IMMIGRATION THEN AND NOW
Introduction
Immigration has been happening for centuries now. Generally, America is made up of
immigrants and can be considered as an immigrant nation. Even after the formation of the
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country by the early settlers, today immigration still continues. Governments have come up with
laws and regulations governing the inflow of immigrants. A few years back, majority of the
immigrants were coming to the United States to find work and improve their earnings, which will
help them and their families back at home. This means that the immigrants came and stayed
temporarily and in the end went back home. Recently new kinds of immigrants have been coming
to the country and settling permanently. This has raised concerns on the cost of such immigrants
and how this affects the economy of the country.
Recently, it has been cited that the problem of immigration today is worse than that
during the great wave. In the great wave period, the country witnessed immigration of an epic
proportion. This was during the industrial revolution. At this time, workers in America were
being replaced by machine in manufacturing, processing and assembling industry. Even the
textile industry incorporated the use of machines. In that case, immigrants came to the country to
look for job offers that required less skilled people. Hence, the use of machines opened up this
opportunity, which allowed more less-skilled laborers coming into the country.
Literature review
Immigrants at that time meant that cheap labor for the industries were readily available.
Consequently, to promote economic development, the government had the open border policy,
which allowed a high number of immigrants come into the country. This made labor to be cheap
and hence increasing the profits of the companies (Keyes, 2014). As a result, the government
encouraged immigrants to get into the country as this would mean that there is cheap labor and
more profits. Therefore, in the end, this translated to the strengthening of the country’s economy.
On the other hand, immigrants of the past, although most did not stay permanently, those who did
assimilated into the American culture. During that period, it was encouraged for the immigrants
to assimilate in the American culture. This, as research indicates, was thought to increase the
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national integration. In addition, assimilating meant that the immigrants started behaving like
Americans and put aside their cultural beliefs and practices (Clayton, 2016). This resulted in
many immigrants actually becoming more like Americans or “Americanized”. Even after being
granted the ability to permanently residing in the country, many of the immigrants assimilated
into the American culture. This made the American people more comfortable as they no longer
saw the immigrants as outsiders. It encouraged more immigrants to get into the country to better
their standard of living and helping their families back at home.
Today, on the other hand, things are different compared to 100 years beck. According to
Brettell & Hollifield (2014), immigration is no longer in sync with the needs of the country. As
Keyes (2014) indicated, the past century, less skilled labor was required. This gave an
opportunity for immigrants without any form of labor skills to come into the country and get
