Not To Recreate Their Former Country Here

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America has always been an immigrant nation. The question isn’t whether people should come here. It is whether immigration occurs at a pace and under rules that allow a nation to remain a nation.

Consider the great immigration wave from 1860 to 1910. Roughly 13 million immigrants arrived during those fifty years. Thirteen million sounds enormous—until you remember America had half a century to absorb them.

Those immigrants arrived while America was expanding dramatically. There was land to settle, farms to build, mines to work, railroads to construct and communities to establish. They came expecting to work, build, become self-reliant and assimilate.

My great-grandfather came to Montana from Germany in 1883 and homesteaded north of Helena. He didn’t arrive with a government benefits package, a cell phone, a translator, a housing voucher and a lawyer waiting at the train station. He got land. Then he got to work. That was the bargain:

Come to America. Work. Build. Learn the language. Obey the law. Raise your family. Become an American. Now compare that with recent years.

By some estimates, roughly 13 million migrants entered the United States during the four years of the Biden administration, depending on how encounters, releases and other categories are counted. Whatever statistical argument one wants to have, the sheer speed and magnitude are extraordinary. We have effectively compressed fifty years of historic immigration into roughly four years. Is it any wonder that real estate prices and rents rose dramatically?

That’s not exactly a recipe for smooth assimilation. It’s more like backing a demographic dump truck up to America’s front door and yelling, “Don’t worry—we’ll figure out where everybody goes later!”

A nation isn’t merely a piece of geography surrounded by a line on a map. It is a legal, cultural and civic community held together by shared institutions, language, laws and expectations. And assimilation takes time. Schools need time. Housing needs time. Hospitals need time. Communities need time. Most importantly, people need time to become part of the society they’ve entered.

When immigration overwhelms a nation’s ability to absorb newcomers, the result can be cultural fragmentation, economic strain, parallel communities and growing disagreement over what it even means to be American.

Which brings us to the Statue of Liberty. The “huddled masses” weren’t an invitation to make America’s borders irrelevant or replace immigration law with an honor system.

The immigrants of that earlier era came to become Americans. They learned English, entered American workplaces, sent their children to American schools, served in the military and built communities. They didn’t arrive saying, “We’ve brought our own culture and expectations. Now please reorganize America around us.” They adapted.

America can be generous without being foolish. We can welcome legal immigrants while insisting that immigration remain legal. We can have compassion without surrendering sovereignty. There is nothing anti-immigrant about that.

In fact, it may be the most pro-immigrant position possible. Because when immigration occurs faster than a nation can absorb it, eventually the system hurts everyone—including immigrants who actually followed the rules and waited their turn.

My great-grandfather came to Montana in 1883. He didn’t come here expecting Montana to become Germany. He came here to become American.

Somewhere between Ellis Island and the southern border, we’ve forgotten that distinction. The American door can be open. But that doesn’t mean we have to take the walls down. Bring the food… the hamburgers, pizza, egg rolls, baklava , crepes, burritos, pistachios, but BE AN AMERICAN!