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Immigration

Immigration is a form of migration that signifies the intention of a person to settle permanently in a new country. Motivating factors are generally economic, social, and political. Despite a long history in the United States and some other countries of receiving immigrants, most people who move from one country to another do not intend to leave their homelands permanently. In recent decades, millions of refugees have been driven by civil war, natural disaster, and persecution to seek safety outside of their countries.
Millions of others leave for temporary work. At one point in the 1970s, for example, about 10% of the labor force in both France and West Germany was made up of foreigners. Ironically, while Italians sought and found work through temporary-worker programs in central and northern Europe, northern Africans, Turks, and others illegally migrated to Italy for the same reason. While Trinidadians worked in New York City in the 1980s, Trinidad provided jobs for persons from Guyana.
Early U.S. Immigration
Large new countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and Canada, as well as the United States, actively recruited permanent settlers (immigrants). The United States started as a nation of immigration in the 17th century, as recruiters from different colonies urged citizens from northern and western European countries to become Americans. Of those early immigrants, a majority spoke English and became farmers. The vast majority were Protestants. Continuing waves of German immigration, however, beginning in the 17th century, made many native-born Americans nervous about the capacity of American society to absorb the foreign-speaking newcomers. Then, following large-scale Irish-Catholic immigration to the United States in the mid-19th century, Americans wondered whether or not their essentially Anglo-Protestant culture could be retained.
By 1880, though, the great fear of German-speaking and Irish-Catholic immigrants was over. Employers who still...