Let’s look back to the founding of the USA, and what the inscription plaque has in it…
This.
Long before that plaque was put up, immigration and opposition to immigration were a thing, not just the US but all of the Americas.
Nativism, essentially has an established group with power resisting the introduction of another group in large numbers which have the potential to weaken the power structure of the existing group.
Nativism existed in the US almost from the very start because the US, like Canada, needed immigrants in huge quantities to expand westward. Virtually every group, from Germans to Irish to Catholics (regardless of country of origin) were vilified from time-to-time. Conversely, black people were welcome - as long as they were slaves. And there has been a wink, wink, nudge, nudge approach to brown folks over the years especially in industries where the white poor won't work. Interestingly, many of those Hispanics owned much of the property in the SW where they now work until illegal American expansionism and a war wrested the territories from Mexico in the 1830s and
40s.
More interestingly, it takes 2.1 live births per female to sustain the population of a country over time. Back in the 1800s that the live birth rate dropped from 7.0 to 3.9. It steadily dropped thereafter reaching a low of 1.8 in 1980 and then grew slightly then fell again by 2020 to 1.6. In short, that is not enough live births per women to sustain the US population. The issue here too touches on race. By 2020 the live birth rate for non-Hispanic white women was 1.55; for non-Hispanic blacks 1.71; for Hispanics 1.88.
The simple math here is that yes, at those rates, Hispanics and blacks share of the population will grow larger than non-Hispanic whites. BUT, without immigration the net population of the US will still drop.
I agree totally that a country needs to control its immigration. The problem for the US's race-based immigration attitude is that the vast bulk of immigrants are those that meet the Statue of Liberty's inscription:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door"
and who inevitably come from what Trump refers to as "shithole countries" and who can't afford to bribe their way in for a US$5 million gold card.
