Immigration and Race: Recent Trends in Immigration to the United States. Program for Research on Immigration Policy.

This paper traces the evolution of immigration to the United States during the 20th century with an emphasis on the racial and ethnic composition of the immigration flow. The changing generational composition of the country's population is described from 1850 through 1990. A new population projection/estimation methodology is employed to measure the contribution of each decade's immigrants and their descendants to population growth for the 1900-1990 period. The methodology is applied to each of four race/ethnic groups: Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and the white, not Hispanic population. The effect for the total population is derived by summing the four groups. The paper also describes the impact of alternative immigration scenarios for the century on hypothetical 1990 populations. (Author)