Immigration Impact on U.S Social Change: A Critical Review

America is undergoing significant social change. While in 1960, white people made up 85 percent of the population, in the latest census it was projected that by 2043, the United States would “be the first post-industrial society in the world where minorities will be the majority” (Deasy, 2012). The 1965 Immigration Act is said to have opened the door to waves of new immigration from Mexico, Latin America and Asia, and the cumulative social impacts have been far reaching. The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to critically review a handful of research papers that explore some of the impacts that immigration has had on the United States, with a particular focus on the research methodologies adopted. It finds that while many papers focus on the use of quantitative research methodologies to measure

It involved the analysis of data from 90,000 individual surveys conducted by the Mexican Migration Project to establish the presence of social effects, and the analysis of qualitative data from 120 in-depth interviews with migrants and their family members in Mexico to reveal the underlying mechanisms. Firstly, it confirmed the hypothesis that “having prior migrants in the household or community increases individuals’ likelihood of migrating net of economic and political context effects” (2013:19). Secondly, through its qualitative research, it found that tough immigration policies among other things, reduce communication channels between migrants in the United States and their families in Mexico. The flow on impact of this is a break down in the feedback loop on what is often, a hard life as a migrant in the United States. Within the context of increased restrictions on border crossings, Garip and Asad (2013) argue that restricting these communication channels simply acts to perpetuate the myth of a glamorous life in the United