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Immigration and the American Dream

The Statue of Liberty greets immigrants to the United States with these words: “Give
me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Taken
from the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, this exhortation expresses
the nation’s confidence that those from many different countries, often, though not Conversation
always, economically poor and uneducated, will make significant contributions to the
economy and culture as they successfully pursue the American Dream in a welcoming
democracy. In what ways, if any, has that confidence in the accessibility of the American
Dream to twenty-first century immigrants eroded since those words were carved onto
the Statue of Liberty in 1903?
Carefully read the following six sources, including the introductory information
for each sources. Write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the
sources and develops your position on the accessibility of the American Dream to
immigrants to the United States today.

SOURCES
1. Joshua Zeitz The Real History of American Immigration (2017)
2. Khalil Bendib Help Wanted (cartoon, 2010)
3. Julia Preston Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous
Ones, Report Says (2015)
4. Amanda Machado from My Immigrant Family Achieved the American
Dream. Then I Started to Question It . (2017)
5. Andrew Lam Is America Still a Nation of Immigrants (2001/2017)
6. Views on Immigration to the United States of America, 1994–2019
(graphs, 2019)
7. Austan Goolsbee Sharp Cuts in Immigration Threaten U.S. Economy
and Innovation (2019)

1 1 The Real History of American Immigration

Joshua Zeitz
Historian and journalist Joshua Zeitz (b. 1974) has written for the New York Times , the
Washington Post , Politico, and the Atlantic magazine. He earned a Ph.D. in history from
Brown University and has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, and Princeton Universities. Author of
four books, he most recently published Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s
White House (2019). The following essay was published by Politico magazine in 2017.

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