Questions for discussion

1. Whose ideas provided the theoretical foundation of the American economic system?

2. What are the basic ingredients of the U.S. economy?

3. Is the U.S.A. a free market economy?

4. How can the U.S. economy be defined?

5. What is meant by the phrase ‘postindustrial’ economy?

6. What direct services and assistance are provided by the U.S. government?

7. Why is the U.S.A. referred to as a world’s leading producer?

8. Why aren’t labor unions in America powerful defendants of the rights of the working people?

9. How is wealth distributed in the wealthiest country of the world?

10. What are the reasons of such a high total public debt?

11. What was done to overcome the consequences of the 2007-2009 credit crunch?

12. What says that the U.S. population is growing and what are the sources of this growth?

13. What does the total fertility rate show?

14. What is the U.S. infant mortality rate (life expectancy)? How can it be compared with the data from Western European countries and Japan?

15. What is the age structure of the U.S. population?

16. Why do economists look carefully at the proportions of the population under 15 and over 65 years of age?

17. How does age differ by ethnicity and race?

18. What states tend to have the highest proportion of young people and the smallest proportion of older people?

19. What are the latest demographic trends in the U.S.A.?

Lecture 5 the united states - nation of immigrants

This lecture tells us that the U.S.A. is a multicultural country; which received the largest number of immigrants in the course of its historic development from the most diverse sources. The lecture defines the uniqueness of American culture and touches upon:

• ethnic structure of the U.S. population;

• American immigration history;

• reasons for immigration;

• attitudes towards immigration;

• economic effects of immigration;

• description of most populous ethnic groups: Native Americans, African Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Slavic and Jewish Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans;

• current immigration trends.

Key Words and Proper Names: abuse, ancestry, average, craftsmanship, cohesive community, disparity, ethnic group, ethnicity, gambling, gaming industry, growth rate, indigenous, inherent rights, life span, longevity, median, net migration rate, syncretism, violence;

Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Afro-Americans, First Nations, First Peoples, Hispanics, Indigenous Peoples of America, Original Americans, Pacific Islanders.

Of more than 318 million U.S. people reporting their ancestry only 7% identified themselves as Americans. The rest chose one or more broad racial or linguistic groupings (such as African American or Hispanic) or national heritages (German, English, Irish, and Italian that were most common) while defining their origins.

Of all nations, the U.S. received the largest number of immigrants over the longest period from the most diverse sources. The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups lists 106 major ethnic groups in the U.S. today, including Native Americans, Albanians, Afro-Americans, Arabs, Burmese, Chinese, Eskimo or Inuit, Filipinos, Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, Japanese, Jews, Mexicans, Puerto-Ricans and Swiss, etc.

In the U.S.A., 31 ancestry groups have more than one million members:

• White non-Hispanic Americans are the largest racial group; English Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, and Italian Americans constitute the four country's largest ancestry groups.

• Black or African Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and the 3-d in size largest ancestry group.

• Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.

In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.9 million people with some American Indian or Alaskan native ancestry and 1.1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific islands’ ancestry. The population growth of Hispanic or Latino Americans is a major current demographic trend.

The U.S. census used to collect information about ancestry, but this question was removed from the 2010, 2012, 2013 censuses. The latest data, from 2000, shows that these were the largest ancestral groups in the U.S.:

• German - 15.2%

• Irish - 10.8%

• African American - 8.8%

• English - 8.7%

• American - 7.2%

• Mexican - 6.5%

Geographically German ancestry tends to dominate in the North and West of the U.S., those with Mexican ancestry are more commonly found in the South West, etc.

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs:

1. the colonial period,

2. the mid-19th century,

3. the turn of the 20th,

4. and the post-1965 period.

Each epoch brought distinct national groups and races and ethnicities to the U.S.

The 17^th, 18^th and mid-19th centuries saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20^th century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 period - mostly from Latin America and Asia.

1. During the 17th century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants arrived as indentured servants. Less than 1 million immigrants crossed the Atlantic between the 17th and 18th centuries. In the early years of the U.S., immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year.

2. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the U.S. The peak year of European immigration was in 1907 when 1,285,349 persons entered the country.

Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, about the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the U.S. during this period.

Between the 1840’s and the 1890’s, Germans and Irish groups predominated.

Beginning with 1896, people from Southern and Eastern Europe, such as Italians, Jews, and Slavic peoples from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were the most numerous groups.

3. Almost 10 million immigrants entered the U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century, close to 6 million in the 1910’s, and about 4 million in the 1920’s. Overall, 500,000 immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 1930’s, 1 million in the 1940’s, and 2.5 million in the 1950’s.

Until the 1960’s, most immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe. Legal restrictions blocked substantial immigration from many other regions. Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and WWII were barred from coming to the U.S.

Eastern European immigration decreased after the 1920’s.

Mexicans, who were allotted a very small quota, came to the U.S. in growing numbers during the 1950’s and early 1960’s. In the early 1930’s, during the Great Depression more people emigrated from the U.S. than immigrated to it. The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily return to Mexico. Thousands were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.

4. Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and doubled again between 1970 and 1990. Nearly 9 million immigrants came to the U.S. from 1991 to 2000, and more than 13 million between 2001 and 2010 – more than in any other 10-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally. The number of immigrants from Eastern Europe increased between 1990 and 2010.

Of those who came legally only 16% are employment based, 10% - are Green lottery winners and 8% -refugees, the rest are family members. About 80% of these immigrants came from Latin America, the Caribbean, or Asia. Since the 1970’s the leading countries of origin for legal immigrants have been Mexico (accounting for more than 30% of all immigrants), China (15%), the Dominican Republic (8%), Puerto Rico (9%), the Philippines (7%), India (5%), South Korea (4%), Vietnam (6%), and Haiti (6%), etc.

Of those who came illegally - 57% are people from Mexico, 24%- from other Latin American countries and 9% are from Asia. Since 1986, Congress has passed 7 amnesties for illegal immigrants.

Hispanic immigrants were among the first victims of the 2007-2009 credit crunch. But funnily enough, although nearly 4 million Americans lost their jobs in 2009, 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence over the same time period. At the same time about 12 million entered the country illegally.

Immigration laws: In 1875, the U.S. passed its first immigration law. This law, dominant in the 19th century, treated immigrants as prospective citizens. As soon as people declared their intention to become citizens, and before the 5-year wait was over, they received multiple low cost benefits, including the right for free homesteads, and in many states the right to vote. The goal was to make America attractive so that large numbers of farmers and skilled craftsmen would settle new lands.

In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 aimed at restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians and Slavs, who began to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act) abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations which changed the ethnic make-up of the U.S. In 1970, European-born immigrants accounted for nearly 60% of the total foreign-born population, in 2000, they accounted for only 15%.

In 1990, President Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the U.S. by 40%. It emphasizes that family reunification is the main immigration criterion, in addition to employment-related immigration, limiting at the same time the annual number of immigrants to 700,000.

Other important immigration documents include: Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). They name many categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported or detained.

Reasons for Immigration: Why did or why do these people choose America? An old Italian proverb explains everything: “Chi sta bene, non si muove” or “He who is well-off doesn’t move.” What primarily motivated most immigrants to come to America in the first place was not American culture, American politics, or even the ideals of American freedom. In fact, the strongest force driving every great immigration boom in American history—from the colonial times to the present—was an economic force: the U.S. simply offered better opportunities for economic advancement than the immigrants could find in their homelands.

The Irish came when the potato crops failed; the Italians came when the soil they farmed was depleted, the Jews came to escape religious persecution. Wars and revolutions brought to the U.S.A. scores of exiles from Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, and Mexico.

The history of immigration to the U.S. is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in the American myth, called the American Dream, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to The Song of Myself to Neil Diamond's America to the animated feature An American Tail.

As in many myths, the immigrant story has been exaggerated. Immigrants were often poor and uneducated but the succeeding generations took advantage of the opportunities offered.

Is immigration good or bad for America? From a simple American’s viewpoint it is not good. As more and more people of different races and cultures enter the U.S., the immigration cannot but become a very intensely debated issue. Some Americans favor tighter immigration restrictions saying that immigrants take jobs away from U.S. citizens, drain social services, and resist learning English.

The roots of the ethnic conflicts and misunderstanding are still very strong and deep. Even Benjamin Franklin opposed German immigration, stating that they would not assimilate into America’s culture. Irish, Japanese, Chinese and Jewish immigration was opposed by the Nativist Know Nothing movement (the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Party—better known as the “Know-Nothings”), which originated in New York. It was caused by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants. Several Italians and Chinese were killed. Systematic bias against Japanese and German immigrants emerged during and after WWII. Irish and Jewish immigrants were popular targets early in the 20th century and most recently immigrants from Latin American countries are often viewed with hostility.

Interesting to know: Early in the 20th century, the pseudoscience called eugenics originated in Britain and the U.S.A. It was about a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race and ways how to avoid it. According to eugenics, the inferior humans, i.e., foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded" were breeding very rapidly. The eugenicists and the immigrationists had to put a stop to immigration. Their plan was to identify those who were feeble-minded - blacks, Jews and many foreigners were thought to be largely feeble-minded - and stop them from breeding by isolation in mental institutions or by sterilization.

Such views were widely shared. H. G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." G.B. Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.

This movement was racist, aimed to attain a’ marvelous’ goal — the improvement of humankind in the future. 29 American states passed laws allowing sterilization, more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America. Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The latter was so enthu­siastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, as well as Jews and gypsies, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.

Much water has flown under American bridges since those days. But still some Americans have not completely adjusted to the largely non-European immigration, and racism does occur. You know that after September 11, many Muslim immigrants and those perceived to be of Muslim origins have become targets of hate crimes.

Racist thinking among and between minority groups often takes place, examples of this are conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants in L.A. in 1992, or between African Americans and Latino immigrants in California prisons. There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by people of Mexican origin, and v.v.

There has also been an increase in violence between non-Hispanic Anglo Americans and Latino immigrants, and between African immigrants and African Americans. There are also tensions between native-born Hispanic Americans and newly arrived Latino immigrants.

At the same time, no doubt, there are a lot of Americans who support America’s historic commitment to immigration and believe that immigrants keep the nation strong, economically competitive, and culturally rich and stress the economic effects of immigration.

Economic effects of immigration: According to James Smith, a senior economist and lead author of the U.S. National Research Council "The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration" (NRC), immigrants contribute as much as $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year. Overall immigration is a net economic gain due to an increase in pay for higher-skilled workers, lower prices for goods and services produced by immigrant labor, and more efficiency and lower wages for owners of capital. And although immigrant workers compete with domestic workers for some low skilled jobs, some immigrants specialize in the activities and perform services that otherwise would not exist in an area, and thus can be beneficial to all domestic residents. Some immigrants mostly do jobs Americans don't want to do.

The Kauffman Foundation’s index of entrepreneurial activity is nearly 40% higher for immigrants than for the U.S.-born. Immigrants were involved in the founding of such prominent American high-tech companies as Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, and eBay.

Brain drain: We should not forget that the U.S. attracts the best professionals and intellectuals from different walks of life from developing countries offering them better salaries, better working and living conditions and better chances to pursue their carriers and ambitions.

There’s no available information about the cost of brain drain for Belarus, so we can only guess. But, e.g., brain drain has cost Africa over $4 billion in the employment of 150,000 expatriate professionals annually which harms the ability of African nations to get out of poverty. Ethiopia lost 75% of its skilled workforce between 1980 and 1991. There are more Ethiopian doctors in Chicago than in Ethiopia. India loses $2 billion a year because of the emigration of computer experts to the U.S. Over 80% of Jamaicans with higher education live abroad. E.g., the brain drain from Europe to the U.S. means that some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S.

On June 13, 1998, at Portland State University, President Bill Clinton said, "new immigrants are good for America. They are revitalizing our cities, building our new economy, strengthening our ties to the global economy, just as earlier waves of immigrants settled on the new frontier and powered the Industrial Revolution. They are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be an American.”

So, we may conclude that the U.S.A. was built by immigrants. And immigration is good and is vitally important for the U.S. economy.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the U.S. population will grow from 300 million in 2006 to 397 million in 2050 with expected immigration, but only to 328 million with zero immigration. “If we have zero immigration with today's low birthrates the American population would eventually begin to shrink” (B.Clinton).

Description of most populous ethnic groups: Further on, contributions of some of most populous ethnic groups to the development of the American economy and culture will be discussed. I’ll start with Native Americans.

They are the only indigenous peoples of America. By the time Columbus discovered the American continent in 1492, about 18 million people had inhabited North America north of present-day Mexico. As you know, for them American history began in disaster. The conquest and enslavement of Native Americans led to a terrible decrease or even annihilation of the whole tribes, peoples and cultures. By 1910, Native Americans had constituted only 0.3 % of the population of the U.S.A., their smallest proportions ever (about 1.15% in 2012).

By the time of the European conquest, the Native American civilizations had reached a level of culture which included personal wealth, fine buildings, expert craftsmanship, and religions which structured the daily lives of the people. Traditional name “Indians” comprised many groups of people who spoke over 300 languages (Some 50 to 100 of these languages are still spoken today). They lived scattered across the continent in tribes. They were fine crafts workers, made pottery, baskets, and carvings and wove cotton and plant-fiber cloth.

Different as they were, all tribes became affected by the white man, who changed their lives forever. Nowadays, nobody calls Native Americans Indians. The formal names applied to Native Americans are Original Americans, Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, American Indians, Amerindians, First Nations, First Peoples, Native Canadians, or Indigenous Peoples of America, all these names refer to those peoples indigenous (native) to the Americas, living there prior to the European colonization.

The Indians worshipped the earth and believed that it was to be shared by all men. In 1620, their generosity saved the Massachusetts Bay Colony established at Plymouth from starvation.

The principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution were modeled after the Five Iroquois Nations constitution drawn up by the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida and Cayuga tribes around the year of 1500. Their agreement guaranteed freedom for all individuals and provided each tribe with equal representation at a grand council which decided on general policy for the Five Nations.

Native Indian communities in both the U.S. and Canada survived disastrous assimilation efforts. And instead of disappearing, they revitalized tribal governments, created modern economies, attained legal rights, and revived cultural traditions and ceremonies that had nearly died out. They combined aspects of their traditional cultures with contemporary life without sacrificing the core of their identity.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2.8 million of Native Americans live in three states: California - 413,382, Arizona - 294,137 and Oklahoma - 279,559. The largest tribes in the U.S. by population were Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo. In 2003, 8 of 10 Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed blood. It is estimated that by 2100 the figure will rise to 9 of 10.

No doubt, military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement in reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, forced sterilizations, termination policies of the 1950’s, and 1960’s, and slavery have had deleterious effects on Native Americans’ mental and physical health. Many U.S. indigenous peoples live in poverty.

Contemporary health problems include alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, and New World Syndrome. Unemployment and school dropout rates are high as well as rates of alcoholism and suicide of Native Americans are far above those for the general population.

Gambling has become a leading industry for Native Americans. Casinos operated by many Native American governments in the U.S. are creating a stream of gambling revenue that some communities are beginning to use as a leverage to build diversified economies. But some tribes refuse to participate in the gaming industry. There is one more tendency: as a testament to their cultural and economic renewal taking place, many indigenous peoples are leaving cities and returning to their homelands.

Cultural aspects: Though cultural features, including language, garb/dress/, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes. Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewelry, weavings, sculptures, basketry, and carvings.

Religion: The most widespread religion at the present time is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. The religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral. The church has had significant success in combating many of the ills brought by colonization, such asalcoholism and crime.

Music and art: Native American music is almost entirely monophonic. Traditional Native American music often includes drumming but little other instrumentation, although flutes are played by individuals. The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans is pow-wow.

The aboriginal contribution to the American heritage is undeniable. The most meaningful gift was a partially humanized land and much valuable information about its contents. The territory entered by the American explorers was not covered by the primeval forest but had already been modified by aboriginal hunting, burning and planting. Much practical geographical knowledge was passed on to the new settlers; it is now reflected in the survival of many thousands of place names of Indian origin on the contemporary map. Many specifically American plants, animals and land forms retain their Indian names. There are several minor but striking aboriginal items in modern American culture, like the canoe, moccasins and forms of basketry. And finally, when it comes to art, there exists the image of an Indian with the mythic beauty in American literature and folklore.

African Americans: To start with, Africans came to America unwillingly. Between 1619 and 1808 about 500,000 Africans were brought to the colonies as slaves. On the eve of the Civil war, in the U.S. there were 4 million black slaves. They could be found in all parts of the country, and put their hands to virtually every type of labor in the U.S. Now African Americans constitute 12.85% of the U.S. population.

The African American contribution: Africans brought the skills and trades of their homeland to North America, and their expertise shaped the industry and agriculture of the continent. West Africans with experience in navigating the waterways of their homeland helped open the rivers and canals of the Northwest frontier to boat traffic, and seasoned African cattle drivers were able to apply their skills to ox teams and livestock. Many Africans were deeply familiar with large-scale rice and indigo cultivation, which were completely unknown to European Americans. Without the skills of Africans and their descendants, the rice, cotton and tobacco fields of Virginia, Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana might never have existed.

The early decades of the 20th century saw an explosion of artistic expression in the African American community. The move to the cities, as well as the greater confidence that came with leaving behind Jim Crow society (i.e., Southern racially segregated society), contributed to an unparalleled surge of creative enterprise, as artists, writers, composers, and musicians explored the nature of modern African American identity through their work.

The poets Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes, the prose artists Jean Toomer and Jesse Fauset, the actor and singer Paul Robeson, and, later, the painters Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden all became known as members of the Harlem Renaissance. African American musicians were among the first artists to make commercial recordings. As the century began, blues and gospel musicians were already celebrities in the African American community.

Jazz quickly became the popular music of the U.S. Such pioneers as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton combined elements of gospel and the blues with rhythmic innovations and virtuoso instrumental performances to create an entirely new musical style. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mary Lou Williams created new works and performances that placed American music, and African American musicians, solidly in the forefront of the international avant-garde.

Now I’m going to speak about other waves of immigrants that poured into the "land of promise"; some of them acquired dazzling riches, but many others suffered in a competitive and unregulated economic age.

German Americans: The Germans were the largest 19^th century immigrant group. The failed German revolution in 1848 stimulated emigration to America. They were the intellectual leaders of this rebellion, and impoverished Germans who had lost confidence in its government's ability to solve the country's economic problems. As a result, more than 5 million people left Germany for the U.S. during the 19th century.

German Americans were employed in many urban craft trades, especially baking, carpentry, and the needle trades. Many German Americans worked in factories founded by the new generation of German American industrialists, such as John Bausch and Henry Lomb, who created the first American optical company; Rockefeller (petroleum); Studebaker and Chrysler (cars); H.J. Heinz (food); and Frederick Weyerhaeuser (lumber).

Germans had a powerful influence over the development of American culture: institutions, traditions, and daily habits. E.g., the U.S. education system, from the lowest grades to the highest, would be unrecognizable without the ideas championed by German immigrants. With a strong commitment to education, Germans brought this dedication to their new home. In 1855, German immigrants in Wisconsin launched the first kindergarten in America, based on the kindergartens of Germany. Germans introduced physical education and vocational education into the public schools, and were responsible for the inclusion of gymnasiums in school buildings. More important, they were leaders in the call for universal education, a notion not common in the U.S. at the time.

German immigrants also brought their reforming zeal to America’s recreational life - Germans invented the American weekend. After the arrival of German immigrants, new large-scale recreational facilities began to appear in U.S. towns - picnic grounds, bandstands, sports clubs, concert halls, bowling alleys, and playgrounds, all suitable for a week-end excursion with the family. Some German contributions to U.S. life are easy to pinpoint - sauerkraut, or the tuba (trumpet), or the national fondness for light beer.

However, the German influence on life in the U.S. runs much deeper, influencing many of the institutions, traditions, and daily habits that many today think of as being quintessentially American. Several of the most familiar elements of the American Christmas celebration, from the Christmas tree to the gift-giving Santa Claus, were gifts from the Germans, as was the Easter bunny.

Irish Americans: In colonial times, the number of the Irish population in America was also enormous. Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over one third of all immigrants to the U.S. Irish Americans have had a significant impact on American politics over the years.

No less than twelve presidents have had the Irish blood coursing through their veins. The first Irish American President of the U.S. was Andrew Jackson, who was Presbyterian, and John F. Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic president. 8 of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were Irish Americans. Two Irish Americans served as members on the first U.S. Senate and two served in the first U.S. House of Representatives.

Many Irish immigrants supported and became leaders of labor union efforts, perhaps because they so well understood the power of organizing to meet needs. E.g., Mary Harris, later known as Mother Jones, committed more than fifty years of her life to unionizing workers in various occupations throughout the country.

Irish Catholics played a significant role in building the private Catholic school system that exists in the U.S. today. In 1790, there were no Catholic schools in the nation, and by 1960, there were over 12,000 Catholic schools educating 5 million children. Irish Catholics have also made significant advancements at higher academic levels. Approximately 16% of faculty at top universities and colleges are Irish Americans. Irish Americans also helped to establish several prominent universities in the U.S., including Princeton University.

Although many of the Irish immigrants of the 1800’s were Catholics, the Irish were also responsible for establishing the first American Presbyterian and the first Methodist Church in America.

The Irish have also made their mark on American letters (Eugene O’Neill, F. Scott Fitzgerald), and in such diverse business ventures as international shipping lines, meat-curing plants and pizza parlor chains. From the other side, the Irish gave America Donegal tweeds, Waterford chrystal, shamrocks (трилистник), the Irish brogue (провинциальный акцент); they gave also the Irish Sweepstake- тотализатор, so that Americans could gamble before there were legal state lotteries , and they gave Irish linen, Irish whiskey, Irish stew, Irish wolfhounds and Irish terriers – but not the Irish potato (that tuber is sorely misnamed). Potato is an original American product.

Italian Americans: In the 1880’s, Italian immigrants numbered 300,000; in the 1890’s - 600,000; in the decade after that, more than 2 million.

A substantial number of southern Italian immigrants had only worked as farmers, and were thus qualified only for unskilled, and more dangerous, urban labor - digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New York subway system. Some members of the Mafia also immigrated to the U.S. They soon became entrenched in American organized crime, especially in the 1920’s during Prohibition, and contributed a lot to the formation of the American Mafia. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 which ended most bootlegging, the American Mafia moved into other areas, such as gambling, labor racketeering, prostitution, and, in recent years, - narcotics. Links with the Italian Mafia were also maintained.

Since the 1950’s, Italian Americans have served in several important political positions. John Pastore was voted the first governor of Italian decent in 1946 and later went on to serve as Senator. In 1984, Geraldine Ferrara became the first women in the U.S. to be nominated as vice presidential candidate.  The first Italian American to serve in a presidential cabinet was Anthony Calabrezze in 1962. Italian Americans were able to move into a wider range of careers, and became business owners and managers in greater numbers. Works by Italian-American authors began appearing in bookstores, and the Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso became a best-selling singer among Italians and non-Italians alike.

With the explosion of mass media after the war, every aspect of show business, politics, science, and art seemed to have at least one prominent Italian American in its vanguard. Marlon Brando became the face of a new school of naturalistic acting. Rocky Marciano revolutionized the sport of boxing. Enrico Fermi continued his Nobel Prize-winning work on the mysteries of the atom, Joe DiMaggio led the New York Yankees to nine World Series championships, and Frank Sinatra was the most popular entertainer in the U.S.

Slavic and Jewish Americans: In the 1880’s, the Russian countryside was strained by severe land shortages. Facing poverty and starvation, farmers and peasants from across the Empire sought a brighter future overseas, and millions set sail for the U.S. Over 200,000 Russians entered America between 1881 and 1890, and over 1.5 million between 1901 and 1910.

More than 2 million fled the country after the October revolution. These new Russian immigrants had mostly been prominent citizens of the Empire — aristocrats, professionals, and former imperial officials. The revolution gave America Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita”, who helped create a “revolution” of his own in the publishing world. Besides, Belarus is to be thanked for Igor Sikorsky and his helicopters and Russia for Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy).

To the above mentioned names we can also add the “Fathers of American Television” – David Sarnoff (1891-1971), born in Minsk, Belarus; and Vladimir Zworykin from Russia. Or the “Father of Wonder Drugs” Selman Abraham Walksman (born in Russia), who earned his title as well as the 1952 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of the antibiotic called streptomycin, the first drug successful in treating tuberculosis.

In the 1880’s, the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were overwhelmed by a wave of state-sponsored murder and destruction known as pogroms. Hundreds of thousands of Yiddish speakers settled into the U.S. and realized the extent of their linguistic freedom. The turn of the 20th century saw an explosion of new literary ventures in Yiddish. Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, and Mendele Mocher Sforim created a new, distinctively American Yiddish literature.

Yiddish theater had long survived underground in Europe, but it burst into public view in the U.S.A. Jewish immigrants, including Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, and William Fox, soon became involved in movie production as well as distribution and went on to found several of the major Hollywood studios. The research of scientists such as Jonas Salk and J. Robert Oppenheimer dramatically reshaped the postwar world.

The musicians Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, along with the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the conductor Leonard Bernstein, brought classical music to new audiences.

The brothers George and Ira Gershwin were bestselling song writers, and Henry and Joseph Mankiewicz became Oscar-winning screenwriters.

Among the latest most significant immigrant contributions known to every Internet-user is the creation of the world famous web-search page – Google Inc. The Father of Google is Sergei Brin, who with his family was among the first to leave the USSR in the 1970’s, and who today - already an American citizen - is a computer genius and a multi-millionaire.

The Jews gave America some of its most outstanding scientific and medical minds. And we all know Albert Einstein - “Father of Atomic Age” and Abraham Flexner - “Father of Modern Medical School.”

Chinese Americans: The Chinese experience in America began with the dreams of wealth. By 1851, 25,000 Chinese immigrants had left their homes and moved to California, a land some came to call gam saan, or "Gold Mountain". But in California they found that the gold mountain was an illusion. They soon discovered that they were cut off from their families and with no source of money.

In the middle of the 19th century, the expanding U.S. railroad companies gave a chance for Chinese laborers to enter the workforce. Chinese immigrants also found work in a variety of industries, from making shoes and sewing clothes to rolling cigars. They often created opportunities for themselves and launched new businesses. Many of the shops, restaurants, and laundries in the growing mining towns of California were operated by Chinese immigrants.

At the same time the Chinese endured an epidemic of violent racist attacks. They were forced out of business, run out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and massacred. In response to hard times and legal exclusion, Chinese immigrants began to build communities of their own Chinatowns, which soon became a source of fascination to many tourists and non-Chinese Americans.

Chinese immigrants and their descendants have had an increasingly great impact on the U.S. culture. From the film director Ang Lee and the novels of Amy Tan to the architecture of I.M. Pei and the hip-hop turntable skills of Kid Koala. Among the celebrities are Bruce Lee – the star of martial arts movies, Chang & Eng – the well-known Siamese twins.

Japanese Americans: As far as Japanese immigration goes, it is not numerous. Japanese two most popular destinations were the archipelago of Hawaii and America’s Pacific coast. Between 1886 and 1911, more than 400,000 men and women left Japan for the U.S. In those days, the Japanese were often portrayed as the enemies of the American worker, as a menace to American womanhood, and as corrupting agents in American society. The Immigration Act of 1924 imposed severe restrictions on all immigration from non-European countries, and effectively ended Japanese immigration.

Mexican Americans: Millions of poor Mexicans have entered the country in recent years, along with more than 1 million Puerto Ricans. Throughout the history besides giving the U.S. their land, the Mexicans contributed much to the culture of America. They showed gold-hungry Californians how to pan for gold, and introduced the technique of using mercury to separate silver from worthless ores. They gave Americans poinsettias, the Mexican hat dance, Mexican jumping beans, tacos, tortillas and all the fiery hot food.

Today, Mexican immigrants and their descendants occupy a significant place in American cultural life than ever before. Mexican Americans often serve as high government officials, as well as local mayors, sheriffs, and school board members. The Mexicans have managed to distinguish themselves as actors (Anthony Quinn, Jennifer Lopez), musicians (Trini Lopez, Joan Baez), dancers-choreographers (Jose Limon), judges (Harold Medina), politicians (Joseph Montoya) and sportsmen (Jip Plunkett, Lee Trevino). They’ve joined the ranks of successful businessmen and millionaires, too, despite the stereotyped image of a race of lazy banditos and revolutionaries.

Nowadays, 46.9 million Americans of Hispanic descent are identified as sharing a distinct “ethnicity” by the Census Bureau; 64% of them are of Mexican descent.

Cuban Americans: After Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, the U.S. accepted 700,000 Cuban refugees. Many of the first Cubans to arrive were from wealthy families and were well educated. Another group of Cuban immigrants, Marielitos that arrived later in 1980 were mostly unskilled workers, criminals, and mentally ill people.

Soon after 1965, the U.S. first began to witness the transformation from predominantly European immigration to Latin American and Asian inflows that continue to characterize today’s immigration patterns. The top 12 migrant-sending countries in 2009, by country of birth, were Mexico (173,753), People's Republic of China (87,345), Philippines (74,607), India (61,369), Cuba (45,614), Colombia (43,151), Dominican Republic (38,069), El Salvador (31,783), Vietnam (30,695), Jamaica (24,976), South Korea (24,386), Guatemala (24,146), other countries - 606,370. Muslim immigration to the U.S. is rising. And in 2005 alone, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.

To sum up, today, two challenges are seen on the U.S. immigration horizon:

• security concerns resulting from the events of September 11, 2001, and

• a comprehensive U.S. immigration reform.

Moreover, the administration and some members of the Congress have become increasingly concerned about the growing undocumented immigrant population, which is estimated to be between 9 and 12 million.

However, illegal immigrants play an important and useful role in the U.S. economy, particularly in the agricultural and construction sectors, which rely heavily upon low-cost labor to keep consumer prices low and remain competitive in global markets.

In 2012, President Obama proposed an amendment to the immigration law giving a chance for many illegal immigrants and their children born and educated in the U.S. to a get the American citizenship.