Immigration immigrants living in the usa - Essay Example

The rush of immigrants to the United States began in the late 1700s when Congress passed a law that allowed naturalization of “free white persons” and almost a hundred years later, even when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, there have already been thousands of immigrants who moved to the United States (History of U.S. Immigration Law and Policy). Immigration of foreigners to the United States reached its peak from 1880 to 1920, where not only Chinese but also German ad Irish people moved to the United States, mostly for work.

Immigrants came mostly from Asia as well as from Southern and Eastern Europe. These immigrants, who were usually known as settlers, went for the promise of cheap land and sought to succeed in farming. From the 1820s to the 1880s, there were actually mass migrations to the United States with many of these immigrants choosing to engage in agriculture in the Northeast and Midwest, while the rest decided to work in factories in the cities on the East Coast, like New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia (The Rush of Immigrants).

There was certainly a deluge of immigrants during these years despite legislations on immigration. In 1882, despite the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act and despite the designation of Asia by U.S. . Moreover, sometimes the problem was not with the implementation but with the law itself. When the lawmakers under the government of Lyndon Johnson passed the Hart-Cellar Act in 1965, it allowed the entry of all immigrants from the developing world. It sought to stimulate immigration from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and from many other countries of the world like India, Korea, China and the Philippines.

By the year 2000, the Hart-Cellar Act has paved the way for the population of immigrants in the United States to reach its 1900 volume (The Rush of Immigrants). The inefficiency of the government in implementing these laws on immigration as well as the lack of a systematic means of regulating foreigner entry surely contributed to the current state of things. Presently, according to information from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, there is an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2010, which means that the number could be much higher at present, while government and academic sources say it is around 11 million (How Many Illegal Immigrants?). A report from the Department of Homeland Security estimates this number to be around 10.

8 million, with 62%, or the majority of whom, coming from Mexico (Hoefer et al.). Moreover, there is an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants arriving each year, and that most of these illegal immigrants have residences in Florida, Texas and California. Currently, second to Mexicans in number are those from El Salvador, closely followed by Guatemala, Honduras, and the Philippines (How Many Illegal Immigrants?). As previously mentioned, the entry of illegal immigrants into the United States is the fault of the government and their inefficient implementation of laws.

However, the American public is