The New Immigration 823every county and city has its particular immigration
narrative. Indeed, as countless population streams
have for centuries flowed into that heaving ocean of
peoples that is the United States, every family’s
immigrant history is irreducibly unique, as the
American Lives essay about “Barack Obama” demon-
strates (see pp. 824–825).
Since 1924, immigration to the United States
had been governed by a quota system that ensured
that the distribution of new immigrants mirrored
the nation’s existing ethnic patterns (see
Chapter 24, p. 640). But the Immigration Act of
1965 eliminated the old system. It instead gave
preference to immigrants with specialized job skills
and education, and it allowed family members to
rejoin those who had immigrated earlier. In 1986,
Congress offered amnesty to illegal immigrants who
had long lived in the United States and penalized
employers who hired illegal immigrants in the
future. Many persons legalized their status under
the new law, but the influx of illegal immigrants
continued. Together, these laws enabled more than
25 million to immigrate to the United States from
1970 to 2000.
Asians, many of whom possessed skills in high-
tech fields, benefited most from the abandonment of
the “national origins” system. Of the 9 million Asians
who immigrated to the United States during these
years, most were from China, South Korea, India,
Pakistan, and the Philippines. Following the defeat of
South Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge takeover over
Cambodia, some 700,000 South Vietnamese and
Cambodians received refugee status.
From 1970 to 2000 the largest number of immi-
grants were Latinos, sometimes called Hispanics
(16 million). By 2000, the Latino population of the
United States (35 million) for the first time exceeded
African Americans (34 million). The overwhelming
majority of these Spanish-speaking immigrants were
Chicanos—Mexican Americans who settled in the
Southwest. (Of the nation’s 35 million Hispanics,
11 million lived in California, and nearly 7 million in
Texas; over 42 percent of the population of New
Mexico was Latino.) In addition, several million Puerto
Ricans came to the mainland United States, most of
whom settled in well-established Puerto Rican neigh-
borhoods in northeastern cities. About a million Cuban
immigrants arrived in Florida during these years.
But immigration was far more complex than the
aggregate data suggest. Dearborn, Michigan, head-
quarters of the Ford Motor Company, is in many
ways the prototypical American city. Yet nearly a third
of its 100,000 residents are Arab-speaking immi-
grants from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine.
Lowell, Massachusetts, whose textile mills
employed young women from New England farms
during the 1820s and 1830s, is now home to some
20,000 Cambodians, refugees from the regime of Pol
Pot, a communist dictator who killed some 2 million
of his own people.
About 10,000 Sudanese, refugees from a genoci-
dal war in Africa, have flocked to Omaha, Nebraska,
to work in its meatpacking plants. Nearly as many
Bosnians, refugees from a civil war in the Balkans,
have settled in Boise, Idaho.
Nearly every community had its own immigrant
narrative, but some patterns were broadly applicable.
As whites left for the suburbs and businesses relocated
to the malls, immigrants moved into vacated city
housing and established businesses downtown. In Los
Angeles, for example, Korea Town, Japan Town, the
Latino barrio, and South Central districts sprouted
almost overnight.
In many communities, the new immigrants
became a significant political force. Latinos elected
mayors in Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, and San
Antonio. César Chávez, a pivotal figure in the his-
tory of Mexican Americans (Chicanos), succeeded
in bringing tens of thousands of Mexicans into his
United Farm Workers union. In a series of well-
publicized strikes and boycotts, Chávez and the
UFW forced wage concessions from hundreds of
growers in California, Texas, and the Southwest.
But the infusion of immigrants generated con-
cern. In 1992 Patrick Buchanan, campaigning for the
Republican nomination for president, warned that the
migration of “millions of illegal aliens a year” from
Mexico constituted “the greatest invasion” the nation
had ever witnessed. By then, about one-third of the
Chicanos in the United States had arrived without
valid visas, usually by slipping across the long U.S.
border with Mexico. Of particular concern was the
fact that the Latino poverty rate—which hovered
around 10 percent—was twice the national average.
In 1994 California passed Proposition 187, which
made illegal immigrants (“undocumented aliens”)
ineligible for social services, public education, and
nonemergency medical services. (The U.S. Supreme
Court struck the law down as an infringement of fed-
eral powers. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that
immigrants were entitled to all the protections the
Constitution afforded citizens.)
Conservatives were not alone in opposing illegal
immigration. Loose immigration policies suppressed
wage rates; often illegal immigrants were recruited as
strike breakers. Many labor leaders blamed the post-
1965 influx of immigrants for the decline in union
memberships. Chávez argued that illegal immigration