> “ive 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!

The U.S. was founded as a nation of immigrants, and has a cultural history of being exceptionally immigrant-friendly (compared to other nations), especially with regard to immigrants without much means.

I don't believe other nations have any obligation to follow this example. On the contrary, they should be able to set whatever immigration policies make sense for them. But this model of letting in poor immigrants, letting them do the work that nobody else wants to do, and letting their kids become net contributors, does seem to have benefited the U.S. greatly over the past few centuries.

▲ matheusmoreira an hour ago | parent [-]

I dunno... 1790 Naturalization Act says only white people could become citizens. Sounds like they were friendly towards immigration from very specific countries.

Roosevelt's 1915 Americanism address also reveals this:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68152/68152-h/68152-h.htm

He says americanism "is a matter of the spirit and of the soul". In the very next paragraph, the so called "hyphenated americans" are condemned. This is perfectly reasonable.

However, note the examples used:

  German-Americans
  Irish-Americans
  English-Americans
  French-Americans
  Scandinavian-Americans
  Italian-Americans

The implication is only the souls of white europeans were eligible for americanization.

There is even legal precedent for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_...

In 1923, the supreme court decided an indian was not eligible for citizenship because he was not white.

So arguably the US was a white ethnoatate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, just over half a century ago.

	▲	rrrrrrrrrrrryan 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I mean yes, obviously: the nation was founded with a giant genocide of native peoples. I do imagine original white people were perhaps more keenly aware of the fact that this land was not originally theirs, and that other people should be let in and given a fair shot, even if they're poor. I was merely making the argument that U.S. immigration policy has historically not been very classist (even if it was immensely racist), and not caring about the wealth of the incoming immigrants has worked out immensely well for the country over its lifespan.