Immigration

Immigration Then And Now, Part I

By J. Wesley ⋅ March 29, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Opponents of genuine immigration reform often point to the past to support their argument. America has absorbed waves of immigrants in the past, they say, and the current influx is simply more of the same.

Um, no. There are similarities between contemporary immigration and the 1880-1924 “New Immigration,” but they’re outweighed by the differences. There is a fundamental difference between immigration then and now. We’re going to examine these differences individually in upcoming posts. Before we compare and contrast the two, however, we’ll look today at some of the similarities.

Some of the similarities include: 1. A high return rate among immigrants; 2. Low-skilled workers; 3. Fears of cultural decay; 4. Ongoing transnational ties between ethnic group and home country; 5. Chain migration.

Nations all have myths about themselves, and ours involves immigrants settling in America in search of freedom and opportunity. People often point to the high return rate of Latin American immigrants as a fundamental difference between historic immigration and today. Reality is, in 1880-1924, only the Jews and Irish actually came to settle — the rest were mainly hoping to save enough to buy a farm back home. The Italians are a classic example. Many of them were “birds of passage” who would literally travel to South America for the growing season, return to Italy, and then come to North America for its growing season. Some ethnic groups had permanent return rates of as high as 50%.

(*Snipped* out of sympathy for your attention span. Check Part II for more similarities!)