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The Permanently Unfinished Country
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20626 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
2,841 Words |
| Author
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Reed Ueda
Reed Ueda teaches history at Tufts University and has been a
visiting professor at Harvard and Brandeis universities. He is
writing a book on immigration and nationality in twentieth-
century America. |
The twentieth century has been called the "American century" because of the rise of the United States to world leadership. It has also been the era when the country became a world immigrant nation. The historical role of the United States as the quintessential magnetic society built from immigration has expanded to accommodate greater ethnic diversity. By the 1990s, the flow of newcomers included people from every region and culture of the globe.
However, this "new diversity" is merely a child of old historic patterns. Unless this is grasped, we are likely to mistake this new diversity as a new threat or new utopia, when it is in reality an outgrowth of roots imbedded in our national past. Thus the question "How new is diversity?" should actually be, "How old is diversity?"
The historical record shows that ethnic diversity is as old as the United States. The first U.S. census in 1790 revealed that the majority of Americans then were not of English origin. California had a higher proportion of Asians in 1880 than it did in 1980. In 1900, the majority of inhabitants in the largest cities were immigrants of the children of immigrants. In 1910, more than 50 languages were spoken by immigrants in the United States. Government and census records of the past amply prove the longstanding reality of American diversity.
This phenomenal ethnic diversity is largely due to certain unique characteristics of American immigration. The first key feature is the sheer magnitude of immigration: By 1990, 57 million people had migrated to the United States, the largest international movement of population in history. More immigrants came to the United States than to all other major immigrant-receiving countries combined. From 1820 to 1930, 38 million people moved to the United States, while 24 million migrated to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa combined. The United States attracted three-fifths of the populations flocking to major immigration countries. From the mid-nineteenth century to the Great Depression, the United States received more than 30 million newcomers, while Argentina received 6.4 million, Canada 5.2 million, Brazil 4.4 million, and Australia 2.9 million.
The second defining feature of American immigration is that it encompasses the greatest variety of nationalities among all the modern international population movements. Fifteen percent of American immigrants came from Germany, 11 percent from Italy, 10 percent from Ireland, 9 percent from Canada, and only 7 percent from England. More Latin
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