ABSTRACT
With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, the United States reversed a trend of declining immigration that had existed since the peak years of the early 1900s. Since 1970, the number of immigrants to the United States has sharply increased to reach a record number of 24.6 million in 1996 (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1997). Although immigrants actually made up a greater proportion of the population at the turn of the century, the percentage of foreignborn has nearly doubled in the last 25 years to reach a post-war high of approximately 9% in 1996. Children and adolescents figure prominently in the new surge of immigration. The 1965 Act established a preference system that emphasized reunifying families when deciding who may enter the United States. As a result, the children of the foreign born totaled 5 million in 1994, and this number is expected to almost double by 2010, when these children will represent approximately one fourth of the total school-aged population (Fix & Passel, 1994).
