When the 46,000 legal aliens and uncounted illegals, who arrived in New York City last year (1993), received temporary housing, education, day care, and health care from hundreds of service organizations and settlement houses, it was a colossal and dramatic change from what earlier immigrants had experienced. Since the beginning of this century, wretched and contemptible tragedies, inspiring and justifiable successes and reproachable myths have been a few of the by products of immigration. What, irrefutably, has soared above all these consequences, however, is the fact that immigration has been an American windfall, and that its encouragement and support are true expressions of the American way.
An immigrant is generally defined as a foreign born person who intends to live permanently in the United States. (Bogen 32). For purposes of clarification, some scholars have divided immigration into two stages: the "Old" (prior to 1941); and the "New" (from 1941 to 1990). This dichotomy is especially useful because, although many of the motives of immigrants have not changed, the Second World War (1941) changed nativists' attitudes, refocused priorities and brought issues of intolerance, discrimination and racism into the open.
Although some immigrants had been abused more and longer than others (blacks), and one, native Americans, deserves (since they are the "real" nativists) separate treatment, it is the immigration of blacks, Asians, Europeans, Indians, Hispanics, and the collective "new" immigrants which is of foremost concern. Our methodology is to provide a brief historical background, a "progress" report, future prospects, and what the "new wave" of immigration is and means to America.
Three distinct groups make up the history of black people in the United States: the antebellum "free persons of color;" those emancipated by the Civil War; and those black immigrants, principally from other parts of the Western Hemisphere, espe...