John Snetsinger
To many observers one of the surprises of the 2000 census was that fully 10 percent of Americans reported that they had been born in a foreign country. Thirty years earlier the figure had been just 4.7 percent, the smallest in the Republic's history. The significance for the future formulation of U.S. foreign policy is not to be lost in the current number of foreign-born within the population. The political reality of the American system is that the greater the number of foreign-born, as well as of others within the population who retain ties with ancestral associations, the more likely it is that ethnic group politics can influence foreign policy. Demographic trends in twenty-first century America hold the promise that ethnicity may well play an even greater role in the making of foreign policy than has generally been the case.
A defining element of the American experience has been the degree to which ethnic affiliations, and to a lesser degree racial identity, have influenced foreign policy. Since the first census in 1790, the federal government has gathered information on ethnicity and race, although the type of data collected has changed over time as interests have shifted. With public awareness heightened by the impact of surging immigration by 1850, census respondents were asked not just their place of birth but also that of their parents. The influence of ethnic groups on the making of foreign policy has fluctuated with the ebb and flow of immigration.
Because there has never been a time in which a higher percentage of Americans had themselves been born in a foreign country, or had at least one parent born overseas, historians commonly focus on the influence of ethnic constituencies on President Woodrow Wilson's diplomacy of war and peace. There is merit in identifying the winners and losers among those engaging in ethnic politics in this era, as will be discussed later. The 1920 census reported that approximately one-third of the national population either had been born overseas or had at least one parent who had been. This remarkably high figure is worthy of attention, but it is also significant that ever since the founding of the Republic, foreign policy issues have been viewed by millions of Americans through the prism of their ancestral ties of culture, nation, language, religion, or race.
See also ASYLUM; CULTURAL IMPERIALISM; CULTURAL RELATIONS AND POLICIES; IMMIGRATION; PUBLIC OPINION; REFUGEE POLICIES; WILSONIAN MISSIONARY DIPLOMACY.