ABSTRACT
From colonial times to the present, the United States has never been united in its attitudes toward newcomers. Admissionists have pressed for an open door, restrictionists a closed door. The late Barbara Jordan, as chair of the United States Commission on Immigration Reform, represented the admissionists when she wrote: “The United States has been and should continue to be a nation of immigrants. A well-regulated system of legal immigration is in our national interest.” But Jordan also acknowledged, “There have always been those who despised the newcomers. The history of American immigration policy is full of racism and ethnic prejudice.” 1 Current American history is riddled with racism and ethnic prejudice. Patrick J. Buchanan, a sometime candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, summed up the restrictionist arguments:
There are flood tides of new immigrants coming to the country and I think these … contribute to some of the social problems we’ve got in America…. If present trends hold, white Americans will be a minority in 2050 … our great cities are riven with gang wars among Asian, black and Hispanic youth who grow up to run ethnic crime cartels.… What happened to make America so vulgar and coarse, so uncivil and angry? Is it coincidence that racial and ethnic conflicts pervade our media when the racial and ethnic character of the US has changed more in four decades than in the previous twenty? 2
