Nation of Nations

Fifty percent of all Americans can trace back to at least one of their ancestors walking through the Great Hall on Ellis Island as an immigrant coming to America. Within the sixty-two years Ellis Island was in service, twelve million immigrants, mostly from Europe, passed through. America would not have thrived without the million and millions of people traveling from their home nations to settle in America. From the first explorers, to the fur traders, the lumberjacks, farmers, and even the slaves, America needed able bodied men and women to build this nation. Once the Industrial Age took hold of America, there was no going back. The population exploded; every year between the mid – nineteenth century, until WWI, millions from Europe entered this nation for the first time.

There was a lull in immigration during the World Wars and Great Depression. In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at lowering the overall inflow and making it proportionate to the ethnicities of the people already in the U.S. Then, 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 United States. While European-born immigrants accounted for nearly sixty percent of the total foreign-born population in 1970, they accounted for only fifteen percent in 2000. Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and doubled again between 1970 and 1990. In 1990, President Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the United States by forty percent. Nearly eight million immigrants came to the United States from 2000 to 2005 – more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally. Since 1986, Congress has passed seven amnesties for illegal immigrants.

Much has changes since 1620, and there are many reasons for the influx and reductions in immigration numbers. At what stage of our nation’s history did the people coming here become immigrants instead of settlers? What monumental change initiated the realization that although this was the “Land of the Free”, there would have to be a toll? This is very evident today as our federal and state governments’ legislate, reform, debate and lobby for or against immigrants. Is there no more room for more? Do they not have anything to offer? What about the welfare costs, and the costs of laborers? We look to explore further into this great debate, for we are all part of it. We may all be American citizens, but at one time someone from our families traveled from a far away nation to create a better life for themselves. Are we robbing others of the same benefit? We look to explore this question and this great debate further, because it affects us all.