grants are admitted to serve Canada’s economic
interests.
Li, Peter.Destination Canada: Debates and Issues. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Examina-
tion of Canadian immigration policies that argues
against efforts to limit immigration to Canada.
Carl L. Bankston III
See also Asian Americans; Immigration to the
United States; Minorities in Canada.
Immigration to the United
States
Definition Arrival and settlement of people from
other countries in the United States
During the 1980’s, the increased immigration that had be-
gun after 1965 intensified. Hispanics and Asians, who
had started to make up a growing number of American im-
migrants during the 1970’s, immigrated in even greater
numbers in the 1980’s, so these two demographics come to
account for more than three-quarters of all the foreign-born
people in the United States. The 1980’s saw a number of ref-
ugee movements, and undocumented immigration, espe-
cially from Mexico, became an issue that drew widespread
public and official attention.
The 1980’s were a decade of heavy immigration to
the United States. The nation had seen a great wave
of immigration between 1880 and the start of World
War I. After the war, restrictive immigration legisla-
tion passed in the 1920’s, the decline of economic
opportunities during the Great Depression of the
1930’s, and World War II during the 1940’s brought
immigration to a low point in American history. This
situation began to change after the United States lib-
eralized its immigration policies in 1965. The num-
ber of U.S. immigrants increased rapidly during the
1970’s, and the increase grew even greater during
the 1980’s. Of the estimated 21,596,000 foreign-
born people living in the United States in 1990,
about 43 percent had arrived during the 1980’s.
New Immigrant Demographics The United States
had begun to draw more Asian immigrants during
the 1970’s, and this trend intensified in the 1980’s.
Of the foreign-born U.S. residents in 1990, less than
8 percent of those who had arrived in the country
before 1970 were Asian; a little over one-fourth (26
percent) of those who had arrived during the 1970’s
were Asian; and 29 percent of those who had arrived
during the 1980’s were Asian. The 1980’s also con-
tinued a trend of growing Hispanic immigration.
Again, among foreign-born residents in 1990, a little
under one-third (31 percent) of those who had im-
migrated before 1970 were Hispanic; 43 percent of
those who had arrived in the 1970’s were Hispanic;
and 46 percent of those who had arrived in the
1980’s were Hispanic.
As a consequence of the growth in Asian and His-
panic immigrants, these two groups played a much
larger role in the demographics of the nation by the
end of the decade. In 1980, Hispanics had made up 6
percent of the total U.S. population and 30 percent
of its foreign-born population. Ten years later, His-
panics constituted 9 percent of the population and
40 percent of the foreign-born population. Asians
made up slightly over 1.5 percent of the U.S. popula-
tion and 12 percent of the immigrant population in
1980, and those numbers rose to 3 percent of the to-
tal population and 23 percent of the immigrant pop-
ulation in 1990.
Mexico sent more immigrants to the United
States than did any other country during this de-
cade, with 1,655,843 legally admitted immigrants
moving from Mexico to its northern neighbor be-
tween 1981 and 1990. This number represented
nearly one-fourth of all legal immigrants. The Phil-
ippines was a distant second, with 548,764 legal im-
migrants, or a little over 7 percent of all those admit-
ted to the United States between 1981 and 1990.
Other countries sending large numbers of legal
immigrants to the United States included China
(346,747 immigrants), South Korea (333,746), Viet-
nam (280,782), the Dominican Republic (252,035),
India (250,786), El Salvador (213,539), and Jamaica
(208,148).Refugees During the 1980’s, more refugees en-
tered the United States than in any other decade in
American history. Approximately one million refu-
gees arrived in the country from 1980 through 1989.
Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975,
Southeast Asians began to resettle in the United
States. Largely in response to the movement of South-
east Asian refugees, the U.S. Congress passed the
Refugee Act of 1980, the most comprehensive piece
of refugee legislation in U.S. history. As a result, hun-
dreds of thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Cam-The Eighties in America Immigration to the United States 505