Over 100 years ago, as another influx of new Americans reached our shores, the issues and debate were not that much different than today. With the immigration issue bubbling in the background during this election season, I thought it worthwhile to remember a short quote from one of the many books published around that time:
I do not fear foreigners half so much as I fear Americans who impose on them and brutally abuse them. Such Americans are the most dangerous enemies to our institutions, utterly foreign to their true spirit. Such Americans are the real foreigners….Whether immigrants remain Aliens or become Americans depends less on them than on ourselves.
— Clergyman and author Josiah Strong, writing in the 1906 edition of the book Aliens or Americans by Howard B. Grose.
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