What is the current situation with regard to immigration in the US today?

There are many ways to answer this question as it is very broad and somewhat vague.  Let us look at some of the most important facts about immigration today.

Perhaps the most important fact about immigration today is that we are in midst of an immigration boom.  As you can see from the graph at the bottom of the link below, we are near to an all-time high in percentage of Americans who were born in another country.  That percentage has more than doubled since 1970 and is only slightly lower than the percentage in the last great wave of immigration in the early 1900s.

A second very important fact about immigration today is that it is comprised of both legal and illegal immigrants.  This is the first time in our history that this has been true.  This is mainly important because it makes our political dialogue about immigration more complicated as we have to try to distinguish between our attitudes towards illegal immigrants and legal immigrants.

A third fact has to do with illegal immigrants and how they come.  While we have people like Donald Trump who vow to build a wall across our border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country, this is really not how all of them come.  According to this link, something like half of all illegal immigrants actually entered the country legally but then did not leave when they were supposed to.

A fourth fact about immigration today has to do with the ethnicity of today’s immigrants.  In the past, immigrant waves were made up exclusively of Europeans.  Today, this is not true.  Today’s immigrants come from Latin America, particularly Mexico.  They come from Asia and Africa.  They are, therefore, much more different from previous waves of immigrants in terms of ethnic background.  This is changing the racial makeup of our country.

A final fact about immigration today is that it is very controversial.  Some Americans think we should allow more immigration on humanitarian grounds.  Others say our economy needs more unskilled workers to do tasks “native” Americans won’t.  Others say we need to keep out the unskilled and only allow in skilled workers whose skills are in demand and who will add a great deal of value to our economy.  Others simply oppose immigration because they believe we have too many immigrants in our country as it is.  Immigration has become an issue that divides us more than it ever has in the past.