The United States is a nation of immigrants. Only the Native Americans are indigenous to this continent, and at some point in their history they may also have come to this region from Asia across the Bering Strait or by some other means. In this century, consecutive waves of immigration from different parts of the world created tensions with Americans already living in this country, for they believed that the immigrants were taking their jobs, gorging the welfare roles, and somehow reducing their overall standard of living. Even many of those who support the values immigrants bring with them have emphasized that no nation can allow unfettered crossings of its borders and that some sort of immigration policy has to be set in place and enforced, though there may be large differences among groups as to what is an acceptable policy. Different national and ethnic groups have encountered different problems, different forms of discrimination, and different legal issues in the course of their immigration experience. Japanese-Americans and Greek-Americans are two such ethnic groups whose experiences can be contrasted to show how each was treated and what sorts of concerns each community has had in terms of immigration and assimilation into American society.
Changes in the way immigrants have been treated through the course of U.S. history has involved at least partially changes in the composition of the immigrant population in terms of where the immigrants originated. Immigration was provided for almost from the beginning of the Union, and the first naturalization law was passed in 1790, with the initial requirement that the applicant must have been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence as an immigrant (Gordon, 1984, 442). Between 1820 and 1910, at least 38 million Europeans arrived in the United States, the result of a number of forces including the Napoleonic Wars; political disturbances in Germany, Austria...