Migration and Immigration in the 1990s and 2000s in two minutes
- The South and West held about half of Americans in 1980 and six in ten by 2010. Cheap land, low taxes, weak unions, military bases and air conditioning drew people there.
- New jobs drew people south and west: Japanese and German carmakers built Southern plants, Silicon Valley grew, and Black Americans moved to the South in growing numbers, reversing the Great Migration.
- Politics followed people. Every census moved House seats and electoral votes south and west, and the once-Democratic South became the base of the Republican Party.
- The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended national-origin quotas and favored family ties, so most new immigrants came from Asia and Latin America. By 2010 about one American in eight was foreign-born.
- The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized about 2.7 million people and fined employers who hired unauthorized workers, but hiring continued. By 2007 about 12 million people lacked legal status.
- Courts blocked California's 1994 Proposition 187, which would have denied public services to undocumented immigrants. A 1996 law sped deportations, and DACA in 2012 shielded people brought here as children.
- On the exam: Questions ask for the causes of Sun Belt growth and post-1965 immigration, their political effects, and comparisons with the immigration wave of 1880 to 1924 and its quotas.
Topic 9.5 key terms
- Real wages
Pay after prices. If prices rise as fast as the paycheck, real wages stay flat. Average real hourly pay for production and nonsupervisory workers was $9.27 in 1973 and $8.90 in 2010, in 1982–84 dollars.
- Sun Belt
The South and the West, where people, jobs and political power kept growing after World War II. By 2010 about six in ten Americans lived in those two regions.
- Right-to-work law
A state law that bars a contract making workers join a union or pay dues. Many states in the South and West had these laws, which is one reason new factories there stayed non-union.
- New Great Migration
Black Americans moving to the South after decades of leaving it. The South's first net gain came in the late 1970s. From 1995 to 2000 it gained about 350,000 Black residents from other parts of the country.
- Reapportionment
After each census, the 435 House seats are divided among the states by population. Electoral votes move with those seats, so growth in the South and West shifted presidential elections too.
- Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Ended the 1920s national-origins quotas, which had favored northern and western Europe. Family members came first, then workers with needed skills. A Unit 8 law. This chart is what it did over fifty years.
- Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)
The 1986 law. Legal status for about 2.7 million people already here, and fines for employers who knowingly hired workers without papers. False documents were easy to buy, so the hiring went on.
- Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
A 1996 law. It made deportation faster and easier, and it made fighting an order harder. It did not stop the jobs that drew people here. The official title is the one on the right-hand page.
- DACA
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a Homeland Security memo on June 15, 2012. It let people brought here as children stay and work for a time. About 800,000 had received it by 2017. Congress did not make it a law.
- Model minority
A stereotype. It treats Asian Americans as one successful group. Time's 1987 cover helped spread it. It hid refugees and other families who were struggling, and the differences among Asian American communities. The AP course description calls that article a racial generalization.
- Border wall
A barrier on the U.S.–Mexico border. On August 31, 2016, a Phoenix crowd cheered 'Build that wall!' CBS News reported those words. The textbook dates the speech September 1 and prints 'Build the wall!'
- Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986)
The 1986 bargain. Legal status for about 2.7 million people already here, and fines for employers who hired people without papers. Forged papers were cheap, and the hiring went on.
- Causation
Say what led to what, with a connecting word: because, so, while, and, but. The job ticket's stamps trace the chain, from the Homestead mill to the new neighbors.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
South and West
1980–2010
Key terms: Sun Belt, Right-to-work law, New Great Migration, Reapportionment
The jobs that did grow kept heading one direction on the map.
In 1980, about half of Americans lived in the South and the West. By 2010, six in ten did.
The reasons went back to the years after World War II. Cheap land, low taxes, weak unions, military bases, and air conditioning.
Japanese and German carmakers built their American plants in Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and Alabama. Their workers mostly stayed out of unions.
In 1971 a trade newspaper popularized a name for the orchards south of San Francisco. Silicon Valley.
Atlanta became a capital of Black business and music. So So Def Records started there in 1993. In the late 1990s, the South gained about 350,000 Black Americans from other regions, reversing the Great Migration.
Gilbert, Arizona, once called itself the hay shipping capital of the world. In 1980, about 5,700 people lived there. By 2010, about 208,000. Some of its water came by canal from the Colorado River, across the desert.
Every census moved seats in Congress south and west. Between the 1980 and 2020 elections, Texas and Florida each gained twelve electoral votes. New York lost twelve.
Every president elected from 1964 through 2004 came from Texas, California, Georgia or Arkansas. And the once-Democratic South became the base of the Republican Party.
The Sun Belt changed the country. The people moving there changed the Sun Belt.
New Neighbors
1965–2012
Key terms: Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, DACA, Model minority
Someone had to do the new work.
The 1965 law ended quotas that favored Europe, and put families first. Fifty years later, most new immigrants came from Asia and Latin America.
By 2010, one American in eight had been born abroad. That was the highest share since the 1920s.
In 1986 Congress gave legal status to about 2.7 million people, and fined employers who hired without papers.
a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows
Forged papers were cheap. The hiring went on.
In the 1990s, immigrants moved to towns far from the border. Most of those towns had never seen many immigrants.
In November 1990, IBP opened a beef plant in Lexington, Nebraska. It stood where a combine factory had closed.
In the mid-1990s, the Border Patrol walled off the busiest crossings, near San Diego and El Paso. So people crossed the Arizona desert instead. Deaths rose from 241 in 1999 to 472 in 2005. Men, women, and children, on foot.
In 1994, California voters barred undocumented immigrants from public schools and clinics. Supporters said the state couldn't afford them. Courts blocked the law. In 1996, Congress made deportation faster and easier. Families were split.
By 2007, about twelve million people lived here without legal status. Congress failed to pass a reform. In 2012 a policy shielded people brought here as children.
Refugees came from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Engineers came from India, China, and Taiwan. By 2010, more new immigrants came from Asia than from Latin America. More than half of Silicon Valley's new tech companies had an immigrant founder.
In 1987, Time's cover read, Those Asian-American Whiz Kids. The model minority label hid families, many of them refugees, who were struggling.
Immigrants changed what Americans ate, watched, and read. In 1991, Americans spent more on salsa than on ketchup.
My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.
¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? was the first bilingual sitcom, made in Miami from 1977 to 1980. Federal education money paid for it, and stations reran it for years. In one episode, the family argues about becoming citizens. The father thinks it would betray Cuba. It shows what its makers thought Cuban families in Miami would recognize. It can't show you a Nebraska meatpacking town in 2000.
Two Forums
1980 · 2016
Key terms: Border wall, Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986), Real wages, Causation
In April 1980, two Republican candidates were asked about Texas schools. They answered by talking about workers from Mexico.
These are good people, strong people.
make it possible for them to come here legally with work permit
And when they want to go back, they can go back.
In August 2016, at a rally in Phoenix, a crowd chanted, Build that wall!
What changed? The 1986 bargain didn't stop the hiring. The numbers grew. After 2001, the border became a security question. Workers whose pay had stalled blamed the newcomers. Economists still disagree about how much immigration held wages down.
Here is where the work went. Into machines and down digital lines. Out of the mills and the union halls. South and west. And to new neighbors who took jobs at both ends of the new economy.
Reader: a young wife, Lexington, early 1990s
We like this town and as long as he can physically hold out, we plan to be here.