THE NEW IMMIGRATION

Little change occurred in the immigration laws from the establishment of the quota system in the 1920s until 1965. The one exception was a program under which Mexican agricultural workers (Braceros) could work temporarily in the United States. The Bracero Program began during World War II (the argument was that Mexican workers were needed to replace Americans serving in the armed forces) and ended in 1965—another result of the wave of liberal legislation of the mid-1960s, the little New Deal (Alston and Ferrie 1993). A prominent argument against the Program was that it was adversely affecting the wages and working conditions of native-born agricultural workers.

At that time, a new general immigration system was adopted. President John F. Kennedy and his allies in Congress were strongly opposed to national quotas, which they believed reflected racial and ethnic prejudice. Kennedy had published a book, A Nation of Immigrants (1964), which celebrated the contribution of immigrants to American life and argued against limitations based on national origin. The new law, enacted after Kennedy’s death, eliminated quotas based on the ethnic composition of the population in favor of a complex system of priorities that gave very high priority to uniting families. A limit was placed on the total number of immigrants, but that limit did not include spouses, minor children, or parents of American citizens. In 1980, a separate program for admitting political refugees was created. As a result of these changes, the number of immigrants increased, many coming from “new” areas that had not previously provided many immigrants—Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In the 1960s, 37 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 39 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 13 percent from Asia. By 1990, 7 percent came from Europe, 67 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 22 percent from Asia.

Table 29.8 shows immigration since 1901. The acceleration of the rate of immigration after the 1965 change in the law is clear; the rate increased from 1.5 per 1,000 between 1951 and 1960 to 3.4 between 1991 and 2000. Even the latter rate, however, was still well below the average of 10.4 per 1,000 between 1901 and 1910.

Many Americans benefited from immigration: those who owned firms that employed immigrants (including those who owned firms indirectly through retirement funds), those who possessed special skills that became more valuable when unskilled labor is widely available, those who consumed the products and services that immigrants help produce, those who provided the services consumed by immigrants, and those who owned property in neighborhoods in which immigrants settled. On the other hand, native-born workers who competed directly with immigrants in the labor force— unskilled workers in urban areas, in particular—faced lower real wages and fewer job opportunities. It is difficult to say how large these effects have been. Some labor economists have stressed the substitutability between immigrants and native workers that implies lower wages for native workers (Grossman 1982; Briggs 1986). But others have found evidence of complementarity, which implies higher wages for native workers (Bor-jas 1983). A study by Francisco Rivera-Batiz and Selig Sechzer (1991) found evidence of both effects, depending on the group being considered, but stressed that both effects have been small.

The countries from which the United States receives its immigrants also experience a variety of effects. In the first decades after World War II, for example, considerable

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, various years.

Concern was expressed about the “brain drain,” the tendency of the United States to draw down the supply of engineers, scientists, physicians, and similar personnel in developing countries.

The figures in Table 29.8 make no allowance for illegal immigration. Inevitably, estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants are contentious. We do know, however, that many people are apprehended trying to enter the United States without proper documents; in 2010 about 500,000. The political debate over illegal immigration has been a hardy perennial. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which put tough new controls on illegal immigration (making it illegal, for example, for employers to hire undocumented workers) while creating an amnesty program for illegal immigrants who had put down roots in this country, proved to be only a temporary compromise. In recent years individual states have been passing laws to control illegal immigration because, they contend, the federal government is not doing enough. The issue is now before the courts. In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that would allow, under certain conditions, the children of undocumented aliens to live and work in the United States.

In the 2000s, high rates of legal and illegal immigration rates produced much the same political controversy as high rates of immigration in the early 1900s: exaggerated claims about the negative impact of immigrants on wages, employment opportunities, and the social welfare system, met by exaggerated denunciations of even moderate critics of immigration. Whether criticism of immigration will produce more severe restrictions in the future will depend on whether the economy can deliver new jobs and rising real incomes.