Basic Features of American

Native Americans
America in the first time was a wild land, until one day the first people reach North America. They were followed by their ancestors that was a promised land, along the Siberian coast and across the land bridge.

 Once in Alaska, it would take these first North Americans thousands of years more to work their way through the openings in great glaciers south to what is now the United States. Evidence of early life in North America continues to be found. Little of it, however, can be reliably dated before 18,000 B.C.; a recent discovery of a hunting lookout in northern Alaska, for example, may date from almost that time. So too may the finely crafted spear points and items found near Clovis, New Mexico.

When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World in 1492, there had been around 2 to 18 million Native Americans living in what is now the continental United States. (The estimations of the number vary greatly. What is certain is the devastating effect that that European disease had on the indigenous population practically from the time of initial contact. Smallpox, in particular, ravaged whole communities and is thought to have been a much more direct cause of the precipitous decline in Indian population in the 1600s than the numerous wars and skirmishes with European settlers.)

During the next 200 years, people from several European countries followed Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean to explore America and set up trading posts and colonies. The Indians suffered greatly from the influx of Europeans. The transfer of land from Indian to European—and later American—hands was accomplished through treaties, wars, and coercion, with Indians constantly giving way as the newcomers moved west. In the 19th century, the government preferred solution to the Indian “problem” was to force tribes to inhabit specific plots of land called reservations. Some tribes fought to keep from giving up land they had traditionally used. In many cases the reservation land was of poor qualities, and Indians came to depend on government assistance. Poverty and joblessness among them still exist today. 

The Golden Doors
 Between 1840 and 1860, the U.S. received its first great wave of immigrants. In Europe as a whole, famine poor harvests, rising populations, and political unrest caused an estimated 5 million people to leave their homelands each year. In Ireland, a blight attacked the potato crop, and upwards 750,000 people starved to death. Many of the survivors emigrated. In one year alone, 1847, the number of Irish immigrants to the U.S. reached 118.120. Today there are about 39 million Americans of Irish descent.
The failure of the German Confederation’s Revolution of 1848-49 led many of its people to emigrate. During the American Civil War (1861-65), the federal government helped fill its roster of troops by encouraging emigration from Europe, especially from the German states. In return for service in the Union army, immigrants were offered grants of land. By 1865, about one in five Union soldiers was a wartime immigrant. Today, 22 % of Americans have German ancestry.
Jews came into the U.S. in large numbers beginning about 1880, a decade in which they suffered fierce pogroms in Eastern Europe. Over the next 45 years, 2 million Jews moved to the U.S. There are more than 5 million Jewish-Americans. During the late 19th century, so many people were entering the U.S. that the government operated a special port of entry on Ellis Island in the harbor of New York City. Between 1892, when it operated, and 1954, when it closed, Ellis Island was the doorway to American for 12 million people.

Unwilling Immigrants
Among the flood of immigrants to North America, one group came unwillingly. These were Africans, 500,000 of whom were brought over as slaves between 1619 and 1808, when importing slaves into the U.S. became illegal. The practice of owning slaves and their descendant continued, however, particularly in the agrarian South, where many laborers were needed to work the fields.
The process of ending slavery began in 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South, 11 of which had left the Union. On January 1, 1863, midway through the war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in those states that had seceded. Slavery was abolished throughout of the U.S. with the passage of the Thirteen Amendment to the country’s Constitution in 1865.

White Americans 
The majority of the 300 million people currently living in the United States consists of White Americans, who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, in many cases by way of other countries and regions (for example: Australia, Latin America, South Africa). Most White Americans are European American, descendants of immigrants who arrived since the establishment of the first colonies, but especially after Reconstruction (1870s).
White Americans are the majority in forty-nine of the fifty states, with Hawaii as the exceptions. The District of Columbia, which is not a state, also has a non-white majority. Non-Hispanic Whites, however, are the majority in forty-six states, with Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, as the exceptions. The latter five have "minority majorities", i.e. minority groups are a majority of their populations.
The non-Hispanic White percentage (68 in 2006) tends to decrease every year, and this sub-group is expected to become a plurality of the overall US population after the year 2050. However, White Americans overall (non-Hispanic Whites together with White Hispanics) will remain the majority, at 73.1% (or 303 million out of 420 million) in 2050, from 80% in 2006.
 White Americans are the majority in forty-nine of the fifty states, with Hawaii as the exceptions. The District of Columbia, which is not a state, also has a non-white majority. Non-Hispanic Whites, however, are the majority in forty-six states, with Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, as the exceptions. The latter five have "minority majorities", i.e. minority groups are a majority of their populations.
The non-Hispanic White percentage (68 in 2006) tends to decrease every year, and this sub-group is expected to become a plurality of the overall US population after the year 2050. However, White Americans overall (non-Hispanic Whites together with White Hispanics) will remain the majority, at 73.1% (or 303 million out of 420 million) in 2050, from 80% in 2006.

Asian Americans
A third significant minority is the Asian American population, comprising 13.1 million in 2006, or 4.4% of the U.S. population. California is home to 4.5 million Asian Americans, whereas 512,000 live in Hawaii, where they compose the plurality at 40% of the islands' people. Asian Americans live across the country, and are also found in large numbers in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Houston, and other urban centers. It is by no means a monolithic group. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea and Japan. While the Asian American population is generally a fairly recent addition to the nation's ethnic mix, relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino and Japanese immigration happened in the mid to late 1800s.

Two or more races (Multiracial American)
Multiracial Americans numbered 6.1 million in 2006, or 2.0% of the population. They can be any combination of races (White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, "Some other race") and ethnicities. The U.S. has a growing multiracial identity movement. Miscegenation or interracial marriage, most notably between whites and blacks, was deemed immoral and illegal in most states in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. California and the western US had similar laws to prohibit White-Asian American marriages until the 1950s. As society and laws change to accept inter-racial marriage, these marriages and their mixed-race children are possibly changing the demographic fabric of America. However, demographers state that the American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various immigrant nationalities culturally distinct until assimilation and integration took place in the mid 20th century. The "Americanization" of foreign ethnic groups and the inter-racial diversity of millions of Americans isn't a new phenomenon.

Language and Nationality
It is not uncommon to walk down the streets of an American city today and hear Spanish spoken. In 1950 fewer than 4 million U.S. residents were from Spanish-speaking countries. Today that number is about 27 million. About 50 % of Hispanics in the U.S. have origins in Mexico. The other 50% came from a variety of countries, including El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. 36 % of the Hispanics in the U.S. live in California. Some other states have large Hispanic population, including Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing the Castro regime have settled. Due to the large number of Cuban Americans living in Miami, the Miami Herald, the city’s largest newspaper, publishes separate editions in English and Spanish.

 Limits on Newcomers
The Statue of Liberty began lighting the way for new arrivals at a time when many natives-born Americans began to worry that the country was admitting too many immigrants. Some citizens feared that their culture was being threatened or that they would lose job to newcomers willing to accept low wages.

A New System
The year 1965 broke a shakeup of the old immigration patterns. The U.S. began to grant immigrant visas according to who applied first; national quotas replaced with hemispheric ones. And preference was given to relatives of U.S. citizens and immigrants with job skills in short supply in the U.S. In 1978, Congress abandoned hemispheric quotas and established a worldwide sailing, opening the doors even wider. In 1990, for example, the top 10 points of origins for immigrants were Mexico (57,000), The Philippines (55,000), Vietnam (49,000), the Dominican Republic (32,000), Korea (30,000), China (29,000), India (28,000), the Soviet Union (25,000), Jamaica (19,000) and Iran (18,000).
The U.S. continues to accept more immigrants than any other country; in 1990, its population included nearly 20 million foreign-born persons. The revised immigration law of 1990 created a flexible cap off 675,000 immigrants each year, with certain categories of people exempted from the limit. That law attempts to attract more skilled workers and professionals to the U.S. and to draw immigrants from countries that have supplied relatively few Americans in recent years. It does this by providing “diversity” visas. In 1990 about 9,000 people entered the country on diversity visas from such countries as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Peru, Egypt, and Trinidad and Tobago.




Illegal Immigrants
The U.S. immigration and naturalization service estimates that some 5 million people are living in the U.S. without permission, and the number is growing by about 275,000 a year. Native-born Americans and legal immigrants worry about the problem of illegal immigration. Many believe that illegal immigrants (also called ‘illegal aliens’) take jobs from citizen, especially from young people and members of minority groups. Moreover, illegal aliens can place a heavy burden on tax-supported social services.
In 1986 Congress revised immigration law to deal with illegal immigrants. Many of those who had been in the country since 1982 became eligible to apply for legal residency that would eventually permit than to stay in the country permanently. In 1990, nearly 900,000 people took advantage of this law to obtain legal status. The law also provided strong measures to combat farther illegal immigration and imposed penalties on businesses that knowingly employ illegal aliens.




The Legacy
The steady stream of people coming to America’s shores has had a profound effect on the American character. It takes courage and flexibility to leave your homeland and come to a new country. The American people have been noted for their willingness to take risks and try new things, for their independence and optimism. If Americans whose families have been here longer tend to take their material comfort and political freedoms for granted, immigrants are at hand to remind them how important those privileges are.

Immigrants also enrich American communities by bringing aspects of their native cultures with them. Many Black Americans now celebrate both Christmas and Kwanza, a festival drawn from African rituals. Hispanic Americans celebrate their traditions with street fairs and other festivities on Cinco de Mayo (May 5). Ethnic restaurants abound in many American cities. President John F. Kennedy, himself the grandson of Irish immigrants, summed up this blend of the old and the new when he called America “a society of immigrants, each of whom had began life anew, on an equal footing. This is the secret of America: a nation of people with the fresh memory of old tradition who dared to explore new frontiers…”


Parlin Pardede: Introduction to American Culture (2010)