Immigration to America: Understanding Immigration Helps Explain American People

If we face the fact that the United States has welcomed more immigrants than any other country in the world, then the story of American people is the story of immigrants. Immigration is in fact one of the most common American cultural and social legacies and therefore understanding immigration also helps to explain some of the American people.

Migration do America began more than 20,000 years ago, when groups of wandering hunter, now considered to be the only "native" Americans, following herds of game from Asia to America, finally settled throughout North and South America. In 1607, Great Britain founded its first permanent North American settlement: Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. Afterwards, communities of Dutch, Swedish and German settlers were also established along North America's Atlantic coastline.

Why did these early European colonists risk a dangerous ocean journey and great hardship to settle in an unknown land? They were brought by the same desires that still bring immigrants today. The first European settlers were seeking wealth, land and freedom - a better life. It takes a lot of courage to leave behind everything that is familiar and come to a new country. That's why immigrants are characterized for their willingness to take risks and try new things. This ability to strike out for the unknown takes an independence optimism and above all a tolerant attitude towards difference and otherness. On the other hand, immigrants are also people who are quick to learn everything from a new language to new social customs, new ways to make a living and are open to new experiences since nowadays, as in the past. Immigrants also believe in the dream. They believe that by working hard and obeying the laws, they can have a better life.

However, not all things have been wine and roses in the history of migrations. Among the flood of immigrants, one group of people came unwillingly and by force.

These were the Africans who were brought to the colonies as slaves between 1619 and 1808, 21 years after adopting of the Constitution of the United States in 1787, although slavery itself was not eliminated until after the Civil War (1861-1865).

Between 1840 and 1860, the United States received its largest wave of immigrants to date. In Europe, famine, poor crops, rising populations and political unrest caused an estimated five million people to leave their homelands each year. Between 1845 and 1850, the Irish people faced famine. The potato crop, upon which the Irish depend for subsistence, suffered blight for five years, and about 750,000 Irish starved to death. Many of those who survived left Ireland for United States.

After the World War II, the United States began accepting refugees as a special group. Refugees are people who flee their homeland because they fear persecution. The first refugees to the United States were Europeans who were uprooted by the horrors of war. In 1984, the Unite States accepted 83.899 refugees who fled their homelands because their policies, race, religion or nationality. In addition, the United States gave asylum to 8,228 asylees, foreign citizens who claim refugee status while inside the United States or at a port of entry.

However, not all immigrants enter the USA legally. There are from two million to ten million people living in the country illegally. Native-born Americans and legal newcomers worry about the illegal immigrants. Many believe that illegal immigrants take jobs from the people of the United States, especially from social and racial minorities as well as young people. Moreover they can place a heavy burden on tax-supported social services.