America hasn’t benefited from immigration at all. This country is not richer culturally and actually because of the contributions made by the immigrants who came here during those times when previous restrictionists would have denied them entry.
It is beyond belief that you could actually attempt to make an argument out of this.
Would it have been a moral failing to deny immigrants entry in the 19th and 20th centuries? No. But it would have been public policy of the most disastrous sort, as history makes totally clear. So: Is it a failing — intellectual and historical failing — to deny that America’s status as a nation of immigrants is one of the key reasons it is the best and most powerful and richest and finest country on earth? Is it a failing to be advancing a case that is not substantively different from the Know-Nothings?
Are you kidding me?