Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

immigration to the United States remained insignificant in the 1950s, averaging only 250,000 a year during the decade. Ellis Island, the nation's preeminent immigration center, closed in 1955.49 Most "ethnic" Americans, moreover, continued to be white in skin color and of European background. In 1960 the most numerous groups of people with a foreign or mixed parentage had hardly changed since 1945. They continued to be German- and Italian-Americans (approximately 3.3 million each), followed by people with roots in Canada, Poland, Britain, Russia, and Eire. Mexican-Americans ranked next, well down the list, with 1.2 million. Asians remained an almost invisible group outside a few concentrated urban neighborhoods. The census in 1960 enumerated only 642,000 people (of a total population of 180.7 million) who had one or more parents from anywhere in all of Asia.