Latin American Immigration to the United States
Marta Tienda and Susana Sanchez
Introduction
Both the size and composition of the U.S. foreign-born population have grown since 1960, rising from 9.7 million to nearly 40 million in 2010. Latin Americans were a major driver of this trend, as their numbers soared from less than one million in 1960 to nearly 19 million in 2010.1 The source countries also became more diverse, especially after 1970, when flows from Central America, Cuba, and Dominican Republic surged. These census-based stock measures, which combine recent and prior immigration as well as temporary and unauthorized residents, reveal little about the pathways to U.S. residence, the ebb and flow of migrants from specific countries, or the forces that produce and sustain the flows.
In this essay we provide an overview of immigration from Latin America since 1960, focusing on changes in both the size and composition of the major flows as well as the entry pathways to lawful permanent residence in the United States, with due attention to policy shifts. We argue that current migration streams have deep historical roots and that are related both to changes in U.S. immigration policy and to unequal and inconsistent enforcement of laws on the books, with myriad unintended consequences for sending and receiving communities. The concluding section reflects on the implications of Latin American immigration for the future of the nation, highlighting the growing importance of the children of immigrants for the future labor needs of an aging nation and worrisome signs about the thwarted integration prospects of recent and future immigrants in localities where anti-immigrant hostility is on the rise.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638184/
