America's Immigrant Challenge

Among the many promises a young upstart named Bill Clinton made to the voters as he campaigned for the presidency was that, if elected, he would produce an Administration that "looks like America." Whether or not he has succeeded in that aim -- he has recruited many minorities, though critics say still not enough -- his pledge was an acknowledgment of an important fact: the face of America has been dramatically altered in the final years of the 20th century. America's face is not just about physiognomy, or even color, although endless varieties of each can be seen throughout the land. It is about the very complexion of the country, the endless and fascinating profusion of peoples, cultures, languages and attitudes that make up the great national pool.

That pool, constantly fed by new streams of immigrants, has produced in the U.S. of 1993 what author Ben J. Wattenberg has labeled "the first universal nation," a truly multicultural society marked by unparalleled diversity. It has also brought fresh challenges for the U.S. -- and considerable doubts among Americans about the wisdom of continuing the country's traditional open- door policy toward new immigrants.

A nation of immigrants from the beginning, the U.S. has welcomed most newcomers, grateful for any new pairs of hands to tame its vast interior or help stoke its huge industrial engine. For more than a century, most of the new arrivals were from Europe. But in the 1960s the U.S. undertook a basic shift in national policy, from one stacked in favor of European immigrants toward one that favored the rest of the world, particularly Third World nations. The full effects of that policy have exploded only in recent years. The past decade has seen the greatest rise in immigration since the great wave of 1901-10. Immigrants are arriving at the rate of more than 1 million a year, mostly from Asia and the vast Hispanic world.

The impact of these new immigrants is literally remaking America. Today more than 20 million Americans were born in another country. Given that there are higher birthrates among the mostly young Third World arrivals, demographers are predicting that the U.S. before long will have to redefine just who its minorities are. In 1950, for example, 75% of all the minorities in the U.S. were African Americans. Hispanics now number about 24 million, and by 2010 -- little more than a dozen years from now -- they will have surpassed blacks in number.

Even more startling, sometime during the second half of the 21st century the descendants of white Europeans, the arbiters of the core national culture for most of its existence, are likely to slip into minority status. "Without fully realizing it," writes Martha Farnsworth Riche, director of policy studies at Washington's Population Reference Bureau, "we have left the time when the nonwhite, non-Western part of our population could be expected to assimilate to the dominant majority. In the future, the white, Western majority will have to do some assimilation of its own."