Age range 7 to 9

What does it mean to be an immigrant today? Has the immigrant experience changed since the last century?

Immigration Nation: The American Identity in the Twenty-First Century invites middle and high schoolers to explore the history of immigration in the United States, along with immigration law and statistics through the perspectives of immigrants, citizens, policy makers, and border agents.

For more than a century, an immigrant from France has stood vigil in the New York Harbor. At 350 feet tall, with a majestic spiked crown upon her head, a tablet of laws clutched in one hand and a torch held aloft in the other, the lady is hard to miss. She cries out to the world, "Give me your tired, your poor…I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Millions of immigrants have answered the Statue of Liberty's call, passing over, under, or through the Golden Door to become Americans. 

However, on the eve of its 250th birthday, the United States is in the middle of an identity crisis. Should this land of immigrants open the door open to outsiders, people hungry for opportunity and desperate for freedom? Or should the country shut the golden door, barring entry to all but a select few? And what does it mean to be an American? How citizens answer these questions in the early twenty-first century will determine the future of America's identity.