Immigration to the United States

Immigration to the United States is the international movement of individuals who are not natives or do not possess citizenship in order to settle, reside, study or to take-up employment in the United States. It 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.

Prior to 1965, policies such as the national origins formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Western Europe. Exclusion laws enacted as early as the 1880s generally prohibited or severely restricted immigration from Asia, and quota laws enacted in the 1920s curtailed Eastern European immigration. The civil rights movement of the 1960s led to the replacement of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits. Since then, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled.

As for economic effects, research suggests that immigration to the United States is beneficial to the US economy. Research, with few exceptions, finds that immigration on average has positive economic effects on the native population, but is mixed as to whether low-skilled immigration adversely affects low-skilled natives. Research finds that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or that it reduces the crime rate in the United States. Research shows that the United States excels at assimilating first- and second-generation immigrants relative to many other Western countries.

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States. During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-19th century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20th-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.

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