From it’s early beginnings, North America has been the destination of a diversity of peoples. For centuries they have left their homelands and settled here to create a society and culture that is often referred to as a melting pot. How many people from other countries are here in our nation? Current estimates place the “Foreign Born” at somewhere around or over 35 million. As the name indicates, these are people who were born in another country and have come to the United States during their lifetime. That makes up 12% of our population. To help you get a better sense of the size of this number in proportion to the total population, imagine counting one person from another country for every eight and a half Americans (see diagram). Even more amazing is that one in every five people is either a “Foreign Born” or the second generation born here with one or both parents being from another country. I don’t know about you, but these figures were eye-opening to me the first time I read them.

The source from which these immigrants are coming has changed significantly over the last forty years. In 1965 the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the national origins quota system. This is still powerfully affecting the US today. Formerly the majority of immigrants came from places like Germany, England, Italy, Poland, etc. Currently they are arriving in mass mostly from South/Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. North American culture is undergoing a powerful shift. This country is changing from a European-founded colony to a multi-cultural world nation with ties to virtually every people group and area of the world!

And the numbers keep on climbing. Statistics tell us that the immigrant population is growing at six times the speed of the United States population. Each year tens of thousands of immigrants stream across our borders. Also, many of these people culturally tend to have larger numbers of children. What will it be like in another twenty years? If you are now twenty years old or younger, it is very possible that by the end of your lifetime people of European descent will no longer be a majority, but only one of several large minority groups.