ABSTRACT
Interest in international migration in the social sciences has tended to ebb and flow with various waves of emigration and immigration. The United States is now well into the fourth great wave of immigration. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the immigrant population stands at a historic high of 36 million, representing 12.5 percent of the total population. As the foreignborn share of the U.S. population continues to rise, the number of secondgeneration Americans, the children of immigrants, also will increase. In 1995, first-and second-generation Americans accounted for 20 percent of the U.S. population, and this figure is projected to rise to one-third of the population by 2025. Europe has experienced a similar influx of foreigners that began, in some countries, as early as the 1940s. In 2005 the foreign-born population of Europe, including nationals of European Union (EU) member states and thirdcountry nationals, stood at 8.8 percent of the population. The foreign born constitute 12.3 percent of the German population, 10.7 percent of the French population, 14.1 percent of the Irish population, and 22.9 percent of the Swiss population, to take but a few examples. In Canada, the establishment in 1967 of a point system for entry based on skills and the reunion of families has not only increased the volume of immigrants but also diversified their places of origin. The same is true for Australia where 40 percent of population growth in the post-World War II period has been the result of immigration. With the abandonment in the 1960s of the White Australia Policy barring non-Euro-
pean settlers, Australia has become a multicultural nation (Castles and Vasta 2004), just as the United States became a more multicultural society in the wake of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which radically altered the composition of immigration, opening the door to Asians, Latin Americans, and immigrants from the four corners of the globe. Even Japan, a country that has long had a restrictionist immigration policy, began admitting foreign workers in the 1980s (Cornelius and Tsuda 2004). Finally, the movement of large populations throughout the developing world, such as refugees in Africa or “guest workers” in Asia and the Persian Gulf states, led some analysts to speak of a global migration crisis (Weiner 1995).
