This is not true. It’s a pernicious lie that the United States has always been doors open, and this falsity makes discussing this topic increasingly impossible because it’s like there’s two different realities that aren’t reconcilable. The US became the economic powerhouse and world power it did during the most restrictive period of its immigration history. The amount of immigration over the last 30 years, and especially over the last decade, is completely unusual and unprecedented. I can go to neighborhoods in the city I grew up in where I played baseball as a kid and it is quite literally completely foreign. A lot of people, and you seem to be one of them, think that America’s immigration system is a cosmic vacuum cleaner that scoops up would-be Einsteins from around the planet and plops them in US cities where they churn out unicorns between writing an opera and running a 10k. This isn’t the case.

The percent of the US population that is foreign-born is about the same as it was before 1920.

To use your vocabulary, it is a pernicious lie to pretend that America's success from WWI through the WWII recoveries was due to immigration policies, rather than other major countries having their infrastructure destroyed and being forced to use the US as a key supplier due to rather large wars.

(and that's ignoring that US population had booms in there that meant that even though immigration was persisting, there was just a big increase in domestic births).

Though if we're going to adopt those immigration policies, perhaps we should also adopt the tax strategies, corporate regulation, and worker unions that accompanied that growth.

> and it is quite literally completely foreign

I'm quite fine with that. I drove through an Armenian neighborhood of LA and stopped for a meal at a restaurant whose name I could not comprehend and it was really, fucking tasty. Zhengyalov Hatz in Glendale, if anyone is wondering.

But yeah, this is the kind of stuff that makes the US awesome. "Would-be Einsteins" are far from the only flavor hard-working people who I absolutely welcome.

Oh well as along as the food is good.

The United States was literally built on the idea of immigration.

https://www.cato.org/blog/founding-fathers-favored-liberal-i...

Cato is doing their usual thing here where they lie by omission.

>These foreigners, if not properly disposed of, will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.[1]

-Thomas Jefferson

The Founders had a conception of immigration that is completely at odds with the free for all that exists today, and Cato is partially responsible for people incorrectly thinking that the US was “literally built on the idea of immigration”.

[1] https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/gdc/lhbcb/0490...

I can't find that in your reference. Additionally, signed by Jefferson into law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1802

Right, a law that made it easier for white people from Europe to become citizens.

Europeans who arrived, seized land, imported enslaved people, broke treaties, then later decided that later arrivals were the real problem? Those Europeans?

Would you prefer the United States didn’t exist or something? What is even the point of this comment. “Bad things happened in history, there was violence and war and conquering, woe is me” this is what you sound like. Profound, truly.

You're Navajo, are you?

Did you roll a dice and pick one or are you actually familiar with Navajo history or something and that’s why you tried to use this retort as a way to imply you’re not allowed to have opinions on American immigration policy unless you’re from a Native American tribe?

That's a no, then. Go back where your family came from, eurotrash.

There it is.

> because it welcomes ambitious, hard-working, and skilled people from around the world

"From around the world" more like the "world tour" definition

They were welcoming mostly Europeans. First from WASP countries, then for more southern/eastern ones. And then from East Asia (I'll save the rant about the word "Asian" for another time)

Every piece of data shows some groups excel while some groups lag behind

(of course I haven't forgotten about other groups of people that came to the US but most of those didn't come willingly)