The United States is a nation comprised mostly of immigrants, who have come in successive waves since the founding of the Anglo nation-state in the 18th century. The vast majority of U.S. immigrants have been European, along with slaves forced to migrate from Africa; sporadic Asian immigration was ended in the early 20th century with a series of immigration acts (Ebaugh 2003). In the 20th century, European immigrants played an important role in the growth and development of postsecondary education. The United States benefited tremendously from an influx of highly educated immigrants fleeing war and persecution in Europe. Jews, Communists, and other intellectuals sought refuge in the relative freedom of the United States, and in some quarters immigrants became synonymous with intellectualism (Cassedy 1997; Heilbut 1984). It was clear at the conclusion of World War II that the United States owed its survival to the intellectual talents of highly educated immigrants – and that many of these immigrants were Jewish or secular (Fraser 2012). Indeed, most scholars acknowledge that the primary reason for the sweeping reform of immigration laws in 1965 was to ease restrictions on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe and to tie immigration to skilled occupations and family ties, rather than simply nationality (Reimers 1983).

Thus the recognition of the importance of highly educated immigrants led to a reform of immigration laws in 1965, which had the unintended consequence of enabling widespread migration from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for the first time (Reimers 1983). However, national quotas and competition for entry mean that immigrants from these parts of the world have to have special characteristics – education being primary – to gain entry. One exception has been a developing immigration stream from Mexico and Central America, from which migrants tend to seek unskilled and semi-skilled work in the agricultural industry, construction, and maintenance. Another is the continued absorption of displaced refugees from various quarters of the globe, but perhaps especially from Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War. Compared to before 1965, current immigrants more often hail from nations where Christianity is a minority religion, and although most of the “new immigrants” are Catholic or other types of Christians, they are different from the European Catholics and Protestants who dominated prior waves of immigration (Alanezi and Sherkat 2008; Sherkat 2010b).