I've been remiss in posting on this page because I haven't been writing much, but I did write the cover story in the latest issue of America magazine, so please take a look if you're interested in the history of immigration to the United States!
From "How Immigration Affects the Three Americas":
One reason immigration is such an intractable issue in Congress and in the United States as a whole is that it means different things to people in different places. This should not be surprising in a nation so complex that there is an ever-growing genre of geographic revisionism, with books and magazine articles devoted to carving it into regions more sensible than our 50 states. But we can boil down the history of and attitudes toward immigration into three main regions, regions with some constancy but also with continuously shifting boundaries.In the Frontier region, America is still being built. This region currently includes states in the Southeast and West states where land is plentiful and U.S. citizens are moving in by the thousands every day. This region is where immigrants are welcomed by the construction and retail industries, but rapid population growth worries environmentalists and taxpayers who wonder how to finance new schools and social services. The creation of “mega-parishes” in these areas can serve Catholics at a time when it is hard to find pastors, but not everyone is comfortable with having 1,000 people at a Mass.
The Gateway region has long accommodated migrants. It currently includes the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, Chicago and other parts of the Upper Midwest, and California—places where the civic and church infrastructure is already there for large populations, and immigrants are largely replacing American citizens who are moving elsewhere. Indeed, without immigrants, many of these communities would face economic decline.
Finally, there is what could be called the Great Interior of the United States—places like Appalachia, the interior South and the Farm Belt. After initial growth spurts when they were absorbed by the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, these regions generally grew slowly and rarely experienced large influxes of migrants, either from other states or other nations. Population growth came from families having children. But now much of the country’s interior is experiencing population loss, thanks to low birth rates and an outflow of educated residents looking for well-paying jobs. There are conflicted attitudes toward immigration here. Resentment toward “globalization” and the outsourcing of jobs runs high, but there is also a realization that immigrants are needed to replenish the workforce.
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