Compare the impact immigration had on the population years ago to ...

[aero]

Homework help. The part "years ago" would be an example of Ellis Island.

[penguins]

The views of immigrations haven't changed much.  The Irish and the Italians were very much considred rowdy labor similar to latin americans and mexicans today.  The difference politically is there isn't a big empty west and their are many expensive social programs that are available to immigrants today that simply did not exist in the 1800's.  Therefore it is now very much a debt issue.

[Melanie]

Actually it was very similar, the immigrants back then were Italian and Irish and they were poor and accused of the exact same things we accuse today's immigrants of laziness, drinking, lack of patriotism to their new country, rudeness, too many kids, and a 'foreign' religion, as most of them were Roman Catholic in what was then a predominantly Protestant nation.
There were also Eastern Europeans, Jews and Eastern Orthodox and they had the same charges flung against them, except that the Jews were accused of being wealthy, even when they lived in the same circumstances as the rest of the immigrants.

[camila]

A key difference in your question that you need to distinguish is whether you are talking about LEGAL or ILLEGAL immigration, or both...because they are two totally different things.

Legal immigrants follow the immigration laws of the country they are immigrating to.

Illegal "immigrants" (illegal aliens) spit on the laws of the country they are "immigrating" to.