Inequalities. Toronto: Oxford University Press,- An examination of the impact of the multi-
cultural policy on group status and public think-
ing and perception.
Knowles, Valerie.Stranger at Our Gates: Canadian Im-
migration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2007.Rev.
ed. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2007. Describes the
ethnic and demographic character of immigrant
streams into Canada, including the role of the
economy and racism in policy making.
Trebilcock, Michael J., and Ninette Kelley. The
Making of the Mosaic: A Histor y of Canadian Immi-
gration Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1998. An examination of the key issues, in-
terests, and attitudes that defined Canadian im-
migration policy and patterns from the precon-
federation period to the late twentieth century.
Ann M. Legreid
See also Asian Americans; Canada and the United
States; Demographics of Canada; Employment in
Canada; Illegal immigration; Immigration to the
United States; Minorities in Canada; Religion and
spirituality in Canada.
Immigration to the United
States
Definition Migration into the United States by
people who are citizens of other countries
The influx of millions of legal and illegal immigrants from
Mexico and Latin America reshaped the profile of the U.S.
population in the 1990’s and made immigration a central
issue on the countr y’s political agenda.
Growth in the U.S. population as a result of immigra-
tion has been a persistent part of the country’s his-
tory. Even more so than the other “settler societies”
of the former British Empire—Canada, New Zea-
land, and Australia—the United States opened its
borders in the mid-nineteenth century, and to no
small degree it was the influx of those peoples from
foreign lands that enabled the country to expand
from coast to coast and emerge as one of the world’s
great powers. On the other hand, except for the Afri-
cans who were forced into the Americas as slaves, be-
fore World War II the overwhelming majority of
those entering the United States were Europeans.
That profile of the country’s population changed
slightly during the late 1940’s and 1950’s as U.S. mili-
tary personnel returned to their homeland with Jap-
anese and Korean war brides. While the Civil Rights
movement of the 1960’s led to a firm commitment to
multiculturalism as a part of the country’s ethos by
the 1970’s, as a result of immigration quotas favoring
those with relatives already in the United States, as
late as the 1980’s most immigrants still came from
European points of origin. Then, in the twentieth
century’s final decade, that profile of the typical im-
migrant to the United States changed abruptly.A Shift in the 1990’s It is mildly ironic, in the light
of the degree to which immigration soon became a
divisive issue in U.S. politics, that the 1990’s began
with legislation designed to depart from the Euro-
centric bias of previous immigration laws. Under the
Immigration Act of 1990, legal admissions were to be
increased by 200,000 per year (to 700,000 per year),
and 50,000 of these admissions were reserved for ar-
eas from which few had previously immigrated to the
United States. Temporary work visas were also made
available in expanded numbers—a provision with
built-in favoritism toward workers close at hand. Un-
fortunately, an unintended consequence of a more
important policy enacted shortly thereafter resulted
in a flood of immigrants from Mexico that quickly
dwarfed these allowances. That policy was the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), whose
creation in 1994 forced Mexican farmers to compete
with the United States’ vastly more efficient agricul-
tural system. Between 1993 and 2002, at least two
million Mexican farmers had to abandon their land
for want of markets for their produce, and many
came north.
Given the fact that at approximately the same
time globalization was producing an outsourcing of
American jobs to countries with cheaper labor, the
arrival of even the allotted number of legal immi-
grants from Latin America might have produced a
minor political backlash. When the numbers enter-
ing the country illegally, principally across its south-
ern border with Mexico, came to exceed the total
number legally entitled to enter the United States,
immigration instead became a major political issue
at all levels of government.
Signaling that fact, in 1994 California voters ap-
proved, by a 59 to 41 percent margin, a statewide ref-
erendum that denied public services to illegal immi-
grants and public education to their children. Other444 Immigration to the United States The Nineties in America