there were at least six to seven million out-of-status immigrants in the United States at that time, and maybe as many as ten to twelve million. On January 17, 1972, US News & World Report warned its readers: “Never have so many aliens swarmed illegally into [the United States]—millions, moving across the nation. For government, they are becoming a costly headache.” According to a December 29, 1974, New York Times article on the “silent invasion,” one million undocumented immigrants lived in the New York metropolitan area at that time. On June 23, 1976, a New Orleans Times-Picayune headline announced: “Illegal Aliens: They Invade U.S. 8.2 Million Strong.” On August 26, 1982, the Saginaw News in Michigan reported: “As many as fifteen million are already here.”
In fact, a study by Census Bureau demographers concluded in 1980 that the number of undocumented immigrants that year was “almost certainly below six million, and may be substantially less, possibly only 3.5 to five million.”28 The Census Bureau’s estimate may have been too high, in fact: after Congress passed a broad amnesty for the undocumented in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), only three million people applied to legalize their status.29
Public perceptions of immigration continue to be highly exaggerated, according to Transatlantic Trends, an annual survey conducted in fifteen nations by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Compagnia di San Paolo, and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. For the 2011 survey the researchers asked people in the United States and ten European nations to estimate the proportion of immigrants in their countries. Respondents in the eleven countries tended to overestimate the immigrant population. On average, U.S. respondents thought that the foreign born made up 37.8 percent of the U.S. population—nearly three times the actual number.30
2. Why Do People Immigrate?
PEOPLE HAVE MANY REASONS FOR migrating, but major waves of migration are generally triggered by “push factors” such as economic or political problems in migrants’ home countries, and “pull factors” such as better opportunities in their new country. When we analyze the push factors, we often find that the countries where migrants arrive—the United States, for example—played a major role in creating the problems that caused people to leave their countries in the first place.
Our current immigration and trade policies do nothing to stem these push factors, and often make the situation worse. Why not focus on solving the problems that displace people from their homes, instead of making it harder for people to get here, and punishing them when they arrive?
What are the “root causes” of migration?
Some people are nomadic and don’t settle down in one place for any length of time. But most people prefer to remain in a relatively stable community in a particular area. Sometimes people are uprooted from their homes by violence, or by economic, social, or political pressures. This “forced displacement” can push people from rural areas into cities or refugee camps, from one region to another, or across borders into other countries.
The series of events in Ireland known as the “Great Famine” triggered the migration of some 1.7 million Irish people to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. People fleeing China to escape the violence and economic turbulence that accompanied the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) were a large part of the wave of immigration that brought more than 105,000 Asians here by 1880. Many of the two million Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States from 1881 to 1914 came because of sporadic anti-Semitic pogroms as well as discriminatory policies in Tsarist Russia that limited opportunities for a decent life.1
Millions of people continue to migrate because their communities are devastated by poverty and violence. For others, it may be possible to survive in their communities, but by migrating they can get jobs that pay more, allowing them to seek a better future for their families. Many migrants hope to return home as soon as economic and political conditions in their homeland improve. Often these hopes are dashed, as conditions only worsen, and family members left behind increasingly depend on their support for basic needs.
Any of us might make the decision to migrate if we faced similar conditions. “I’m a retired cop,” said a Long Island man during a public meeting shown in the 2003 award-winning documentary Farmingville. “I was in the Marine Corps. I have a lot of respect for the laws of the United States. If I lived in Mexico and I knew I had some advantage here to help my family back in Mexico, I’d be wading across the Rio Grande myself. I’d be on a raft floating from Haiti, I’d be crossing the border from Yugoslavia into Germany. I’d be going into England. I’d do anything I can to help my family.”2
Why do people come to the United States?
Many people consider the United States to be a land of freedom and opportunity, and believe that people from around the world are eager to come here. For most people who are driven to migrate, a combination of three main factors influences where they choose to go: economic opportunities in the destination country; the presence of family or friends there who can help them get a job and a place to live; and the distance, difficulty, and expense of the trip.
The United States has a large economy with a range of job opportunities, and material goods tend to be cheaper here relative to income levels than in other countries. Our history as an immigrant nation means many foreign citizens have family or friends—or even entire communities from their homeland—already living here, and can help the newcomers adjust.
Some immigrants are drawn to the United States because it promises certain freedoms, like freedom of speech and religion. And despite persistent economic and social inequalities and racial discrimination in the United States, immigrants sometimes feel they can leave behind the class and caste prejudices of their home countries and make a fresh start here.
The United States is not the only country with high rates of immigration. As of 2013 more than 230 million people were living outside the country where they were born, about 3.2 percent of the world’s population. The approximately 44 million immigrants in the United States accounted for about one-fifth of these people.3
Immigrants generally settle in economically stronger, more stable countries that are comparatively easy to reach. Migrants from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia tend to settle in the United States; migrants from Africa and West Asia often prefer to go to Europe. Sometimes these patterns reflect historical relationships of colonialism that leave behind cultural, political, or linguistic links: for example, when North Africans go to France, or people from the Indian subcontinent move to Britain.4
Is it our fault other countries have so many problems?
In recent decades, immigrants to the United States have come largely from places where the U.S. government carried out major military, political, or economic interventions in the past. Of the top ten countries of origin for the million people who became permanent legal residents in 2012, seven experienced major U.S. interventions: Mexico, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Vietnam, Haiti, and South Korea.5
Claiming a need to stop influence by the Soviet Union, in the 1980s the U.S. government funded and promoted wars against leftist revolutionary movements in Central America. Some 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed: 200,000 in Guatemala, 70,000 in El Salvador, and 30,000 in Nicaragua. This represented about one death for every hundred inhabitants in the region.6 The United States has spent billions on a similar armed strategy in Colombia, where some 220,000 people have been killed and millions displaced over the last half-century as government forces tried to crush leftist insurgencies.7 The U.S. government has also trained Latin American military officers who have been accused of abducting, torturing, and murdering civilians throughout the hemisphere.8
