ABSTRACT
During the last several years, both academic and lay interest in immigration issues has skyrocketed. Attention to immigration has been fueled by a dramatic increase in the size and rate of growth of the immigrant population, the diversity of recent immigrant flows, and the failure of expectations based on traditional models of assimilation to be met for some new immigrant groups. In the public mind, the sheer number of immigrants arriving each year is cause for concern. Currently, about one million new immigrants (legal and illegal) are added to the U.S. population annually (Martin & Midgely, 1994). Most of these immigrants settle in just a handful of states in which the social and fiscal impacts of their arrival have been substantial. Although the influx of immigrants has been felt less directly in other U.S. locales, immigration issues are on the minds of many U.S. citizens in the current period.
