What keeps immigrants coming to America?
March 21, 1996
Web posted at: 1:30 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Anne McDermott
Supporters of a controversial bill to revamp U.S. immigration laws predict the House will pass it Thursday. Amendments that sparked angry debate Wednesday would allow states to ban free public education for children of illegal aliens and would require some immigrants to pass standardized tests to prove they can speak English.
There is a proposal to divide the bill, packaging restrictions on legal and illegal immigrants separately. Many feel that public anger over illegal immigrants should not affect policies for people entering the country legally.
An immigration-reform vote in the Senate is expected in April.
Correspondent Anne McDermott examines why immigration reform has developed into a major political issue in the last of CNN's four-part series, "Whose America?"
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- America. What is it that makes people fight and die for her; that makes people fight to get to her? During his presidency, Ronald Reagan quoted a man who thought he knew.
"You can go to France to live but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Japan but you cannot become a German or a Japanese. But the one place in the world, he said, where anyone from any corner of the world can come (is) America. Come to live and become an American." (264K AIFF sound or 264K WAV sound)
"God bless America," says an elderly woman -- an immigrant from Romania who has learned to speak English. But assimilation comes hard for others. In Los Angeles, a Guatemalan native, speaking in Spanish, says he feels free in the United States, "but not quite American." Perhaps his young daughter will feel differently one day.
Minorities becoming the majority
Today, whites make up about 75 percent of the U.S. population. But some experts say that in another 50 years, they will hover below the 50 percent mark. Minorities will be the majority. And some Americans, including many who were immigrants themselves, don't like that.
"I think we're getting too many across the border," says Los Angeles resident Eddie Gandara, whose own roots lie in Mexico.
It's the old American quandary. We are the land of liberty. Give us your human castoffs. But don't let them live near me.
At the turn of the century, Irish immigrants were despised. And the Irish were white. It's an advantage Chinese immigrants didn't have when 19th-century California enacted laws against them. Now it's Hispanics who say they are feeling the sting.
Are immigrants good for economy?
Proposition 187, which California voters approved in 1994, called for denying medical care and education to illegal immigrants. Court challenges have crippled the measure, but the anti-immigrant feelings it spawned haven't disappeared.
Some Californians say those feelings are linked to the state's slumping economy, but others argue the economy would be a bust without immigrants who often take jobs no one else wants.
"The industry and the success of these immigrants leaves the so-called white Anglo-European Americans with a choice," says historian Philip Ethington. "They can either get used to it or they can continue to be on the wrong side of the great historical trends."
And then there's the language dilemma. While some immigrants can't, don't or won't learn English, there are others who insist their children be taught the language of their new country.
America is slowly changing color, and fear won't stop it. The change will be better in ways and worse in ways. But it will always be America, says essayist Ben Wattenberg. The United States is "the only nation in the world everybody looks to, because everybody feels they have a stake in it."
And because they feel that way, they will keep coming. And coming. To America.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Special Report
On Sunday, join CNN's Charles Bierbauer at 10:30 p.m. EST for the CNN special, "Whose America?"
Previous stories in the "Whose America?" series
- U.S. Border Patrol under the gun to stop illegal immigrants
- The long road to the American dream
- Coming to America: Melting pot starts to boil
Related Stories
- Immigration reform bill faces opposition
- Open arms, outstretched hands
- Rush is on for U.S. citizenship
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