Prior to 1965, policies such as the national origins formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Western Europe.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s led to the replacement of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits. Since then, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007.
The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.
Immigration patterns of the 1930s were dominated by the Great Depression, which hit the U.S. hard and lasted over ten years there. In the final prosperous year, 1929, there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933, only 23,068 came to the U.S. In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than to it. It's all about economics it seems.
While European immigrants accounted for nearly 60% of the total foreign population in 1970, they accounted for only 15% in 2000.
In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%. Appointed by Bill Clinton, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people per year to approximately 550,000. Bush increased the number of immigrants while Clinton reduced it. Obviously immigration laws are not divided along party lines.
Hispanic immigrants were among the first victims of the late-2000s recession, but since the recession's end in June 2009, immigrants posted a net gain of 656,000 jobs.
