5: Until Now, the U.S. Has Always Been Very Welcoming to Immigrants

 5: Until Now, the U.S. Has Always Been Very Welcoming to Immigrants

Many Americans are perplexed when they hear about immigrants coming to the country illegally. Why, they wonder, don't they simply apply for residency and get in the legitimate way — just like so many of their ancestors did 100 years ago? As we said earlier, the vast majority of immigrants do enter legally, but it's an arduous process today.

During the United States' first 100 years as a newly minted country, any able-bodied immigrant was allowed in. They just had to physically get here (though that was often problematic). Today, there are many rules about who can and cannot enter the country.

Most immigrants enter by obtaining a family-sponsored or employer-sponsored visa. These visas can be pricy ($200 to more than $700). The U.S. also limits the number of immigrants per category and by country of origin. On Nov. 1, 2014, there were 4.3 million people waiting for a family-sponsored visa, but just 226,000 family-sponsored visas were due to be handed out in 2015. (Visas for spouses and children under 21 aren't subject to limits.) Also, the number of immigrant visas handed out to citizens of any one country can't exceed 7 percent of the total number of visas each year. This means years-long waits for most foreigners. Some citizens of Mexico and the Philippines have been on the family-sponsored visa waiting list for more than 20 years [sources: Santana, U.S. Department of State].

If someone was trying to escape violence in his or her own country, or to reunite with family members, they may reluctantly opt for an illegal entry rather than waiting for years or decades.

3: Widespread Green Card Marriage Fraud is Occurring

One way an immigrant can quickly obtain a green card is to marry a U.S. citizen. So naturally a lot of green card marriage fraud occurs annually, say some people. You've likely heard of "mail-order brides." Well, now there are loads of websites that help people in other countries hook up with Americans willing to marry them for money just so the foreigners can enter the U.S. legally.

It's true such websites exist. And it's true that marriage fraud occurs. But not as much as you might think. Between 2007 and 2009, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services discovered about 600 fraudulent green card applications, but that was among 700,000 petitions for foreign spouses, which is only about .0009 percent [source: Dwyer].

Marriage fraud does occur partly because U.S. immigration laws make it relatively easy for the spouses and minor children of citizens to quickly enter the country, in order to reunite families. In 2013, 66 percent of the total number of new LPRs — lawful permanent residents, or green card recipients — were family-sponsored immigrants. Foreign spouses made up about 38 percent of all family-sponsored LPRs [source: Monger and Yankay].

2: Immigrants Refuse to Learn English

One complaint native-born Americans often make about today's immigrants is that they don't want to learn English. Instead, they want everyone to learn their language. Or have interpreters available everywhere they go. When people came into this country years ago, they were only too eager to learn the mother tongue of their adopted land.

There may be a wealth of foreign-language radio and TV stations, or innumerable interpretation services, but that doesn't mean immigrants are spurning English. Au contraire.

Today's immigrants do attempt to learn English, as do their children; the demand for English as a Second Language (ESL)

classes is far higher than the available supply [source: Nevarez]. Only a mere 7 percent of second-generation Latinos continue to speak Spanish as their main language [source: Equal Rights Center]. With the prevalence of English across the globe today, there are actually more immigrants coming to the country already fluent in the language than in the past — 48 percent of recent legal immigrants are proficient in English before arriving in the U.S. [source: Guo].

Interestingly, many native-born Americans don't realize that their ancestors actually clung to their roots for a long time after emigrating there. In 1917, nearly 50 years after German immigration had peaked, there were still more than 700 German-language newspapers being printed in the U.S. [source: Teaching Tolerance].

1: Immigrants Take American Jobs

One of the more persistent misconceptions about immigration today is that immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans. Yet if you take a good look, you'll quickly see that immigrants are often working at jobs such as dishwasher, gardener, housekeeper, maid — low-paying grunt jobs, typically without benefits, that many American citizens spurn. Immigrants take these jobs because they really want to work.

A study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found 86 percent of first-generation male immigrants were employed, a higher rate than that of native-borns (83 percent). Even 84 percent of male immigrants without a high school education had jobs, compared with just 58 percent of native-born Americans.

In addition, innumerable studies soundly refute this notion of immigrants stealing jobs. A 2012 study by The Brookings Institution found immigrants actually better the earnings of native-born Americans because the two groups tend to be employed in complementary fields. For example, immigrant roofers and gardeners can help American builders and landscapers land more business and expand their companies [source: Greenstone and Looney]. And the U.S. Small Business Administration found immigrants are more entrepreneurial than natives. One in 10 immigrants is a business owner, and 620 of every 100,000 immigrants starts a business each month [source: Fairlie].

Lots More Information

Author's Note: 10 Misconceptions About U.S. Immigration

Immigration is a loaded topic in America today, and in many other countries around the world. I don't know exactly how my great-grandparents got to America in the late 1800s/early 1900s from Eastern Europe. Nor do I know if they were greeted with open arms, suspicion or hostility. I know several of them borrowed money from family and friends to pay for a ticket in steerage, which was the cheapest way to get to America from Europe (by boat). Steerage was a pretty grim place at that point in history. People were crammed together in tight spaces. Toilets were pots and pans. Cots were lined up one next to the other, and mattresses were filled with seaweed or straw. Meals were sparse. Illness was rampant. Once they got here, they went straight to work at some pretty menial jobs. But they loved it in America. And every successive generation prospered a little bit more. I'm so grateful my ancestors were able to relocate to a country that helped them better their lives and lay a foundation for increasing prosperity for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (me!). Today, I hope people around the globe are given the same opportunity.