Answer: The United States prides itself on being a nation of immigrants, and the nation has a long history of successfully absorbing people from across the globe. The successful integration of immigrants and their children contributes to economic vitality and to a vibrant and ever-changing culture. Americans have offered opportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fully incorporated into U.S. society, and in exchange immigrants have become Americans—embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting the United States through service in its military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, and enriching everything from the nation’s cuisine to its universities, music, and art.
2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which began the most recent period of mass immigration to the United States. This act abolished the restrictive quota system of the 1920s and opened up legal immigration to all the countries in the world, helping to set the stage for a dramatic increase in immigration from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. At the same time, it limited the numbers of legal immigrants coming from countries in the Western Hemisphere, thus establishing restrictions on immigrants across the U.S. southern border and setting the stage for the rise in undocumented border crossers. Although the Immigration Act of 1965 exemplified the progressive ideals of the 1960s, the system it engendered may also hinder some immigrants’ and their descendants’ prospects for integration.
Today, the 41 million immigrants in the United States represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S.-born children of immigrants, the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2015. The Integration of Immigrants into American Society. Thus, together the first and second generations account for one out of four members of the U.S. population. Whether they are successfully integrating is therefore a pressing and important question.
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