The US Immigration

Immigration to the US is the international movement chance of people around the world to reside their nationality permanently in the country. Immigration becomes a major source of population growth and cultural changes through United States history. And nowadays, the United States is the top country that has the largest immigrant population.

Immigration to the US has stared since the 17th. Immigrants were mostly from Europe. Until the 20th, there were more people from Europe, Mexico, Asian countries that moved to the US. From 2000 to 2010, nearly 14 million immigrants entered the US and over one million persons got their US citizenship in 2008. According to the world’s statistic, the US has about 244 million international migrants worldwide, representing 19.1% and 14.4% on the US population in 2015.

One of the reasons the US allows more people immigrate to the country is economic and social impact by the immigrants. Immigration has always been a formidable engine of economic and demographic growth for the United States. During the last decades of the 19th century, immigrants contributed substantially, providing labor for the industrialization and electrification of the country. That wave of immigration was ended by the very restrictive immigration laws passed in 1929. While the “Immigration and Nationality Act” of 1965 abolished national quotas and allowed the flow of immigrants to resume, it has only been during the last 30 years that the mobility of the world’s people has increased significantly. Young, motivated, and often highly educated people are on the move, and many of them would like to come to the United States. With its 41 million immigrants, the United States is by far the largest magnet for international migrants. Moreover, according to Gallup World Polls, there are about 150 million more people who say that they would migrate to the United States if they had the opportunity.

People love moving to the US because they want to look for a better life. For example, the refugees from my country, Vietnam after the 1970s, when the US-Vietnam war ended, the government treated their citizens really bad, they didn’t have enough food to eat, no house to live, no field to work, and more important is no freedom. Therefore, they tried to escape the border by boat and hoped for being accepted by the US or European countries. And the things they were looking for at that time was freedom and a better life. For my experience, I really appreciate the US immigration policy that gives me a chance to become US citizen after 13 years processing document and 5 years contribution as a permanent resident.

Nowadays, it is reasonable for the country has a strict policy because it accepted too many people from the last two centuries so the government has to control the US population. How is strict policy? It is more difficult about the requirements to become a US citizen. However, the strict immigration policy of the US makes non-US people try to get into the country illegally, especially people from Mexico. Therefore, the government is seeking more solutions to prevent it as much as possible.