Latin American immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: Throughout U.S. history, Latin Americans have immigrated in waves to North America. By the 2020s, the Hispanic population of the United States totaled 62.5 million people. Early Hispanic immigrants tended to congregate in western and southwestern states in the U.S. However, by the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American immigrants were settling throughout the entire country—in large urban centers, suburban areas, and small towns—and were becoming one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States.

In response to changing historical conditions, immigration from Latin America to the United States ebbed and flowed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The late twentieth-century surge in Hispanic immigration was a product of many factors, including the increasing economic globalization of labor markets, the long shared border between the United States and Mexico, and increasingly attractive economic opportunities for immigrants in the United States.

Any consideration of “Latin American” immigration must keep in mind the wide diversity and heterogeneous nature of the many Hispanic or Latino people living in the United States. Immigrants have come to the United States from nineteen Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of the Western Hemispherebringing with them a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. They have settled in almost every region of the United States, doing so under a variety of circumstances and for different reasons.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most Hispanics lived in the southwestern region of what is now the United States. This region constituted the northern part of Spain’s New World empire until Mexico became independent in 1821. Afterward, it was part of Mexico until the Mexican War of 1846–48when the region passed to the United States. Most of the Hispanic residents of the region remained after 1848 and became American citizens. Initially, Mexicans and other Hispanics continued their historical patterns of moving back and forth between Mexico and the American Southwest in order to work and conduct tradebut they had to cross a new international border to do so. That border would later become the major crossing point for new Hispanic immigration into the United States.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the United States began receiving Hispanic immigrants from other countries. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, small numbers of Puerto Ricans and Cubans came the eastern United States to work temporarilylater returning home. These two patterns of nineteenth-century immigration would frame, to a large extent, the continued movement of Latin Americans into the United States during the twentieth century.

Twentieth-Century Developments

Immigration from Latin America continued steadily into the twentieth centurya pattern due to changing political and economic conditions in Latin America. During the first decades of the century, Latin Americans came to the United States in search of work. As jobs grew scarce in their own countries, U.S. economic stability drew them into the large urban centers of the Northeast, Midwest, and Southwest. While immigration levels dipped slightly during the Great Depression of the 1930s, they began to rise again immediately after World War II ended in 1945. At that time, the U.S. government began playing an active role instituting policies to encourage an already cyclical migration pattern in which Latin Americans traveled to the United States on a temporary basis to earn money and later return to their home countries. As a result, the already existing movement from regions such as Mexico and the Caribbean continued, with the majority of immigrants being men who worked to support families whom they left at home. Upon finishing their job contracts or seasonal work, some settled in the United States and others returned to Mexico.

A turning point in twentieth-century immigration came about when the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This legislationcombined with late modifications in U.S. immigration policy, including tighter control of the US-Mexican border, and changing political relations between the US and other hemispheric governmentsfundamentally transformed the nature of Latin American immigration. Whereas Hispanics had historically tended to immigrate to a limited number of US urban regions, they were now spreading out all over the United States. Moreover, because the 1965 immigration law placed more emphasis on the reunification of families, increased numbers of women, children, and entire families were beginning to enter the United States to work and settle permanently. In a process known as “chain migration,” Hispanic communities developed strong social networks linking their new American communities with their home regions in other countries. Latin Americans began organizing and participating more fully in the civic and political lives of their new communities, and were becoming visible at both the local and national levels.

Many Latin American immigrants maintained dual citizenshipwhich allows them to vote in elections in both the United States and their home countries. Latin American immigrants tended to travel frequently to their home countries, and many of them send remittanceprimarily monetaryto family members outside the United States.

Large-scale Latin American immigration had a measurable impact on the demographic structure of the United States. Hispanics are, on average, younger than the general population. Moreover, they are adding significant numbers of young people to labor forces in regions of the United States where native-born populations are aging. By expanding the pool of those who work labor-intensiveand typically low-wagejobs, they have helped to reinvigorate parts of the United States that had been experiencing net population losses. Because many of them are also settling in both rural and urban areas, their sheer numbers are causing local communities to rethink how to integrate the newly arrived groups into the civic and cultural lives of their towns and cities. Increased Hispanic participation in political processes has helped to shift emphases to issues important to immigrant communities and to change voting patterns in many regions.

Push-Pull Factors

The reasons why Latin Americans immigrated to the United States have changed since the early nineteenth century. In the pastparticularly during the mid-nineteenth centuryeducated upper- and middle-class Latin Americans tended to migrate to the United States either to work as professionals and then return home or to they migrated to send their children to U.S. schools. This was especially true among Hispanics in the island countries of the Caribbean. During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, members of other socioeconomic classes arrived in the United States, a trend that continued into the twenty-first century. Latin America can be viewed as divided into four distinct zones:

•Mexico

•Caribbean basinor West Indies

•Central America

•South America

Mexican Immigrants

Historically, most Latin American immigrants came from Mexico. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, movement across the U.S.-Mexican border was fluidpeople from both sides could cross with little obstruction. Consequently, Mexicans could travel north to work and return home easily. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of people moving north across the border began to increase significantly, and larger numbers of immigrants from Mexico’s lower and middle classes began arriving on the U.S. side in search of political stability and economic opportunity.

During the 1940s, the U.S. and Mexican governments negotiated agreementssuch as the bracero programto create more orderly systems of bringing workers into the United States. Under these programs, large numbers of Hispanic migrant workers traveled north to the United States to work in the construction and agricultural sectors of the U.S. economy. After completing their contracts, they generally returned homesome remained permanently in the United States. Contract labor programs continued into the 1960s, and through these programs, the U.S. government recognized and formalized an already existing migration pattern.

The border between the United States and Mexico extends approximately 1,920 miles along the southern edges of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the northern edges of the Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coauila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. The border runs through mostly arid terrain ranging from sandy flatlands to rugged mountains.

While Mexican immigrants came into the United States in increasing numbers for several decadesby 2014 the more than eleven million Mexican immigrants residing in the country represented the largest single immigrant group in the United Statesthe number of new individuals entering the country from Mexico decreased in the 2010s, with countries such as China and India had surpassed Mexico in supplying the largest numbers of new immigrants.

Explanations for the decrease in new Mexican immigrants included a lower birth rate in Mexico and stricter border enforcementincluding higher rates of deportation of Mexican immigrants. Additionally, the U.S. presidential election of 2016 inspired greater anti-Mexican immigrant sentiment in the United States as Republican candidate Donald Trump consistently claimed that most immigrants entering the country from Mexico were criminals and rapistscalling for a large wall to be built along the border and paid for by Mexico.

Caribbean Immigrants

The West Indies islands of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hispaniola—which are shared by the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic and French-speaking Haiti—constitute the second region of Latin America. Though separated by open expanses of sea, these islands share a geographic proximity to the United States that accounted in part for the movement of many West Indians to the US mainland. During the nineteenth century, upper- and middle-class Hispanic islanders traveled in small numbers from the Caribbean to the United States. By the beginning of the twentieth century, their numbers had gradually increased but still remained small in actual numbers. The 1920s and 1930s saw an increase in West Indian immigration as job opportunities were becoming scarcer in the Caribbean.

During the mid-twentieth century, West Indian immigration numbers increased substantially. The economic and political circumstances varied among the Hispanic islands, but all these islands were experiencing growing populations and shrinking job bases. People from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico—which by then was a US dependency—continued to go to the United States primarily to work, and they formed large communities, primarily in the Northeast. Cuban immigration surged during the 1960s as a result of the island’s communist revolution, and it continued to be strong into the 1980s and 1990s.

Immigrants from the Caribbean, largely Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Trinidad, and Tobago, continued to settle in the United States into the twenty-first century as well, representing nine percent of the nation's total immigrant population by 2014, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Central American Immigrants

Significant immigration from Central American nations did not begin until the late twentieth century. Immigrants from those nations have dispersed over a wide area of the United Statesparticularly the South, Midwest, and Far West. Political upheavals during the 1970s and 1980s impelled many people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua to migrate north. A large part of these immigrants were members of the working class and had less education than other Latin American immigrants. Consequently, they tended to experience higher levels of poverty after settling in the United States. In contrast, immigrants from the more politically stable Costa Rica tended to be more educated and better equipped to find success in the United States. Even after political unrest largely abated in Central America by the early twenty-first century, immigrants continued to come to the United States in large numbers. By 2013, according to the Migration Policy Institute, there were around 3.2 million Central Americans living in the United Statesseven percent of the total immigrant population in the country. Additionally, in the 2010s, the United States saw a sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied children from countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Hondurascountries with rampant gang violence and drug issues as well as struggling economiesillegally crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. By 2021, there were roughly 3.8 million Central Americans living in the U.S.

South American Immigrants

Although South America has the largest population of any of the four Latin American zones, it has historically supplied the fewest immigrants to the United States. However, during the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, the rate of immigration from South American nations more than doubled. The countries sending the most people to the United States were Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. The number of immigrants from Colombia were particularly high because of political instability in that country. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of immigrants have come from Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, and Bolivia. Immigrants from South America have settled throughout the United States, but they have tended to concentrate in the Northeast and along the East Coast. Among Latin American nations, the countries of South America are the most distant from the United States. Because of the great distances immigrants from those countries travel to reach the United States, the immigrants have worked especially hard to develop social and support networks to facilitate their journey. By 2014, a report from the Migration Policy Institute indicated there were 2.9 million individuals from South American countries residing in the United Statesseven percent of the country's total immigrant population.

South American immigrants have traditionally brought higher levels of educationtheir emigration from their homelands created serious “brain drains” in their home countries. However, by the early twenty-first century, increasing portions of immigrants were coming from the working classes of their countries. Chilean immigrants have generally had higher levels of education and professional skills, while Paraguayan and Bolivian immigrants tended to be less educated. Paraguay’s high rate of population growth has made the immigrants coming from that country younger than those of most other Latin American nations.

Changing Patterns in Immigration

With the large increase of Latin American immigration to the United States after the 1960s, extended family and kinship networks have grown apart. They, in turn, facilitated the development of chain migration links. Whereas in the past, most Latin Americans coming to the United States were men planning to work and save money before returning home, the late twentieth century saw a large increase in the numbers of women, children, and families following established migration routes to live and work in American communities in which Hispanic family and social contacts were already established.

These social and kinship networks also led to generally more participation in local civic organizations, clubs, and churchesas well as a renewed use of mutual aid societies to assist and support new immigrants. At the same time, the Spanish-language media and press have become increasingly important disseminators of news, culture, entertainment, and advertising to Spanish-speaking markets.

Demographics of Hispanics in the United States

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021, the Hispanic population of the United States totaled 62.5 million people. This number represented a nineteen percent increase over the previous decade and is significantly higher than the overall United States growth rate of seven percent. This increase in Hispanics accounted for more than 50 percent of the total population growth in the United States since 2010. Those claiming Mexican ancestry formed 60 percent of the total Hispanic population. Although Mexicans have historically been the largest nationality among Hispanic immigrants, by 2021, this trend was changing. Because of the severe economic downturn in Venezuela, large-scale immigration to the United States resulted in Venezuelans becoming the Hispanic demographic with the fastest population growth at 172 percent.

By 2022 Hispanics became the largest ethnic groups in California and Texas. In Texas, not only are Hispanics the largest ethnic group, they are also the state's largest demographic. According to data from the 2020 U.S. Census, Hispanics form 40.2 percent of the population in Texas, now outnumbering those who self-identify as white39.4 percent. As there is no longer a racial majority in Texas, and only pluralities, Texas is often referred to as a "majority-minority" state.

Twenty-First Century Immigration Issues

In the twenty-first-century, the United States became caught up in a global conundrum facing developed countries. This was where non-immigrant populations in developed countries experienced declining birth rates and longer life expectancies. The result was that older societal segments in the developed world were growing larger, while numbers in the younger demographics contracted. Many Western countries met labor shortfalls by encouraging the entrance of a large number of immigrant workers. These same societies, nonetheless, came to feel their native cultures to be at risk by the presence of foreign newcomers. Ironically, many of these Western countries had culturally transformed societies outside their borders as colonizers in previous centuries. This situation had reversed itself in the twenty-first century. Some countries such as Canada were forthright in acknowledging their dependence on immigration to meet labor and population replenishment needs. In other countries, right-wing nationalist movements emerged and threatened to become the popular ruling party of many Western governments, a situation not experienced since the end of World War II in 1945. Countries demonstrating these trends included France, Germany, Norway, Holland, and others.

In the mid-2020s, the political response of the United States more resembled that of Western Europe. The spotlight the topic of immigration assumed in presidential elections was a prime illustration. For example, beginning with his first public statement announcing his candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump made immigration a central theme of his three presidential campaigns (2016, 2020, 2024) and presidency (2017-2021). The American public came to accept immigration as a core national issue. Immigration reduction and border control evolved into important party platforms for both parties.

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