Immigration to the United States

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Immigrants take the oath of allegiance on naturalization
Population growth in the United States of America since 1770

The Immigration to the United States influences the demographics and culture of the country. Since the state was founded, a large number of migrants have settled for religious, political or economic reasons or have been forcibly settled as slaves .

The first immigrants came from Great Britain and the Netherlands , with immigration peaking between 1892 and 1924. Today the United States has more legal immigrants than any other country in the world.

history

Immigration to the North American colonial areas

After the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 , the North American continent was settled by Europeans from three main directions:

Other major waves of immigration were:

Immigration from 1776 to 1849

About 9 percent of the American population was German at the end of the 18th century. During the first half of the 19th century, 500,000 Germans emigrated to America (see: Thirties , Gießen Emigration Society and Mainz Adelsverein ). Many of them fled Germany due to the failed revolution of 1848 (see: Forty-Eighters ).

The Great Famine raged in Ireland from 1845–1849 , causing millions of Irish to flee to America.

National origin of white Americans in percent based on a 1790 census

country percent
England 59.7
Northern Ireland / Ulster 10.5
Germany 8.9
Ireland 5.8
Scotland 5.3
Wales 4.3
Netherlands 3.1
France 2.1
Sweden 0.3

Immigration from 1820 to 1924

Austro-Hungarian emigrants on an Austro-Americana ship in Trieste
Immigration figures from 1820 to 2003

From 1820, data on immigration were recorded and archived centrally in the newly established Department of Immigration Statistic . All data on the origin, number, place of settlement, employment and the like of the immigrants can be viewed. An online search is available for immigrants who entered via Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924 .

Events that have had a significant impact on the flow of immigration:

Between 1850 and 1930, 5 million Germans immigrated to the USA . Between 1876 and 1910 around 3 million people left Austria-Hungary for the United States - mainly via the large German shipping companies Norddeutscher Lloyd (Bremen) and Hamburg-Amerika-Linie (Hamburg), but also via Trieste with the Austro-Americana . In the period from 1840 to 1930, 900,000 French Canadians came to the country, mostly settling in New England . Over 2 million Italians immigrated from 1910 to 1920.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act , which excluded Chinese workers from immigrating, was passed. It was not lifted until 1943. After that, the quota system of 1924 applied to Chinese immigrants until 1965. It only allowed 105 Chinese new immigrants per year (see the history of the Chinese in the United States and Sino-Americans ).

The USA encouraged immigration during the period of westward settlement ( Frontier ), for example through the Homestead Act , which guaranteed new citizens land from common ownership as property if they used it for at least five years.

Immigration Policy since 1924

In 1921 immigration was made subject to a quota for the first time ( Emergency Quota Act ). The Immigration Act of 1924 followed three years later . The quotas agreed in both laws were intended to curb immigration from southern and eastern Europe in favor of immigration from northern and western Europe and, in general, to ensure the “white” character of the population. To this end, the number of new immigrants per country was limited to three percent of the population of 1890.

After the Second World War (especially in the first post-war years), many people in many European countries (which had been largely destroyed and where hunger, hardship and housing shortages prevailed in many places) wanted to emigrate to the USA.

From 1965, the order of application, origin by world region (hemisphere) and questions of family reunification were taken into account. Since 1978, there has been a uniform worldwide quota for immigration to the USA.

With the abolition of the racist quota system in 1924, the composition of the immigrants changed dramatically. In 1970, 62% of the foreign-born residents of the United States were Europeans , but by 2000 that percentage had dropped to 15%. The number of immigrants also increased sharply. It was 2.5 million from 1951 to 1960, 4.5 million from 1971 to 1980 and over 10 million in the 1990s.

Due to the changed migration pattern, the Hispanics became the largest ethnic minority in the USA (2000: 35.2 million, of which over 20 million from Mexico , see Mexican Americans ). Their number rose by 61% from 1990 to 2000 alone. Immigration in the 1990s even exceeded mass immigration at the end of the 19th century in absolute terms. However, the relative proportion of foreign-born residents was higher at the beginning of the 20th century than it is today. It was 15% in 1910, dropped to 5% in 1970 and rose again to around 10% in 2000.

Illegal immigrants have always been largely excluded from government welfare in the USA. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) excluded other immigrant groups from it in 1996. According to PRWORA, state funds can only come to those who have been and continue to be “qualified” immigrants, whereby “qualified” immigrants include, for example, refugees, asylum seekers and holders of a green card. This does not include illegal immigrants, tourists, students and certain short-term migrant workers. Exceptions apply to emergency Medicaid, school meals and short-term disaster relief. From 1997 to 2002, PRWORA made exceptions for immigrants living in the USA before 1996 with regard to the issuing of food stamps and assistance to people with disabilities. In 2002 and 2009, exceptions were implemented for pregnant women and for children legally resident in the USA, which granted access to Medicaid and the CHIP children's health insurance program . The states can create further exemptions for immigrants who arrived before 1996 and also provide their own funds for other immigrant groups, provided that they expressly state this in state law, which was done in most states. This created an incentive for states to promote naturalization, as those affected then move from state funding to state funding. This, together with other regulations such as the Green Card Replacement Program from 1992 and the Citizenship USA Initiative from 1995, led to an increase in naturalizations.

According to government figures, 463,204 people received US citizenship in 2003; the average over the years 1997–2003 is around 634,000.

Latin American immigrant groups

see also: Wetback , border between the United States and Mexico , Harvest of Empire , Mexican Americans , migration route from Central America to the border between Mexico and the United States

European immigration groups

The large European immigrant groups include the Germans (see History of Germans in the United States , German-Americans ), Irish (see Irish-Americans ), and Italians (see Italian-Americans ).

Switzerland

Most of the immigration from Switzerland took place in the second half of the 19th century. The reasons for this were mostly of an economic nature, at that time Switzerland was considered one of the poorest countries in Europe.

year number
until 1820 25,000
1820-1860 40,000
1860-1880 50,000
1880-1890 82,000
1890-1920 90,000

By 1820, around 25,000 Swiss immigrated mainly to Pennsylvania and North / South Carolina. In general, the destination in the 19th century was the Midwest and the Pacific coast. The Italian-speaking Swiss preferred California. Some Swiss settlements were founded, such as New Glarus in Wisconsin , Gruetli-Laager in Tennessee or New Bern in North Carolina .

Sweden

The majority of Swedish immigrants came to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Usually they migrated to the Midwest via New York . In 1900 Chicago was the city with the largest number of Swedish residents in the world after Stockholm . Many others settled as farmers in Minnesota , Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Greece

In the 2000 United States Census , 1,153,295 people reported being of Greek descent, of whom 365,435 spoke Greek. They were mostly concentrated in New York, Chicago, and Florida .

Immigration of Greeks to the USA:

year number
1890-1917 450,000
1918-1924 70,000
1925-1945 30,000
1946-1982 211,000

Americans of Greek descent include Telly Savalas , Jennifer Aniston, and Michael Dukakis .

slaves

The majority of African slaves were brought into the country before American independence. As the first Muslim whose presence in North America is documented, the Moroccan slave Estevanico was shipwrecked in 1528 at what is now Galveston in Texas . It is estimated that around 300,000 slaves were shipped to the English 13 colonies before independence . Between the American War of Independence and the War of Civil Secession , 100,000 black slaves followed. In the southern states, where slavery was inextricably linked to the expanding economy, the number of slaves grew to around four million by the end of the Civil War in 1865.

Current situation

Immigration legislation

Current immigration law was essentially created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996.

The Real ID Act 2005 may indirectly affect immigrants. This law primarily regulates the use of the driver's license as an identification document (ID) - as a replacement for identity cards that are not issued in the USA. As part of the precautions against forgery and the misuse of the driver's license as an ID, the law of 2005 tightened the requirements for the documents that must be presented in order to issue a driver's license. On that occasion, the requirements for documents on which applications for political asylum are based and for other documents relating to immigration were also tightened. As a result, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and US citizens demonstrated in numerous cities across the United States on May 1, 2006 to protect migrants' rights. According to the motto “Day without immigrants”, they stayed away from work on this day and thus drew attention to their economic importance.

Since then, the dispute for and against new immigration legislation has hardened. Several bills failed: the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (2005), the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (2006), and finally the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act (2007). They either missed the approval of the Senate or that of the House of Representatives . Attempts in the Conference Committee to mediate between the contradicting legislative initiatives of both houses of Congress failed or were not even initiated due to hopelessness.

Refugees and asylum seekers

The United States distinguish between refugees ( refugees ) and asylum seekers ( asylum seekers ); see: Refugee policy of the United States after the entry into force of the Geneva Refugee Convention . Refugees enter after an assessment of their refugee status by the UNHCR through the resettlement program of the UNHCR or have personally applied to the United States for recognition as refugees and have been recognized as such. The United States has a rigorous screening process.

For each year ( fiscal year , October of the previous year to September), the Congress sets an upper limit for the number of refugees to be accepted worldwide ( worldwide refugee ceiling ) and upper limits for individual regions. The global upper limit in the USA was 231,700 in 1980, was reduced in the following years, reached a low in 1986 with 67,000 and again an interim high in 1993 with 142,000, was lower again in the following years, varied in 2001 between 70,000 and 80,000 by 2015 and increased to 85,000 in 2016. On March 6, 2017, President Donald Trump by decree ( Executive Order 13780 ) lifted the government program for the admission of refugees for a period of 120 days and limited the number of admitted refugees for 2017 to 50,000.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) aims to give refugees a successful start in the United States and empower them to support themselves.

Asylum seekers are people who have applied for asylum on US territory or at the border. In contrast to the refugee program, the granting of asylum is not subject to any upper limit. Asylum seekers can only apply for an employment authorization in the USA if 150 days have passed after the asylum application has been submitted and no decision has yet been made on the asylum procedure. Those who have been granted asylum are allowed to work.

Illegal immigration

In the United States, illegal immigrants represent an estimated 3.5% of the total population and 5% of the workforce.

Many illegal immigrants pay social security contributions without being entitled to benefits. This is because social security contributions from people whose social security number does not match any existing data record are forwarded to the Earnings Suspense File (ESF). This applies to illegal immigrants who have presented a false social security card to their employer. It is estimated that illegal immigrants and their employers deposited a total of $ 13 billion in 2010.

Minors residing illegally in the US are entitled to schooling in the (free) public school, according to case law, and the constitution guarantees the right to 12 years of schooling.

On September 5, 2017, President Donald Trump ordered the end of the DACA program, with which certain persons who immigrated illegally as children were temporarily protected from deportation and were able to work legally. Furthermore, under his government, deportation measures were also applied to a greater extent to those people who, apart from staying illegally (and possibly illegal immigration), largely obeyed the law. In 2011, the previous government focused on criminal foreigners and granted judges leeway for other cases to formalize proceedings ( administrative closure ). This meant that the victims were not initially deported, but were not given any right to stay, and could be subjected to renewed proceedings at any time.

At the beginning of 2019, the pressure on the immigration authorities in the USA increased due to a steadily growing number of new arrivals at the border with Mexico and the authority reported at the end of March that the capacity limit had been reached. The majority of the newcomers were no longer illegal immigrants, but instead forced regular access to the US territory by applying for asylum. The large number cannot be held in closed facilities until their asylum applications have been examined, allowing them to move freely around the United States. There were 78,000 people in February and 95,000 arrivals were expected for March 2019.

United States Abroad-Born Population, by Country of Birth, as of 2013

Every year the Office of Immigration Statistics publishes the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics , which publishes immigration data for the past ten years and since 1820.

In 2013, according to the US Census Bureau, around one in ten of the 317,238,626 citizens of the United States was born in one of the 20 main immigrant countries.

rank Country of birth Number (2013)
1 MexicoMexico Mexico 11,584,977
2 China People's RepublicPeople's Republic of China People's Republic of China 2,383,831
3 IndiaIndia India 2,034,677
4th PhilippinesPhilippines Philippines 1,843,989
5 VietnamVietnam Vietnam 1,281,010
6th El SalvadorEl Salvador El Salvador 1,252,067
7th CubaCuba Cuba 1,144,024
8th Korea SouthSouth Korea South Korea 1,070,335
9 Dominican RepublicDominican Republic Dominican Republic 991.046
10 GuatemalaGuatemala Guatemala 902.293
11 CanadaCanada Canada 840.192
12th JamaicaJamaica Jamaica 714.743
13th United KingdomUnited Kingdom United Kingdom 695.489
14th ColombiaColombia Colombia 677.231
15th HaitiHaiti Haiti 593.980
16 GermanyGermany Germany 584.184
17th HondurasHonduras Honduras 533,598
18th PeruPeru Peru 440.292
19th PolandPoland Poland 432,601
20th EcuadorEcuador Ecuador 427.906
Sum of these 20 countries 30,428,465

See also

On the history of immigration

Immigrants worldwide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation: Searching for Immigrants Online via Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924 , accessed September 19, 2013.
  2. ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War. Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , pp. 27, 121.
  3. ↑ Annual immigration quotas under the Immigration Act of 1924
  4. ↑ a b census.gov: The Foreign-Born Population (PDF; 50 kB), chapter 17, 2000.
  5. ^ Susan B. Carter, Richard Sutch: Historical Background to current immigration issues. In: James P. Smith, Barry Edmonston (Eds.): The immigration debate. Studies on the economic, demographic, and fiscal effects of immigration . The National Academies Press, Washington DC 1998, ISBN 0-309-05998-4 , pp. 289-366.
  6. ↑ census.gov: We the People: Hispanics in the United States (PDF; 430 kB), chapter 18, 2000.
  7. ^ A b Tanya Broder, Avideh Moussavian, Jonathan Blazer: Overview of Immigrant Eligibility for Federal Programs. National Immigration Law Center (NILC), December 2015, accessed October 14, 2017 .
  8. ↑ a b c Audrey Sing: Immigrants, Welfare Reform and the Coming Reauthorization Vote. Migration Policy Institute (MPI), August 1, 2002, accessed October 14, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b Mapping Public Benefits for Immigrants in the States. The PEW Charitable Trusts, September 24, 2014, accessed October 14, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Swissroots.org: Swiss Emigration 1820–1910 ( Memento of October 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF).
  11. ^ Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History . Ed .: Edward E. Curtis IV. Facts on File, New York 2010. ISBN 978-0-8160-7575-1 . S. XXII.
  12. ↑ 150 Years Ago : The End of Slavery in the United States. In: diepresse.com. December 18, 2015, accessed May 18, 2018 .
  13. ↑ USC , Title 8: § 1229a (c) (4) (B)
  14. ↑ 109th Congress: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005
  15. ↑ 109th Congress: Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006
  16. ↑ 110th Congress: Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2007
  17. ↑ Refugee Resettlement - Security Screening Information: Fact Sheet. Human Rights First, February 1, 2017, accessed March 8, 2017 .
  18. ^ Eva C. Schweitzer: Refugee Policy in the USA - The Limits of the American Dream. In: Cicero. August 6, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Figures from the interactive view, available at: US Annual Refugee Resettlement Ceilings and Number of Refugees Admitted, 1980-Present. Migration Policy Institute, accessed March 7, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Fact Sheet: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry To The United States. US Department of Homeland Security , March 6, 2017, accessed March 8, 2016 .
  21. ^ The US Refugee Resettlement Program - an Overview. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), US Department of Health & Human Services, September 14, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017 .
  22. ^ Application for asylum in the USA. Requirements & entitlement to a work permit. In: www.justlanded.de. Retrieved March 8, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Asylum. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), August 6, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017 .
  24. ^ Social research institute Pew Research Center, quoted from: Heike Buchter: Illegale Immigranten: Woe, if they go. Zeit online, March 16, 2017, accessed March 16, 2017 .
  25. ↑ Alexia Fernández Campbell: The Truth About Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes. The Atlantic, September 12, 2016, accessed March 16, 2017 .
  26. ↑ Stephen Goss, Alice Wade, J. Patrick Skirvin, Michael Morris, K. Mark Bye, Danielle Huston: Effects of Unauthorized Immigration on the Actuarial Status of the Social Security Trust Funds. (PDF) In: Actuarial Note, Social Security Administration, No. 151. Office of the Chief Actuary, Baltimore, Maryland, April 2013, accessed March 16, 2017 . }
  27. ↑ Plyler v. Doe . Quoted from: Holk Stobbe, Undocumented Migration in Germany and the United States: Internal Migration Controls and the Scope of Action by Sans Papiers , Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2004, ISBN 3-930457-69-5 , p. 185. (books.google.com)
  28. ↑ Reade Levinson: Exclusive: Under Trump, prosecutors fight reprieves for people facing deportation. In: Reuters. March 29, 2018, accessed May 18, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Laura Meckler: Trump administration arresting far more illegal immigrants without criminal convictions. In: marketwatch.com. May 17, 2018, accessed May 18, 2018 .
  30. ↑ Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti: "US has hit 'breaking point' at border amid immigration surge, Customs and Border Protection commissioner says" washingtonpost.com of March 27, 2019.
  31. ↑ Immigration Statistics | Homeland Security . Dhs.gov (February 22, 1999). Retrieved July 29, 2013.

literature

Web links