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1,800,000
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
Ye a r
Figure 3.7. Net immigration to the United States of America from 1953 to 2002
(including illegal immigration) (Source: estimates of the French
National Institute for Demographic Studies)
Although immigration to the United States has never ceased, it does go through
distinct phases (see Figure 3.7). Before 1845, about half a million Europeans
(mostly British) and half a million black slaves crossed the Atlantic and formed the
core of the dominant WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and minority African-
American communities. From 1845 to 1880, the California Gold Rush and the Great
Famine of Ireland launched the great wave of transatlantic European migration with
8 million British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants. A more modest
Chinese and Japanese migration to California was later banned by racist laws.
From 1880 to 1915, 33 million Europeans of very different origins crossed the
Atlantic. New communities included Italians, Slavs, and Ashkenazi Jews from
Central and Eastern Europe. Entries peaked at about 1 million immigrants per year,
mostly arriving in the port of New York. Even though the United States sought to
encourage the agricultural colonization of the Great Plains, many immigrants settled
in the cities where they landed. This is how New York became the country's leading
city.
From 1915 to 1965, immigration slowed down considerably and came mostly
from neighboring countries with only 20 million entries, eight million of which
arrived between 1950 and 1965. Temporary Mexican immigration triggered massive
immigration movements, sometimes illegal (wetbacks), that the Mexican
government, with the support of the United States, attempted to control with the
Maquiladoras program (1965). The quota laws of 1924 intended to halt the
settlement of non-native populations from the eastern hemisphere, which were not
present in 1880, in order to try to preserve the majority population of Protestant
Anglo-Saxons. The period spanning from 1924 to 1965 was very important,
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