-
Emigration to North America slowed between 1760 and 1815. This was a time of intermittent warfare in Europe and North America, as well as on the Atlantic Ocean.
-
Most early immigrants came from northwestern Europe. At the time of the first national census of the United States in 1790, more than two-thirds of the white population was of British origin, with Germans and Dutch next in importance.
-
For the first half of the 1815-1913 period, most migrants continued to come from northwestern Europe. They were followed in subsequent decades by streams of people from southern and eastern Europe.
-
Between about 1815 and the start of World War I in 1914, immigration tended to increase with each passing decade.
-
Within a century after that, the frontier reached the Pacific Ocean, and by 1890, the U.S. Bureau of the Census was able to announce that the American settlement frontier was gone entirely.
-
By 1913, well over four-fifths of all immigrants were from these areas of Europe, especially Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
-
The United States passed its first major legislation to restrict immigration in the 1920s.
-
Between 1960 and 1987, for example, the farm population fell from more than 15 million to under 6 million.
-
Far more liberal immigration laws were passed in the 1960s.
-
U.S. population statistics for the 1970s and 1980s suggest that a fourth major mobility period is at hand.
-
In the late 1980s, Mexico, the Philippines, and the West Indies provided the greatest number of migrants to the United States.
-
In 1990, the United States had a population approaching 250 million, with a density of roughly 235 people per square kilometer.
-
Today, the United States typically receives roughly 700,000 legal immigrants annually. About 275,000 illegal aliens also enter the country each year.