Don’t get immigration wrong - again

Every American seems to be a self-styled expert on immigration. If only I had a dime for each time I've patiently endured yet another cocktail-chatter lecture from someone who, hearing that I was researching and writing about the topic, launches into a speech on what it means "to become American".

The cocktail lecture goes roughly like this: "A hundred years ago, everything was different. Unlike today's newcomers with their tight ties to their homelands, our ancestors left everything behind. They were different from immigrants who come today because they wanted to learn English and never go home again. It was easier for them to assimilate because America chose to close the doors, establishing strict national-origins quotas in the 1920s that all but cut off the contaminating flow of new people bringing backward Old World customs with them. Besides, it was easier for them to become Americans because, unlike immigrants today, they were white and so could blend in more easily."

This narrative is drawn from a mix of sources: elementary-school textbooks, media formulae, and the public need for a meaningful, digestible story of the national past. It is, unfortunately, skewed, selective, and self-serving. This makes it actively misleading and even, in its implications for present-day policy, dangerous.

link