Immigration a Comparison of Immigration

Immigration

A Comparison of Immigration in the U.S. And Italy

Immigration is a serious issue facing most countries in today's globalized world, and especially those that are more developed and thus present attractive locations to anyone in the world seeking to make a better life for themselves and their families. While immigration can be an important source of labor and economic growth and provide excellent cultural growth and stimulation as well, it can also present a significant burden to nations and their native populations. This has led to often changeable and highly variable immigration policies in the different nations of the world, and a comparison of two countries and the ways in which they handle immigration can provide a general understanding of the specific issues that arise as part of the immigration question. To this end, this paper will provide a brief overview of historic and current immigration policy in the United States and Italy.

US Immigration

The United States was a country entirely built on immigration, of course, with the arrival of various waves if Europeans -- some of whom were intending permanent settlement and others who planned and often achieved returns to their native countries -- supplanting the native inhabitants of North America (Spartacus 2010). This occurred with relative speed, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the new "natives" of the United States were less-than-pleased about the new arrivals form Ireland and Germany brought about by respective famine and revolution in those countries, respectively (Spartacus 2010; USCB 2010).

Current immigration laws have set specific quotas from various regions and/or countries for the number of immigrants allowed into the United States each year, and n order to become full citizens there is a naturalization process that must be gone through (USCIS 2010). A great deal of energy is also put into immigration enforcement, ensuring that natives of other countries are in the United States legally and that they do not overstay their legal welcome in the country, nor use the United States as a place either to engage in illegal activities or to hide from authorities in other countries based on their illegal activities (USICE 2010). The economic impacts of immigration and immigration enforcement are thus highly complex, with an overabundance of immigration driving down wages while at the same time vast sums of money are being spent -- at taxpayer expense -- to keep illegal immigrants out.

Italian Immigration

Italy is at once a much older and a much newer country than the United States, and its history does have a major impact on its immigration policies and the national views towards immigrants, as well. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, it was not until the nineteenth century that the various culturally- and linguistically-Italian city-states and republics were again unified into a single nation, and for much of the following period immigration out of Italy to Northern Europe where jobs were more plentiful was far more common than immigration to Italy (Columbia 2007). This changed in the 1970s and 80s, when many nations closed their borders to immigrants and Italy became popular as a temporary and permanent stop for many immigrants (Caritas 2002).