Immigration Works Fine When Newcomers Integrate

The U.S. would be nothing if not for immigrants. It was mass immigration that gave the U.S. the power to win the World Wars and the Cold War, and to attain the market size that made it the dominant manufacturing power of the late-19th and 20th centuries. The genius of the Founders was to recognize that immigration wasn't inherently dangerous. They threw out the more restrictive notions of nationalism based on race and religion that prevailed in Europe, and made a big bet on the ability of diverse peoples to come together as one. George Washington, addressing the fears of those who worried that immigrant groups would fail to forge a single cohesive nation, summed up his bold thesis in 1794:

So far, Washington's bet has paid off in spectacular fashion -- the U.S. remained cohesive, and zoomed ahead of rivals such as Russia, Germany and Japan, countries that defined their nationhood by blood and soil. But the process hasn't always been a smooth one. Several times, the U.S. has been riven by spasms of anxiety about whether the most recent waves of immigrants would become one with the existing population. The Know-Nothing movement of the mid-1800s was based on the premise that Catholic immigrants would poison American culture with papal influence. And in 1924, fears of anarchist terrorism and job competition led to the Johnson-Reed Act, which helped put an end to the waves of newcomers from Italy and Eastern Europe.