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As of July 2014, the U.S. population is 318,662,000 people including an approximate 11.2 million illegal immigrants. In 1967, 200 million lived in the U.S. and the 100 million - around 1915. So, the U.S. population more than tripled during the 20th century, a growth rate of about 1.3% a year, having been about 76 million in 1900.The U.S. population growth rate reflects 13.42 births and 8.15 deaths per 1,000 people. The U.S.population growth rate is 0.77% (2014 est.).Total fertility rate in the U.S. is 2.01 children born/woman (2014 est.). Life expectancy is high: 79.56 years The U.S. has a very diverse population. The ethnical distribution of the U.S. population on the U.S. territory is as follows:
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
LECTURE 5 THE UNITED STATES - NATION OF IMMIGRANTS This lecture tells us that the U.S.A. is a multicultural country; which received the largest number of immigrants in the course of its historic development from the most diverse sources. The lecture defines the uniqueness of American culture and touches upon:
Key Words and Proper Names: abuse, ancestry, average, craftsmanship, cohesive community, disparity, ethnic group, ethnicity,gambling, gaming industry, growth rate, indigenous, inherent rights,life span, longevity, median, net migration rate, syncretism, violence; Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Afro-Americans, First Nations, First Peoples, Hispanics, Indigenous Peoples of America, Original Americans, Pacific Islanders. Of more than 318 million U.S. people reporting their ancestry only 7% identified themselves as Americans. The rest chose one or more broad racial or linguistic groupings (such as African American or Hispanic) or national heritages (German, English, Irish, and Italian that were most common) while defining their origins. Of all nations, the U.S. received the largest number of immigrants over the longest period from the most diverse sources. The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups lists 106 major ethnicgroups in the U.S. today, including Native Americans, Albanians, Afro-Americans, Arabs, Burmese, Chinese, Eskimo or Inuit, Filipinos, Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, Japanese, Jews, Mexicans, Puerto-Ricans and Swiss, etc. In the U.S.A., 31 ancestry groups have more than one million members:
In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.9 million people with some American Indian or Alaskan native ancestry and 1.1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific islands’ ancestry. The population growth of Hispanic or Latino Americans is a major current demographic trend. The U.S. census used to collect information about ancestry, but this question was removed from the 2010, 2012, 2013 censuses. The latest data, from 2000, shows that these were the largest ancestral groups in the U.S.:
Geographically German ancestry tends to dominate in the North and West of the U.S., those with Mexican ancestry are more commonly found in the South West, etc. American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: 1. the colonial period, 2. the mid-19th century, 3. the turn of the 20th, 4. and the post-1965 period. Each epoch brought distinct national groups and races and ethnicities to the U.S. The 17th, 18th and mid-19th centuries saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20th century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 period - mostly from Latin America and Asia. 1. During the 17th century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants arrived as indentured servants. Less than 1 million immigrants crossed the Atlantic between the 17th and 18th centuries. In the early years of the U.S., immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year. 2. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the U.S. The peak year of European immigration was in 1907 when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, about the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the U.S. during this period. Between the 1840’s and the 1890’s, Germans and Irish groups predominated. Beginning with 1896, people from Southern and Eastern Europe, such as Italians, Jews, and Slavic peoples from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were the most numerous groups. 3. Almost 10 million immigrants entered the U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century, close to 6 million in the 1910’s, and about 4 million in the 1920’s. Overall, 500,000 immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 1930’s, 1 million in the 1940’s, and 2.5 million in the 1950’s. Until the 1960’s, most immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe. Legal restrictions blocked substantial immigration from many other regions. Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and WWII were barred from coming to the U.S. Eastern European immigration decreased after the 1920’s. Mexicans, who were allotted a very small quota, came to the U.S. in growing numbers during the 1950’s and early 1960’s. In the early 1930’s, during the Great Depression more people emigrated from the U.S. than immigrated to it. The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily return to Mexico. Thousands were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated. 4. Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and doubled again between 1970 and 1990. Nearly 9 million immigrants came to the U.S. from 1991 to 2000, and more than 13 million between 2001 and 2010 – more than in any other 10-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally. The number of immigrants from Eastern Europe increased between 1990 and 2010. Of those who came legally only 16% are employment based, 10% - are Green lottery winners and 8% -refugees, the rest are family members. About 80% of these immigrants came from Latin America, the Caribbean, or Asia. Since the 1970’s the leading countries of origin for legal immigrants have been Mexico (accounting for more than 30% of all immigrants), China (15%), the Dominican Republic (8%), Puerto Rico (9%), the Philippines (7%), India (5%), South Korea (4%), Vietnam (6%), and Haiti (6%), etc. Of those who came illegally - 57% are people from Mexico, 24%- from other Latin American countries and 9% are from Asia. Since 1986, Congress has passed 7 amnesties for illegal immigrants. Hispanic immigrants were among the first victims of the 2007-2009 credit crunch. But funnily enough, although nearly 4 million Americans lost their jobs in 2009, 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence over the same time period. At the same time about 12 million entered the country illegally. Immigration laws: In 1875, the U.S. passed its first immigration law. This law, dominant in the 19th century, treated immigrants as prospective citizens. As soon as people declared their intention to become citizens, and before the 5-year wait was over, they received multiple low cost benefits, including the right for free homesteads, and in many states the right to vote. The goal was to make America attractive so that large numbers of farmers and skilled craftsmen would settle new lands. In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 aimed at restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians and Slavs, who began to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act) abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations which changed the ethnic make-up of the U.S. In 1970, European-born immigrants accounted for nearly 60% of the total foreign-born population, in 2000, they accounted for only 15%. In 1990, President Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the U.S. by 40%. It emphasizes that family reunification is the main immigration criterion, in addition to employment-related immigration, limiting at the same time the annual number of immigrants to 700,000. Other important immigration documents include: Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act(IIRIRA). They name many categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported or detained. Reasons for Immigration: Why did or why do these people choose America? An old Italian proverb explains everything: “Chi sta bene, non si muove” or “He who is well-off doesn’t move.” What primarily motivated most immigrants to come to America in the first place was not American culture, American politics, or even the ideals of American freedom. In fact, the strongest force driving every great immigration boom in American history—from the colonial times to the present—was an economic force: the U.S. simply offered better opportunities for economic advancement than the immigrants could find in their homelands. The Irish came when the potato crops failed; the Italians came when the soil they farmed was depleted, the Jews came to escape religious persecution. Wars and revolutions brought to the U.S.A. scores of exiles from Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, and Mexico. The history of immigration to the U.S. is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in the American myth, called the American Dream, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to The Song of Myself to Neil Diamond's America to the animated feature An American Tail. As in many myths, the immigrant story has been exaggerated. Immigrants were often poor and uneducated but the succeeding generations took advantage of the opportunities offered. Is immigration good or bad for America? From a simple American’s viewpoint it is not good. As more and more people of different races and cultures enter the U.S., the immigration cannot but become a very intensely debated issue. Some Americans favor tighter immigration restrictions saying that immigrants take jobs away from U.S. citizens, drain social services, and resist learning English. The roots of the ethnic conflicts and misunderstanding are still very strong and deep. Even Benjamin Franklin opposed German immigration, stating that they would not assimilate into America’s culture. Irish, Japanese, Chinese and Jewish immigration was opposed by the Nativist Know Nothingmovement (the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Party—better known as the “Know-Nothings”), which originated in New York. It was caused by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants. Several Italians and Chinese were killed. Systematic bias against Japanese and German immigrants emerged during and after WWII. Irish and Jewish immigrants were popular targets early in the 20th century and most recently immigrants from Latin American countries are often viewed with hostility. Interesting to know: Early in the 20th century, the pseudoscience called eugenics originated in Britain and the U.S.A. It was about a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race and ways how to avoid it. According to eugenics, the inferior humans, i.e., foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded" were breeding very rapidly. The eugenicists and the immigrationists had to put a stop to immigration. Their plan was to identify those who were feeble-minded - blacks, Jews and many foreigners were thought to be largely feeble-minded - and stop them from breeding by isolation in mental institutions or by sterilization. Such views were widely shared. H. G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." G.B. Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind. This movement was racist, aimed to attain a’ marvelous’ goal — the improvement of humankind in the future. 29 American states passed laws allowing sterilization, more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America. Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, as well as Jews and gypsies, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II. Much water has flown under American bridges since those days. But still some Americans have not completely adjusted to the largely non-European immigration, and racism does occur. You know that after September 11, many Muslim immigrants and those perceived to be of Muslim origins have become targets of hate crimes. Racist thinking among and between minority groups often takes place, examples of this are conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants in L.A. in 1992, or between African Americans and Latino immigrants in California prisons. There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by people of Mexican origin, and v.v. There has also been an increase in violence between non-Hispanic Anglo Americans and Latino immigrants, and between African immigrants and African Americans. There are also tensions between native-born Hispanic Americans and newly arrived Latino immigrants. At the same time, no doubt, there are a lot of Americans who support America’s historic commitment to immigration and believe that immigrants keep the nation strong, economically competitive, and culturally rich and stress the economic effects of immigration. |