Immigration, Jesuit Higher Education, and the Undocumented

Long before the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution in 1789, immigration shaped the American experience. Spanish explorers traveled north from Mexico into the future state of Arizona in 1539 and European settlement followed along the eastern seaboard: Jamestown, Virginia, 1607, and Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620. From 1819, when the United States government began to systematically collect immigration data through the year 2014, the official number of immigrants totals 79,483,571. Almost 80 million people came to the United States in 195 years, the most massive movement of population to one place in all of recorded history. As Oscar Handlin,