Immigrants in American Life

Historically, as British colonies and then as the United States, this land has always been a haven for refugees and a beacon for those seeking a new life (Dinnerstein & Reimers, 1988, p. 195). Maldwyn Allen Jones, in her analysis of the impact of immigration on the development of the United States, asserts that the significance of immigration in American history is simultaneously apparent yet difficult to define (Jones, 1992, p. 291). However, it is clear that at each stage of the country's development from the colonial period to the present, immigrants have left a significant mark upon American life (Jones, 1992, p. 291).

Generally, political conservatives have traditionally called for restricted immigration while liberals have called for more open borders. However, there are crossovers, such as conservatives whose commitment to a free-market economy espouse the necessity of open borders and liberals whose commitment to equal opportunity for those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder lead them to argue in favor of restricting the entry of lower-skilled workers who may threaten the availability of such positions.

In 1990, Congress appeared unlikely to contemplate curtailment of immigration levels (Muller, 1993, p. 157). It passed legislation that changed the immigration statutes to increase the number of skilled workers and so-called "independent" immigrants allowed into the country. The new annual ceiling set by the legislation was 7

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riticism, not only from human rights groups but also from liberal political opponents and from the Los Angeles Times (Diamond, 1992, p. 97). Wilson backpedaled and refocused the blame on the federal government, which collects about two-thirds of the taxes immigrant workers pay, but then doesn't redistribute that revenue to state-level social service agencies. By March 1992 Wilson publicly assailed presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan as a "racist," in an apparent effort to shore up his own image as a "moderate" (Diamond, 1992, p. 97). Arguments of Inferior Culture Perhaps the most troubling of arguments in favor of a restriction on immigration center around the questions of American culture and character that are arguably jeopardized by the constant influx of various and differing immigrants. Peter Brimelow, a senior editor at Forbes and himself a naturalized American of British and Canadian background, argues that immigration worked in the past in America only because earlier waves of nativist backlash succeeded in limiting it to a level that could be successfully assimilated into the dominant Anglo-Saxon American culture. Thus, he is arguing the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture as the American culture that must be maintain

Category: History - I