Essay on "Immigration in America: 19th Century to Present"

Quoted Instructions for "Immigration in America: 19th Century to Present" Assignment:

Instructions for Order:

(3) - Separate essay questions needed 650-750 words each. Cite references at the end of each question.

1) Identify the major turning points in American immigrant history from the 19th century to the present. When did major changes in the number of immigrants from a particular continent occur? Then, looking at post-1965 immigration, discuss the patterns of settlement of different broad groups of immigrants. Are settlement patterns, as that described in Gjerde for Monterey Park, California, of particular concern? If so, why? If not, why not? Illustrate your argument with historical precedents and statistical data, such as from the 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics and documents found in Gjerde.

2) Takaki stresses that the change affecting American society now is momentous*****the passing of an America in which being White was the norm and non-Whites were minorities, to one where Whites are only one of several major ethnic/racial groups. Will such a division be enduring? What impact will such a development have on American culture? Discuss the potential future of American society in the light of long-term trends in American history.

3) Compare the arguments used to restrict immigration today to those made in the 1920*****s and 1850*****s. What do these arguments express about American anxieties and values? To what extent are such fears rooted in the economy and to what extent are they cultural?

Text Books required for answering essay questions.

Diner, H. (1983). Erin*****'s daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Gjerde, J. (Ed.). (1998). Major Problems in American and Ethnic History: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Takaki, R. (2008). A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Rev. ed.) Boston: Little Brown Company.

Ok to also add and use additional Internet Sources, just need to site them.

HELPFUL information

This is an Overview of what area*****s and reading you can locate information based on what Module covered what topic.

Module 5- The Jewish Experience and The Elusive Prize: Latinos and Blacks Between the World Wars

During this module, you are expected to:

Read Takaki Chapter 11, *****The Exodus from Russia,***** Chapter 12 *****El Norte: Up from Mexico,***** and Chapter 13 *****To the Land of Hope.*****

Read Gjerde *****The Yiddish Press in New York City***** (pages 210-211), Chapter 8, *****Women and Children Immigrants Amid a Patriarchal World***** (page 249), and *****Changes Between Daughters and Parents of the Mexican American Family***** (pages 262-271).

Work on Project 2

Participate in all discussions

Additional reading:

U.S. Bureau of the Census (1999). Race and Hispanic Origin of the Foreign-Born Population: 1850 to 1990. February 21, 2008

U.S. Bureau of the Census (2002). Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. Retrieved June 17, 2010 http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html or http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.pdf

During this module, you will learn about the experiences of specific groups of European immigrants who came to the United States in search of political freedom and freedom from discrimination. You will explore the motives of Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in wanting to adopt an American identity as quickly as possible. You will also learn more about how Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe negotiated their desire to maintain their religion and essential parts of their culture with efforts to assimilate into mainstream American life. Other topics covered in this module are the role played by Jewish immigrants in the nation*****'s industrial economy in the first decades of the 20th century, the role they played in the union movement in the garment and clothing industry during that period as well as the reaction of native-born Americans to the presence of Jews.

Besides achieving a better understanding of Jewish immigration, you will also examine the forces that drove Mexicans to immigrate to the U.S and Blacks to move from the South to the North. As background to these migrations, you will learn about the growth of racial laws in the post-Civil War Era and early 20th century and how they affected African-Americans and Hispanics. Additional topics include the concept of the *****"Promised Land*****" for Chicanos and Blacks in the 20th century, how Chicanos settled in the Promised Land of El Norte and Blacks settled in large urban areas. Finally we will cover how Black migration to the North created a stronger sense of self reliance and pride in the individual and the race, how the Great Depression of the 1930*****'s had a greater impact on the lives of Mexicans and Blacks than on Whites and how Mexican immigrant families were affected by immigration.

Instructors Note:

The massive emigration of Europeans that had begun in the 1830s continued until World War I. Millions of Europeans were fleeing the disruptions caused by the modernizing European economy, which left many small farmers and craftsmen no hope for economic survival. Others fled political strife. The American government welcomed this immigration as it helped populate and develop the United States far more quickly than had otherwise been possible. Being White, these immigrants were seen by old stock Americans as prospective fellow citizens. Yet, because since the 1830s the bulk of these immigrants were not English-speaking Protestants, a nation that very consciously defined its culture as English and Protestant was confronted with the challenge of how to incorporate these newcomers. In addition, the immigrants were confronted with the challenge of how much they should adapt to the new society without betraying their innermost values.

Among these immigrants were Eastern European Jews, mainly from Czarist Russia, which included, at that time, most of Poland. The pogroms of 1881-82 started a mass flight out of Russia to the U.S, followed by the May Laws of the 1890s, and the pogroms of 1903-05. The 1899 pogrom in Jassy in Romania led to additional flight to the U.S. Poverty in the Polish- speaking Galician region of Austro-Hungary also led to immigration to the US, and political instability led to emigration from the southern Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. About 2 million Jews came from the Russian Empire, 500,000 from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 150,000 from Romania, and 75-150,000 from the southern Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in the period of 1870-1924. A few Jews had lived in North America since Colonial times. Then in 1815-1870 200,000-250,000 Jews came to US, primarily from Central Europe and created a Jewish community prior to the arrival of the Jews from Eastern Europe. The first congregations in every upstate New York community-- Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo*****trace their origins to this migration. Subsequently in 1880s the United States experienced a large immigration when millions of Russian/Polish Jews fled government-orchestrated racist violence and discriminatory laws mentioned previously.

Eastern European Jews settled mainly in cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest. These American cities were already ethnically diverse when the Eastern European Jews arrived. In New York City, in 1900, three-quarters of the inhabitants were immigrants or children of immigrants, and the remaining quarter were often grandchildren of immigrants. As a consequence, rural Americans of that era often saw their own cities as alien in culture and language as immigrants tried to retain many of the memories, customs, traditions and much of the language of their homeland. Immigrant communities in the United States were also often served by newspapers in the language of the community. A middle-size city might have, besides three or four daily English language newspapers, several more weeklies, and sometimes dailies, published in German, Italian, Yiddish (a Germanic language spoken by Eastern European Jews), Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages spoken in the local immigrant communities. In addition, there would be also ethnic fraternal, cultural, educational and religious organizations designed to provide certain services for immigrants not available from local government. Immigrants bought familiar foods from ethnic stores, which gave the chance of entrepreneurship to some of their own. Many foods, initially seen by old stock Americans as alien and soon discarded by immigrants in favor of *****American food***** once they assimilated, ended up, ironically, as part of American culture. Immigrants also supported theaters where they could enjoy familiar forms of entertainment in their own languages. New York City had an especially vibrant Yiddish theater that gave a start to many entertainers who would go on to fame on Broadway and in Hollywood. In these vibrant American cities, New York and Hollywood, Jewish immigrants were only one ethnic group among many and, thus, not as conspicuous as they had been in Russia.

Religion itself was rarely given up*****most Catholic and Jewish immigrants remained Catholic and Jewish despite encountering, at times, discrimination against their faiths*****yet some religious practices, culturally at odds with American practices and not strictly necessary for worship, were modified or phased out over time. But other ethnic institutions faded as the children and grandchildren of immigrants moved into the mainstream of American life. They preferred to read the local newspapers reporting on events close to them, rather than their parents***** foreign language newspapers reporting on events in places they had never seen and would probably never see, and editorials fighting over issues that meant little to them. Living in the United States also changed the most intimate relationships within the family. In Europe, families had to cooperate closely to survive economically, usually under the leadership of the father, no matter how much they actually liked each other. In urban American society, individuals, especially women, had more economic and educational options, which changed family dynamics in immigrant families. This also happened to Jewish immigrants as they assimilated into American society.

The migration of Blacks from the South to the North represents one of the greatest internal mass movements in the nation*****s history. Starting with the First World War, Southern Blacks left the states of the old Confederacy and moved north in search of work in the war production plants. Labor shortages forced employers to go against prevailing conventions and add Black workers to their White workforce. Blacks, like others who left the farm for the factory, responded enthusiastically to an opportunity to earn high wages while escaping from the grinding poverty of share-cropping and plantation laboring. However, the influx of the newcomers often intensified tensions between them and Whites. The result was often bloody race riots that left hundreds of Whites and Blacks dead and millions of dollars in property damage, such as in Chicago in 1919.

In the West, the movement of Mexicans to the United States intensified after the late 19th-century in response to the demands by western railroads for unskilled laborers in place of Chinese laborers who were now excluded from entering the United States. The rapid growth of large- scale agriculture California and the Southwest created further demand for Mexican farm workers and laborers. Political chaos and civil wars in Mexico sent hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to the West and Southwest to work in low-paying and unskilled jobs on farms. In many Western states, they were not counted as Whites and were subjected to segregation. Systematic discrimination insured a docile Chicano workforce that could be shipped back to Mexico in lean times, and actually, at times, were deported even when they were American citizens. Settling in barrios, their families were subjected to the pressures of American consumerism and individualism, as well as changing gender roles, just as European immigrants were. Unlike the European immigrants, they also lived under the constraints of social and legal racial discrimination, as did the descendants of the Mexican population who had become American citizens after the annexation of the Southwest by the United States.

***Disc Question 1 Breaking from the Past:

Given the example of Jewish immigrants, was it necessary for European immigrant groups to make a complete break with the past in order to get ahead in American society? Why or why not? Was the same true for Germans in Stearns County? Support your answer with examples from the readings.

*** Disc Question 2- Living my Own Life-

Did immigration make the lives of women in Mexican families easier or harder in the long run? Would an Irish immigrant woman agree? Why or why not? Use examples from the readings to defend your response.

HIS330: Immigrant and Ethnic History

Module 6: The New Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and Bolting the Door: The End of Free European Immigration

Assignments

During this module, you are expected to:

Read Gjerde Chapter 6 *****Emigration and Return***** (pages 174-181, 185-194), Chapter 7 *****Industrial Immigrants in the City,***** and Chapter 8 *****Women and Children Immigrants Amid a Patriarchal World,***** Chapter 9 *****Racialization of Immigrants***** (esp. pages 281-284, 291-304), and Chapter 10 *****Responses to Immigrants: Exclusion, Restriction and Americanization.*****

Additional Reading: These readings are optional. They will provide additional material for the class discussions, quizzes and your research essay:

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Ellis Island Immigrant Museum

America in the 1920s, from the E Pluribus Unum Project

Society for German American Studies, at the Indiana University*****Purdue University at Indianapolis, with many full*****text documents about German immigration

Digital History, which includes a section *****Ethnic Voices*****

H*****Net Ethnic and Immigration History

HIS 330 Week 6

Be certain to base your answers on the documents provided by Gjerde, and from the additional sources.

1. Were the changes in family roles (as described in Gjerde, Chapter 8, and Chapter 7, p. 216*****218) that happened in immigrant families in the new American urban environment on the whole positive or negative for the affected individuals, and for American society at large?

2. Why did so many European immigrants return to their home countries after living in the United States, as noted by Gjerde in Chapter 6? Compare their reasons, and discuss them.

Discussion Question 1:

Why did the *****Americanization***** movement happen during the Progressive Era? Was it necessary? Why or why not? Are there any implications for immigration today? Use examples from the readings to support your stance.

Gjerde, J. (Ed.). (1998). Major Problems in American and Ethnic History: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Takaki, R. (2008). A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Rev. ed.) Boston: Little Brown Company.

Post 1: Efforts to streamline a newly Industrialized U.S. made *****Americanization*****, a zealous form of patriotism, a useful resource for workplace efficiency. I first thought of *****Americanization***** as a logical evolution of the *****melting pot***** concept, however as I continued to read Chapter 10,

and learn about Henry Ford*****s Sociological & Educational Departments Gjerde, 1998, p 323-332) *****Americanization***** took on another dimension for me.

Americanization as extreme Patriotism still exists. Much like Governor Harding*****'s 1917 legislation to proclaim English as THE official language (Gjerde, 1998, p 321-322), schools still follow strict curriculums wherein teaching of American History dominates over multi-cultural education.

Module 6: The New Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and Bolting the Door: The End of Free European Immigration

Overview-

During this module, you will learn about immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This module includes the *****"New Immigration*****" from Southern and Eastern Europe from the late 19th century to the 1920s and Asian immigrants and how they fared in American society compared to earlier arrivals. You will study the factors leading to these immigrants***** decision to emigrate, and sometimes to return home, their adjustment to American society and the impact of the new environment on immigrant families. You will also examine the experiences of various groups of Europeans, Asians and Latinos in American society from the late 19th century to the 1920s and how American society reacted to major changes in patterns of immigration. You will use primary documents and articles to explore political and legislative reactions to immigration and ethnic pluralism in American society from the 1880s to the 1920s. These documents and the arguments put forth will help you understand the development of racial laws between the late 19th century and the 1920s and how they affected African-Americans and other racial groups. You will also learn about how Anglo-Americans viewed immigrants during that time, the links between stricter racial policies and forcible assimilation of immigrants and the factors behind the *****"national origins*****" immigration quota system established in 1921 and 1924.

Outcomes:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

Compare and contrast the motives and experiences of various ethnic and immigrant groups in the U. S. and how they have changed over time. (intermediate level expectation for this outcome in this module)

Illustrate how gender roles affected the experiences of female immigrants. (intermediate level expectation for this outcome in this module)

Additional Reading: These readings are optional. They will provide additional material for the class discussions, quizzes and your research essay:

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Ellis Island Immigrant Museum

America in the 1920s, from the E Pluribus Unum Project

Society for German American Studies, at the Indiana University*****Purdue University at Indianapolis, with many full*****text documents about German immigration

Digital History, which includes a section *****Ethnic Voices*****

H*****Net Ethnic and Immigration History

Instructors Note-

From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to World War I, American society changed dramatically, from a rural, decentralized society with some industries to an urbanized and industrialized world power. During that half-century, immigration continued at very high levels. Though British, Irish, Germans and Scandinavians still immigrated, the vast majority of immigrants came now from Southern Europe, mostly Italy and Eastern Europe (notably Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Jews). This was called the *****"New Immigration*****" to contrast it with the pre-Civil War immigration. Some immigrants came from Mexico and Asia, but not in large numbers. Though most of the immigrants were, as before, mainly displaced peasants, few of the members of this immigration wave became farmers. Instead, they formed the bulk of the new urban industrial American working class.

Besides the usual tensions of adapting to a new society, long days in dreary and regimented factories were a shock for peasant immigrants, as was life in a cramped slum. Urban housing was expensive, and wages low. Therefore, working class areas were slums, whether ethnic or not. To survive in this new, bewildering environment, immigrants lived together in ethnic enclaves supporting a variety of ethnic stores, newspapers, churches, clubs, and relief associations. Immigrants were approached by urban political machines, often led by Irish-American politicians who promised material support in exchange for political support. All these institutions eased accommodation and assimilation to American life, in part by preserving the immigrants***** self respect. But life in the ethnic enclave also produced a deep heartbreak for many immigrant families, as their US*****born or US*****educated children rejected their entire heritage. Some immigrants did not remain in the United States, but chose to return home.

The Nativist movement of the 1850s had been short-lived. But after the 1890s, the cultural, social and political impact of mass-immigration on American society became an overarching issue for the politically dominant Anglo-American elites for several decades. They now blamed most of the country*****'s problems on immigration.

Immigrants from Asia and Latin America were even more marginalized than before. Most Chinese immigration had been specifically banned since 1880, and in 1924, Asian immigration was banned altogether.

In addition, Black Americans continued to be marginalized. *****Jim Crow laws***** forbidding social interaction between races, from dining to marriage, were adopted by 30 states. They were not only found in the former Confederate states. Races were defined more strictly now, and racial boundaries were enforced more brutally, including lynching of African Americans, and physical discrimination against Hispanics and Asians.

American culture was now defined more strictly than before as being English-derived, and immigrants were pressured to give up more quickly the entirety of their cultures and become simply *****white***** working class. But Anglo-Saxon elites also increasingly *****racialized***** (as Gjerde called it) European immigrants, by making distinctions between immigrants from Northern and Western Europe on the one hand, and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Some *****Americanizers***** like Theodore Roosevelt still believed, as the founding fathers had done, that all Europeans could, in principle, become good Americans. But more and more Anglo*****Americans doubted that. They were influenced by the new science of genetics. As Madison Grant argued in the bestseller The Passing of a Great Race (1916), only *****Nordics***** had the right genetic basis to acquire an American character. Grant and others demanded to end immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. In the 1921 National Origins Quota Act, Congress limited immigration and set annual immigration quotas by national origins to 3% of those born in a given European country according to the Census of 1910. But, this would still allow the immigration of many Southern and Eastern Europeans. And, so, in 1924, in the National Origins Act, Congress took the Census of 1890 as basis for the quotas, virtually ending immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe in favor of immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia. The quota system would remain in place until 1965. ability to buy land, marry Whites, attend public schools, and be part of many

Module 7: Charting Changes in the Origins of American Population over Time and Rainbow Society: Racial Integration after World War II

HIS 330 Week 7

During this module, you are expected to:

Use information from the United States 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics to support the points you make in your assignments for this module. 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (You may need to hit the *****"refresh*****" button when you first open this link.)

Review Takaki Chapter 6 on Irish, Chapter 8 on Chinese, Chapter 10 on Japanese, and Chapter 12 on Mexican immigrations

Read Takaki Chapter 14 *****World War II: American Dilemmas,***** Chapter 15 *****"Out of the War: Clamors for Change,*****" Chapter 16 *****"Again, the Tempest-Tost*****" and Chapter 17 *****"We will all be Minorities.*****

Read Gjerde Chapter 13 *****Immigration and Ethnicity in the Post-Industrial World, 1965 to the Present***** and all of Chapter 14 including the article by Elliott Barkan, *****The Recent Era of Immigration to the United States, 1965 to the Present***** (pages 465-474)

Submit Project 2

Participate in all discussions

Additional Reading:

Loving v. State of Virginia, the United States Supreme Court decision in 1967 that ended state laws banning interracial marriages

Module 7: Charting Changes in the Origins of American Population over Time and Rainbow Society: Racial Integration after World War II

Overview

In this module, you will learn about the changing patterns of immigration to the United States from the early 19th century to the present as reflected in statistical census data, the changes in the numbers of immigrants coming to the United States from different regions during the period covered in this course, key changes in immigration figures during the period from 1820 to the present, historical causes for shifts in patterns of immigration during specific time periods and immigration rates among selected groups over long periods of time and projections of those rates into the foreseeable future. You will also better understand how racial stereotyping led to the mass internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942, how the need to win World War II and the Cold War led to the repeal of all forms of legal racial segregation and discrimination in the United States as well as the sources of new immigration in the decades after 1965 and whether the problems those groups face are similar to the problems faced by groups that arrived before.

Outcomes

During this module, you will be able to:

Compare and contrast the motives and experiences of various ethnic and immigrant groups in the U. S. and how they have changed over time. (advanced level expectation for this outcome in this module)

Describe how changes in social attitudes and collective U.S. culture have affected the legal and social status of various ethnic, immigrant and native peoples from the first European settlers until the present. (advanced level expectation for this outcome in this module)

Instructor*****'s Note

Your work with the 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics in this module gives you practice working with statistical data to spot certain trends. The data will give you a better understanding of the extent of and changes in immigration patterns over time.

The statistical data also helps you to develop inferences. Inferences are assumptions that you can build from your examination of the numbers. You need to become familiar with the definitions used to define the various categories of foreigners in the United States: Legal immigrants; refugees and asylees (asylum-seekers); non-immigrants; and illegal aliens, which are described on p. 1, as well as with the regions of the world as defined by homeland security on p. 2 of the introduction to the 2008 booklet.

Here*****s an example of how to use the tables:

Go to Table 8 where you see legal immigration figures for 2008 broken down by Age, Marital Status and Occupation. Using the breakdown by age, find the age groups in which there were largest number of immigrants in 2008. Now look at Marital Status-were the majority of the immigrants in 2008 married or single? You*****ll see that the majority of immigrants coming to the United States in 2008 were between the ages of 15 to 44. The majority of those immigrants were also married.

You would easily conclude that the United States attracts immigrants who are in their peak earning years (15-44), and being married, they are more likely to stay and set down their roots. You would also want to look at immigration figures from previous years to see if the nation had always attracted the young and those who would probably stay.

You could also look at breakdown by gender to see that more women than men came to the United States in 2008. You could explore using other data for that year to see if they came by themselves or as part of family groups. You could also go back to information for previous years to see if this signals a larger trend.

When World War II broke out, racial segregation was the law in a majority of states of the Union. The United States Supreme Court and the Federal government did not challenge these laws, because the accepted jurisprudence of the era delegated the protection of civil rights to the states. Also, because segregation was so widely supported by the public, politicians were loath to attack it. Civil rights activists had little hope of seeing the abolition of racial segregation in the foreseeable future. Yet, a mere few years later, the federal government and the Supreme Court began to attack segregation with great determination. And, twenty years after the end of World War II, the last segregation laws had been declared unconstitutional, with the federal government enforcing the rulings of the Supreme Court.

During World War II, at first the old ways of racial stereotyping seemed alive and well. Without any substantive proof, all Japanese living on the West Coast of the mainland United States, about 110,000 people who formed a small and scattered part of the population and consisted mainly of farmers and shopkeepers, were summarily interned in camps, as were their American-born children. They lost their life*****s work, without any compensation. The circumstances of their internment show that this was caused by local prejudice and racial stereotyping, made worse by the pressure of war and the attitude of local elites. In Hawaii, where the Japanese population was substantial, and disloyalty could have created severe problems for the United States war effort, the local white elite, despite anger at the sudden Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, refused collective punishment on the mere basis of race, and was fully justified by the patriotic support of Japanese immigrants and their children.

Yet, the pressures of winning the war also began to erode the old order. The inconsistency of fighting racial supremacy as promoted by the Third Reich, while non-White Americans were discriminated against by law, forced major changes in American attitudes. After China became an ally of the United States against Japan, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. To rally African-American support, the government enforced non-discriminating hiring and payment policies in war production plants and began to train African-Americans for combat duty. However, the bulk of segregationist laws remained, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt remained unwilling to move against what was traditionally viewed as within the legislative rights of individual states to avoid alienating voters. After World War II ended, the modest wartime push for more equality could have stalled, or even backtracked.

By the beginning Cold War, the global struggle to contain Communism forced the country*****s leaders to continue racial reform because the position of the United States, as leader of the free world, was undermined when newly independent countries in Asia and Africa reacted strongly against the continuing legal discrimination against their countrymen and/or their descendants. At the same time, proud of their contributions to victory in World War II, more African-Americans and other groups began to actively pressure for an end to segregation. Northern public opinion also began to turn from indifference to opposition to continuing racial segregation. Prodded by national security concerns and by courageous activists, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal government finally acted decisively against segregation. Schools were integrated, barriers to mixing in public transportation and other places fell, and voting rights were enforced. In 1967, the last racial laws, those banning intermarriage, were declared unconstitutional.

These changes came during a time of great social ferment. Other groups in American society, women, Whites of non-English ancestry, and many others not included in the mainstream national narrative, began to demand more consideration, ranging from the inclusion of their ancestors***** experiences in the history taught to their children to laws and policies creating genuine equality of opportunity.

Changes in attitude towards immigration and immigrant groups also changed immigration law. In 1952 and 1965, immigration was broadly opened to non-Whites. Since the 1970s, a majority of immigrants, both legal and illegal, have come from Latin America, Asia and Africa, while relatively few Europeans move to the United States. Sometimes, these immigrants encounter prejudice because they look different and have different customs than the earlier arrivals. Though circumstances change, the old questions that are fundamental to American history remain: Who should be allowed to join the United States, and what do such newcomers have to do to be considered part of American society? Takaki asks that we build upon our understanding of the experiences of the Native Americans, African-Americans, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Chicanos and other peoples to better understand the challenges faced in our time by immigrants coming from places and traditions far removed from our own. Our understanding of American reactions to perceived threats in the past will also help us understand how perceived threats of the future, such as terrorism and uncertainty about homeland security, can influence national immigration policy and the treatment of minorities. Our understanding of the factors and forces that shaped immigration policy in the past may help us to shape a policy that keeps our doors open and yet secure.

Takaki stresses that a major difference from European immigration in the past is that most newcomers and their descendants cannot simply physically blend into traditional American society. American society, still defined as White in many ways, must come to grips with the fact that, in the 21st century, Whites will be only one racial group among several. To ensure that all Americans feel appreciated and at home, American society must accept the fact that non-Whites will express their *****"Americanness*****" in different ways. Such an enduring multiculturalism would, in Takaki*****s view, unite rather than disunite America. ***** Hollinger, in Gjerde, Chapter 13, agrees with him for the short term, but worries that the means currently used to ensure equal treatment among formerly segregated groups may begin to create problems too. Today, racial categories still matter a great deal in the terms of the way most Americans define a person, and the opportunities offered a person in life. By law, four racial categories and one ethnic category have been created to monitor the progress of formerly segregated groups as compared to Whites. Many governmental institutions require data based on whether one belongs to one of these groups. Hollinger suggests this division of the American population into five racial/ethnic groups has become an overly rigid *****iron pentagon.***** The melting pot keeps churning. In the same way as intermarriage among White ethnic groups has erased group differences that, in their day, were seen as enduring for a very long time, the increasing rate of intermarriage between racial groups will soon make current racial and ethnic definitions much less relevant in how people define themselves.



*****