“America, with its expanding industrial economy, job opportunities, and high wages and standard of living” (Foner 21-22) beckoned to immigrants throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even after over twelve million immigrants passed through New York’s Ellis Island, there is still a “continuing desire to move to the United States” (Foner 17) responsible for an increase in undocumented immigration in recent years. Does this mean the opportunities offered in America have expanded? Is America—as Reagan emphasized—a “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere?” Certainly, and this city upon a hill cannot be hid (Matthew 5:14-16).
Though the motivation of the modern immigrant may be the same as that of the nineteenth and twentieth century immigrants, the contemporary image of the American immigrant has—for the most part—shifted from the migrant worker escaping political oppression, pressure on land availability, and rampant anti-Semitism, to the young student arriving on a “jet plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport, often dressed in designer jeans or fashionable attire” (Foner 10). This is because America is still a beacon of freedom and opportunity, but a different kind of opportunity. Opportunities have been fueled by newspapers, movies, and magazines romanticizing the American good life, as well as by letters, phone calls, and visits by immigrants to their families abroad (24).
Yes, migration to America continues to allow the migrant farmer to stabilize his family’s livelihood, and purchase “domestic appliances, automobiles, and television sets,” (25) but nowadays most immigrants come for an American education and the freedom to open a small business. In fact, “10 percent of the working-age immigrants living in New York City were college graduates; an addition 6 percent had a master’s degree or more” (Foner 15). America’s economy is built on these immigrants, and so it has made visas more available in recent years. “From poor farmers and factory workers to physicians, engineers, and scientists,” (14) these immigrants “want to learn, they want to start businesses, and they want to hire Americans” (Bloomberg). Therefore, it can be argued that America is still worth settling in, adjusting to a new country, and making a permanent home here, because it continues to “hold out the promise of political and cultural freedom—and material abundance” (26) for the immigrants with college degrees and technical experience.
