Figure 13.1 Population 10 and older unable to speak English well enough to be understood in
ordinary conversation in the year 1900
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau^1 estimated that the United States is a
nation of some 310 million people, of whom about 3.2 million are Native
American and about half a million Hawai’ian. To this number we might
add the population we think of as Mexican American or Chicano/a, who
are descendants of Europeans but also of the aboriginal peoples of Central
America and the Western U.S. Thus it is an obvious and inescapable truth
that the majority of people residing in the U.S. are immigrants or the
descendants of immigrants. Most came of their own free will, while others
came in chains. We are a nation of immigrants, but having made the
transition and established ourselves, there is a strong urge to be protective
of what is here; we talk at great length about closing the door behind us.
At times, we have acted on this impulse:
In the 1840s, during a depression, mobs hostile to immigrant
Irish Catholics burned down a convent in Boston.