Page 1: The Development of American Attitudes Toward Immigration
The audio file attached here acts as a guided tour throughout the Omeka Exhibit walking the listener through each artifact (graph or chart) related to different variables that influence American attitudes regarding immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the PEW Research Center (2018), the U.S. is the country with the largest number of immigrants in the world with 44.8 million immigrants living in America (Budiman, Tamir, Mora, & Noe-Bustamante, 2020). The graph titled “Foreign-born Population in the United States: 1850-2018” reflects the growth of the immigrant population within the U.S. over the last century and a half (PEW, 2018). In 2018, the percentage of the U.S. population that immigrated was 13.7% compared to only 5.4% in 1960 when only 9.7 million immigrants were living within the U.S. (Budiman et al., 2020).
The chart from the PEW Research Center (2015) titled “Views of Immigrants in Europe and the U.S.” reflects how half or 51% of the Americans surveyed claim that immigrants “strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents” while 41% of Americans claim immigrants “are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing, and health care” (Krogstad, J. M., 2020). This data indicates that the views Americans have towards immigrants are more positive and the PEW Research Center explains that the views are, indeed, more positive today than previously in 1994 when survey data collected indicated that only 31% of Americans held the view that immigrants strengthen the U.S. and 63% saw them as a burden on the country (Krogstad, J. M., 2020). In other words, the views shifted from negative in the 1990s to positive in the 2010s, but they have shifted to become more negative again. Why?
