The U.S. is not a nation of immigrants
April 14, 2017
The myth that the United States is a
“nation of immigrants” feeds into the national self-image that the United
States is both a free society and a land of opportunity. It is a seductive myth
because we cherish the well-established fable of American exceptionalism, and
the idea that this nation is “a city set upon a hill.” But the myth is more
fiction than fact, and it hides a deeper and deeply unsettling truth about our
nation’s past and present. We need to stop saying that we are a “nation of
immigrants.” The following article explains why.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 was
the first US citizenship act. It limited naturalization to free white citizens,
thus excluding Native Americans, slaves, indentured servants, Asians and many
others. During the following decades and centuries other naturalization laws
were enacted, but it was not until 1924 that the Indian Citizenship Act
was enacted.
Adam Goodman’s article, “A
Nation of Immigrants,” which appeared in the October 8, 2015 issue of Dissent Magazine traces the nation of immigrants
paradigm to the Chicago School of Sociology in the early twentieth century.
Goodman says that the paradigm gave European immigrants a privileged place in
US society, and allowed them to treat non-European immigrants as secondary
actors, while ignoring Native Americans completely.
The big change came in
immigration policy came with the enactment of the 1965 Immigration Act. This
Act ended the national-origins quota immigration system that had prevailed up
until then, and created new opportunities for people from around the world to
come to the United States. The number of immigrants as a percentage of the
total population nearly tripled between 1970 and 2015, growing from less than
five percent to nearly fourteen percent. The nation of immigrants mythology
emerged during this period.
Importantly, the “nation of
immigrants” myth fed into the flawed “Bering Straits” theory of indigenous
migration from Asia to the Americas some 12,000 years ago. Accordingly, Indians
were the first immigrants. The Anglo settlers and others who came later were
simply subsequent waves of immigrants coming in search of a better life.
Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz debunked this
“Bering Straits” theory. She argues that indigenous peoples were in the
Americas at least 50,000 years before the English and other European settlers
arrived. Recognition of this history is not permitted by the "nation of
immigrants" myth. The plain truth is Native Peoples were dispossessed of
their land.
Congress adopted House Concurrent
Resolution 108, the Termination Act, on August 1, 1953. The stated purpose of
the Termination Act was "free those tribes listed from Federal
supervision and control." The termination policy meant that federal trust
protection and transfer payments guaranteed by treaties and other agreements
would end. That same year, 1953, Congress enacted Public Law 280, which
transferred all tribal court jurisdiction to respective state courts. As a
result of these acts of Congress, 109 tribes were terminated, approximately 2.5
million acres of Indian trust land was removed from protected status and sold
to whites, 12,000 Native Americans lost tribal recognition, and tribal
governments lost their right to govern. The termination policy was not ended
until 1968. Tribes and individuals harmed by the termination policy have not
been made whole for the loss they suffered or fully compensated for the damages
caused by the government’s action.

The United States is not a
"nation of immigrants." It is a settler nation trying to discover its
identity and redeem itself.
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