I think the mentality is different. Our great grandparents did their best to make sure the kids spoke great English and tried to get them to become American as possible. Today we encourage the kids to speak their mother tongue. Sure it's great for job prospects and to keep it's not about what language they speak as much as the mentality about becoming an American and leaving the home country behind.
Societies regulate the influx of strangers to protect their culture — and the rapid influx of people who don’t share cultural values has damaged American culture.
Going by this chart (the first thing in google), the percent of immigrants between 1850 and 1930 was about the same as 2000-on, with a dip in the middle.
The Americas went for over 350 years (from 1500 to 1850) before there existed any kinds of controls on immigration.
Americans have only ever been afraid of "uncontrolled immigration" when it was non-white immigrants. It was for racist reasons that we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it's for racist reasons now.
> Americans have only ever been afraid of "uncontrolled immigration" when it was non-white immigrants.
This is racist revisionism.
There was plenty of dislike of white migrants as well, eg, Irish, German, Polish, Italian, etc all received ethnic hatred at various periods.
> it's for racist reasons now
Believing that all nationalism is racism is ideological nonsense meant to poison the well, rather than address serious challenges to your ideology and the impact it has on cultures and human flourishing.
Sure, that would be a ridiculous thing to say, which is why I didn't. If I meant "every person who is opposed to immigration is fuelled by racial hatred," I would have said that. I thought that a good-faith reading was one of the rules of HN?
If you look at the times when anti-immigrant sentiment is highest, whether via popular opinion or governmental action, it directly corresponds to when Americans were the most racist about the arriving immigrants.
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
