A Letter From the Publisher

By John A. Meyers

! Since the turn of the decade, TIME has closely followed the newest wave of immigrants to America and the ways in which they are changing our nation. A 1981 cover story described the pervasive Hispanic influence in South Florida, and another in 1983 dealt with the new mix of ethnic groups in Los Angeles. The subject, however, encompasses areas as diverse as education, culture, food, business, religion, indeed every aspect of our lives. The more TIME's editors examined immigration today, the more they concluded that it represented a change of historic dimensions. For this reason, they have chosen to devote virtually an entire issue to the subject. This format has been used only three times in the past decade: to look at the American South in 1976, the Soviet Union in 1980 and Japan in 1983.

This week's issue contains 80 editorial pages, making it the largest in TIME's history. To produce it, the editors drew on the magazine's extensive resources in the U.S., including dozens of correspondents in ten bureaus, plus scores of editors, writers and reporter-researchers on the New York staff. Senior Editor Henry Muller, who oversaw the issue, traveled to California to meet with immigrant leaders, illegal aliens and law-enforcement officials. He joined a nighttime border patrol south of San Diego and crossed into Mexico. Muller brought a special perspective to the task, for he is himself an immigrant, having come from Switzerland at the age of six. "This project has reminded me of what makes America unique," he says. "No other country has the courage to let its demographic mix change so quickly, and to bet that doing so will continue to enrich it."

Muller is one of more than 60 foreign-born staff members from 29 countries as far-flung as Australia and Bolivia, Germany and Viet Nam. Among the earliest of these new arrivals to America are Assistant Art Director Arturo Cazeneuve, from Argentina, and Layout Chief Burjor Nargolwala, from India. Both became U.S. citizens while serving in the Army during World War II. Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald, who contributed a two-page Essay to the issue, came from Austria in 1940 by way of France, Morocco and Portugal. Assistant Managing Editor John Elson was born in Vancouver. His father, an American journalist, brought the family from Canada to Washington, D.C., in 1942.

Many others were displaced by World War II. Deputy Chief of Correspondents William Mader left Hungary in 1944. Layout Artist Modris Ramans fled Latvia in 1945, the same year Reporter-Researcher Victoria Sales left the German- occupied city of Danzig, where she was born. Copy Processing's Lily Eszterag and Reporter-Researcher Ursula Nadasdy de Gallo fled Hungary after Soviet troops crushed the 1956 revolution. A different upheaval, this one in Cuba, brought Reporter-Researcher Nelida Gonzalez-Alfonso to the U.S. in 1959, followed by Copy Processing's Osmar Escalona and Raquel Prieto and Reporter- Researcher Cristina Garcia in 1961.

Other staff members came because they were seeking wider opportunities. Chinese-born Reporter-Researcher Oscar Chiang left his homeland for Taiwan in 1949, then moved to the U.S. in 1960 to study and later to work. International Editor Karsten Prager and Senior Correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer, both German-born, came as exchange students in the 1950s and decided to return as immigrants. Says Prager: "There's nothing quite so invigorating, so refreshing as the mix of people and cultures that is America." Reporter- Reseacher Bernard Baumohl arrived from Belgium, via Canada, in 1953.

Artist Nickolas Kalamaras jumped ship as a merchant seaman more than 20 years ago, but regularized his status and became a citizen in 1976. "My papers, covered with bells and stars in honor of the Bicentennial, are a real collector's item," he says proudly. Staff Writer Pico Iyer and Reporter- Researcher Naushad Mehta, both Indian citizens, arrived in the U.S. as graduate students in 1978, Iyer to attend Harvard University and Mehta to study at Syracuse. Photographer Ted Thai, who left Viet Nam in 1973, took the picture on this page.

This special issue also launches a campaign by TIME to help preserve those most remarkable symbols of the country's openness to immigrants, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. As an official sponsor of the Statue of Liberty- Ellis Island Foundation, the magazine is donating 18 pages of advertising space over the next 16 months to help raise money for the restoration of those landmarks. An invitation to U.S. agencies to create the ads drew 218 responses. The first of the ads, which was prepared by Cunningham & Walsh and shows a human hand helping to hold Liberty's torch, appears on page 13.