That was before all the land was settled. And most likely meant for Europeans.

What matter does it make if it was originally meant at Europeans rather than Indians? People also used to consider Catholics (Irish, Italians, Polish) as not white.

The US is still very sparsly populated, especially for a country with so much arable land & relatively mild climate.

Ever been to the Netherlands or Belgium? They are quite lovely. Both also have a population density well in excess of 10x the US's.

Lots more people can fit in the country without negative effects.

I hear this about the US all the time - open the gates, plenty of land left.

But the areas that have seen job growth in the last 20 years are highly concentrated in areas that are about as packed as most of Western Europe: LA, SF, Boston through DC, and about a dozen other massive metro areas. The vast majority of available land (from the Mississippi to the Pacific and Alaska) is uninhabitable or agricultural and without jobs.

All I know is that where I live we already have way too much traffic, lack of affordable housing, and the lowest labor participation rate in decades. So by what metric does increasing population help those of us who live here (besides companies who love cheaper labor)?

So by the same measure do you also support legislation to disallow rural Americans from moving to the cities? How about those from sparser cities into denser ones?

    So by what metric does increasing population 
    help those of us who live here

Not everything is about helping you. Why do people in HN complain about zoning/density restrictions in SFBA? Keeping real estate restricted/expensive is beneficial to people who already own a house there!

   areas that are about as packed as most of 
   Western Europe: LA, SF, Boston through DC,
   and about a dozen other massive metro areas.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas... - only 2 of the top 20 metros are in the US and they have the lowest density (table 1). Also from that page: "the least dense urban areas with more than 2.5 million population are all in the United States."

The US is sparse in any meaningful metric.

Shouldn't we help the ones already here first?

Should we solve all problems on earth before attempting a mission to mars? And this is ignoring the fact that allowing immigration is not some purely benevolent sacrifice for helping others, countries generally benefit from immigration as a whole.

That was before there were billions of Africans, Indians, and Indonesians a few hours travel from the United States. Times change.

Also this part is important: "yearning to breathe free" is quite different from "yearning to establish a global Caliphate".

Yearning to establish a caliphate is a boogeyman. The vast majority of immigrants to the US are not Muslim and the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are not schemeing to establish a caliphate.

The "scheming" comment is a classic false dichotomy.

There's a big spectrum of behavior towards a political outcome between "opposed with deadly force" and "supportive with deadly force". Most Germans in 1940 wouldn't personally gun down Jews, nor even directly participate in organizing such a thing. But nor did they didn't oppose it with force, or energetically ensure it didn't happen.

Of course most Muslims aren't "scheming" to establish a caliphate, but they wouldn't oppose it the way you or I would.

This is an obvious reality that people just don't like to acknowledge.

I live in the 2nd-most Turkish neighborhood of the most Turkish city outside of Turkey (Tempelhof, in Berlin), I think I may have more personal first-hand experience with muslim immigrants than you do.

They are for the vast, overwhelming majorly part, just normal people not unlike natives of the same social class. yes, if you compare the "typical" working class muslim to professional yuppies they come across a lot more conservative but not more so than the local-western working class.

And the muslim professional class (the doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc among them) are similarly not very different in this aspect from the local-western professional yuppies.

I think the discrepancy in perspective is that most yuppies don't otherwise notice the native working class.