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Sarah Gardner Summary This article was about people rallying against the Alabama immigration law. Hundreds of people rallied on Valentine’s Day. They choose Valentine’s Day to tell law makers to “ love and respect immigrants.” The law will make citizens prove citizenship at traffic stops and requires government offices to verify legal residency for everyday transactions like obtaining a car license, enrolling kids in school, getting a job or renewing a business license. Immigrants are saying that the law is unfair and they are being targeted for no reason. One girl, Carmen Espinoza, says she lives in fear that her family will be deported or someone will ask for her papers. Some trailer parks have no people living there any more, only their trailers full of their possessions. Some say this law is hurting the economy and some say it’s doing wonders for it. Some industries are being affected because some jobs will only be done by immigrants, like picking fruit. Since there are no immigrants to pick fruit or vegetables they’re just rotting away in fields, hurting the economy. But Elois Zeanah, the president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, disagree. She says unemployment rates are dropping and immigrants are deporting themselves. She also says, “Tax dollars paid in public benefits to illegal aliens are down!" Lawmakers say they will be making small changes to the bill but the protesters say they will not be happy until the law is repealed. Relevance  Immigrants came in through Ellis Island in New York and Angel Island in California (1900’s). At the start of the 1900’s nine million immigrants were flooding the US. Immigrants came for a better life; they wanted to leave behind religious, racial, and political persecution, economic hardships, and famine (1900’s). The US has always had immigrants from all over the world. We’ve made laws to limit them and even try to keep them out. People believed in pure and all white societies and did not want the immigrants to ruin that (1900’s). Not all immigrants were allowed in the country, if they were criminals, strikebreakers, anarchists or carriers of disease they were sent back to their home country. In 1924 the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed (1924). This act tried to limit immigrants coming into the country. “It limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States i n 1890 (1924).” Also non-whites who couldn’t be naturalized could no longer immigrate (1924). This act also lets some races slide, like Italians. Even though they were only allowed to have 4,000 people immigrate a year they had 200,000 people immigrating in a year. This act stayed in place until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924  (1924). This act got rid of the quotas and replaced it with a different system. The new system was a preference system that was based on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents (1965). But this new law made illegal immigration skyrocket and now 11.1% of American’s were foreign born (1965). In 1882 the  Chinese Exclusion Act was passed (Chinese).This act discriminated against Chinese people and did not let them into the country because they were taking all the gold miners jobs. In 1943 the act was repealed but the Chinese would still feel discriminated against for years to come (Chinese). The  National Origins Formula of 1921 of gave preference to immigrants from northern and western Europe (History). It really limited immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, and said all immigrants who were from Asia were said to be “unworthy” of the United States. Refugees were also starting to be allowed into the country around this time (History). Evaluation A demographic change includes changes in birth, marriage, and death rates, population size, density, effects of immigration, internal migration, and migration networks on society. This article talks about the effects of immigration on America and population size. Due to immigration the population has grown immensely with more and more immigrants coming to the US every day. Immigration has also had some positive and negative effects on us. Like the article said immigrants do lots of the jobs that we Americans do not want to. But we also have to pay public benefits to immigrants with our own money. Immigrants can also take jobs that Americans want to actually do, which many people feel is unfair. So immigration has had a few positive and negative effects to it. Questions
 * 1) How many immigrants are in the US today?
 * 2) How many of them are here illegally?
 * 3) Overall does immigration help or harm the US?
 * 4)  Will there be any more new laws dealing with immigration?
 * 5) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Where are the most common places people immigrate from?
 * 6) Where is the most common place for immigrants to live in America?

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