Politics, ethnicity, and bilingual education in massachusetts: The case of referendum question 2

The second great wave of immigration to the United States, which began in the mid-1960s, has dramatically changed the ethnic composition of the nation. When the first great wave (1880-1930) reached its peak at the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants were close to 15 percent of the total population (14.7 percent in 1910). Today, immigrants have passed the 10 percent mark (11.5 percent in the year 2002). But unlike the first great wave that consisted mostly of populations from Europe, the present one has brought to our shores a much more diverse group of populations from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.¹.