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A Great and Happy People

With very few exceptions, immigration into the United States has always been contentious. On one hand, many Americans see this country not entirely accurately as a nation of immigrants. On the other hand, many others have sought to exclude the tired, the poor, the non-European, the not-Protestant, the sick the list goes on and on. And for many others, becoming Americans was not a choice, but a status imposed on them by force.

For most of the history of the United States, however, immigration has defined us and our fellow, hemisphere-wide Americans from Canada to Chile. From our language to our food, from our economy to our research laboratories, newcomers have enriched our country with their labor, ingenuity, culture and energy. And from the Oregon Trail to the Great Migration, mobility within the United States, too, has had a tremendous influence over the shape of the United States civil landscape.

These are texts that tell the stories of the unstoppable ebb and flow of human movement, unwelcome and welcome, from the first trans-Atlantic contacts to today.

Learn more at https://americancivicforum.org/project/a-great-and-happy-people/immigrants-lives/