immigration between the 1880s and early 1920s, although I make forays further back in time to the large Northern and Western European inflows of the mid-nineteenth century, as well as to the Chinese arrivals of that period. As table 1.1 shows, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom dominated the enormous immigrant inflows in the mid-1800s, and Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Poland led the list at the turn of the twentieth century.

In turning to the past, I also discuss the impact of the forced migration of Africans brought to America in chains, even though enslavement was radically different from the experiences of other foreign-born people in the United States. Enslaved people, as historian Tera Hunter (2017) puts it, were not immigrants; they were property: "Africans were kidnapped in the interior of the continent, marched to the coastline, and packed in vessels like inanimate cargo .. These were one-way voyages with no chance for return." Moreover, the native-born descendants of enslaved Africans, it is argued, have "historically occupied a . unique legal and structural status in American society" that is different from that of those we refer to as immigrants (Kasinitz and Waters 2024: 95). This said, the history of enslaved Africans and, after abolition, institutionalized racial oppression of their descendants has had significant consequences for many contemporary, especially Black, immigrants who continue to confront severe racial boundaries. The history of this forced migration to America therefore deserves attention in our analysis.3

Some Basic Facts and Figures

Although immigration has been a fundamental part of the United States since its colonial beginnings, many features of the immigrant population have undergone change over the centuries. Among the most basic are the number and percentage of foreign born in different periods, as well as their regions and countries of origin. Changes in immigrant inflows since 1965 have been especially dramatic and help to set the stage for exploring the relationship between the immigrant past and present.

Table 1.1. Three Great Waves of Immigration to the United States

Note: * Includes Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao; ** Includes other North America; *** Includes Northern Ireland.

Population figures are rounded to the nearest 25,000 for 1965-2024 and the nearest 1,000 for earlier waves. Shares based on unrounded numbers. Estimates for 1965-2024 include legal and unauthorized immigrants; for 1840-1919, only legal admissions are used.

Source: Moslimani and Passel 2024.

Era and region Total % Largest countries Total % Modern era (1965-2024) 72,000,000 100 Latin America 35,350,000 49 Mexico 17,800,000 25 South/East Asia 19,150,000 27 China* 4,275,000 6 Europe, total 8,500,000 12 India 4,150,000 6 Africa/Middle East 5,900,000 8 Philippines 2,750,000 4 Canada** 1,500,000 2 Cuba 2,075,000 3 All other 1,600,000 2 Korea 2,000,000 3 Former USSR 1,950,000 3 Vietnam 1,725,000 2 El Salvador 1,700,000 2 Dominican...