The students in Ms. Kahn’s class are talking about the cultural makeup of the United States. “There are so many different elements of our culture that people have brought from all over the world,” says Mario, “but I feel like there’s a shared tradition of resourcefulness that unites us as Americans. For example, my great grandparents arrived from Sicily in the 1920s. It took a lot of guts to leave behind everything they knew and start over. They had to be resourceful and responsible in order to build a new life out of virtually nothing. It’s the same for lots of groups: The people who came were the risk takers, so wherever they came from, they had something in common.”

“Okay, but don’t forget that not everyone made that kind of choice to come here,” says Alyssa. “There were slaves from Africa, British criminals sent here as punishment during colonial times, and Native Americans facing invasion. Lots of different groups have been resourceful, even those that didn’t choose to immigrate. In my opinion, what’s most impressive about the U.S. isn’t our shared tradition, but the complexity of all the different traditions.”

“Most of my family came from Japan before World War II, and from Hawaii before it became a state in 1959,” says Sumiko. “But one of my grandmothers was descended from Europeans who arrived in the British colonies before 1776. I wonder if immigration has increased or decreased over the last century or two. Immigration is in the news all the time. I bet we’re more of a nation of immigrants now than we’ve ever been before.”

“I doubt it,” says Alyssa.

“Maybe some of you could do some research on U.S. immigration over time,” says Ms. Kahn.

Mario, Alyssa, and Sumiko found some statistics on U.S. immigration since 1850 and presented the following chart to the class.

Over the time period represented in this table, what has been the trend in the total population numbers?

Has the foreign-born population changed in the same way? Explain.

Discussion Question:

What’s the most accurate way to describe the difference between the data for 1910 and for 2010?