Describe several major waves of immigration and migration into California across the 20th century and explain how they shaped the state's culture.
The waves of newcomers studied earlier this year -- Spanish, Mexican, Gold Rush miners from around the world, Chinese railroad workers -- were only the beginning. During the 1930s, drought and economic hardship pushed many families from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas to migrate to California seeking work, a migration often remembered through the nickname "Okies" and described in John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." During World War II, the Bracero Program (1942-1964) brought Mexican agricultural workers to California to fill labor shortages while so many Americans were serving overseas.
After a 1965 change in national immigration law, many more immigrants arrived from Latin America and Asia. Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees arrived in large numbers in the 1970s after the Vietnam War, building communities like "Little Saigon" in Orange County. Today, California is one of the most diverse and multilingual states in the country, its food, languages, neighborhoods, and festivals all shaped by wave after wave of people who chose to make it home, going all the way back to the very first Spanish and Mexican settlers you studied earlier this year.
Mastery looks like: They can name at least two 20th-century migrations into California and explain one way immigration has shaped the state's culture.
Common stumbles: Thinking immigration to California is a recent phenomenon rather than a pattern stretching back through the whole year's history.