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6 Int'l Migration Rev. 5 (1972)

handle is hein.journals/imgratv6 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction For a number of years the topic of American immigration has not received a great deal of attention from demographers. It was presup- posed that the age of mass immigration was over and, therefore, the topic was more or less marginal to the discipline. The reawakening of ethnic identity as something of a by-product of the Civil Rights movement and the emergence among historians of a renewed interest in ethnic history did not change the evaluation in the population field. The publication of the Interim Report of the Commission on Popula- tion Growth and the American Future in March, 1971, altered the picture somewhat. One of the facts presented in the Interim Report was that about twenty per cent of American population growth in recent years was due to net civilian immigration. Although this percentage is partially a function of a decline in fertility, nevertheless the finding took many, demographers or not, by surprise. The interpretation of this finding and steps to be taken because of the contribution of immigration to the population of the United States are still questions under discussion. This issue is meant as a contribution to that discussion by providing information to those already involved and by introducing this important topic to persons from various perspectives interested in questions of migration and ethnic groups. Conrad Taeuber presents an overview of the question in American immigration and Population Growth. He puts immigration in the broader perspective of the multifaceted problem of population. He also points out that in the opinion of many, the major population problem is not numbers per se, but population distribution and resource use. The second article, Changing Patterns of American Immigration, by Richard Irwin of the Census Bureau, is a more detailed look at the demographic characteristics of the immigrant population. This informa- tion provides the basis for assessing the impact of immigration from an historical and comparative perspective. One of the major problems of determining the size of net immigra- tion today is the lack of emigration data and the crudeness of estimates. Bernard Axelrod reviews a number of historical studies of emigration. Although there is disagreement on the size of the emigrant population, it seems to have been considerable. The impact of immigration and emigration on the nation's history is, of course, difficult to assess without 5

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