In the spring of 2006, an issue as old as the American nation suddenly burst again onto the center stage of politics—immigration. As we have seen, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 led to a radical shift in the origins of those entering the United States, and especially the rapid growth of the Hispanic population. The influx of immigrants proceeded apace during the first five years of the twenty-first century. By 2005, immigrants represented 12.4 percent of the nation’s population, up from 11.2 percent in 2000. Many of these newcomers were bypassing traditional immigrant destinations and heading for areas in the Midwest, small-town New England, and the Upper South. The city with the highest rate of growth of its immigrant population from 1990 to 2005 was Nashville, Tennessee. Racial and ethnic diversity was now a fact of life in the American heartland.
Alongside legal immigrants, undocumented newcomers made their way to the United States, mostly from Mexico. At the end of 2005, it was estimated, there were 11 million illegal aliens in the United States, 7 million of them members of the workforce. Economists disagree about their impact. It seems clear that the presence of large numbers of uneducated, low-skilled workers pushes down wages at the bottom of the economic ladder, especially affecting African-Americans. On the other hand, immigrants both legal and illegal receive regular paychecks, spend money, and pay taxes. They fill jobs for which American workers seem to be unavailable because the wages are so low. It is estimated that more than one-fifth of construction workers, domestic workers, and agricultural workers are in the United States illegally.
As noted in previous chapters, Mexican immigration has long been a controversial subject, especially in the Southwest. Before 1924, there were no limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. During the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans were repatriated. The bracero program of the 1940s and 1950s brought thousands of Mexicans into the United States under labor contracts as migrant agricultural workers. Operation Wetback in 1954 sent 1 million Mexicans home. Since the rise of the Chicano movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, the Mexican-American community has generally defended the rights of undocumented workers, although some advocates have feared that the presence of illegal aliens lowers the standing—in the eyes of other Americans—of everyone of Mexican descent. Unions generally fear that such workers lower wages for all low-skilled workers and make labor organizing more difficult.
In 1986, the Reagan administration had granted amnesty—that is, the right to remain in the United States and become citizens—to 3 million illegal immigrants. During the 1990s, conservatives in states with significant populations of illegal immigrants, especially California, had called for a tough crackdown on their entry and rights within the United States. As governor of Texas, by contrast, George W. Bush had strived to win Hispanic support and downplayed the immigration issue. But in 2006, with many Americans convinced that the United States had lost control of its borders and that immigration was in part responsible for the stagnation of real wages, the House of Representatives approved a bill making it a felony to be in the country illegally and a crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants.