America Wasn’t Built on “Anything Goes” Immigration

Assimilation isn’t hate. It’s the deal. And if we pretend otherwise, we break the country that everyone wants to move to.

Introduction

There’s a story people tell about the United States that sounds noble, modern, and morally superior.

It goes like this:

America was “built by immigrants,” therefore America must accept anyone, at any pace, by any method, and then politely reshape itself around whatever culture arrives. If Americans don’t like that, they’re fearful. Bigoted. Racist. Some kind of “-ist.”

That story isn’t just wrong.

It’s dangerous.

Because it quietly replaces the American immigration model with something else entirely: a borderless, expectation-free revolving door where the host country is expected to adapt to newcomers, instead of newcomers adapting to the country they chose.

That isn’t how America became America.

And it isn’t how America stays America.

Immigration can be good. Legal immigration can be great. Immigrants have built businesses, served in our military, enriched our communities, and strengthened our economy. None of that is in dispute.

What is in dispute is the lie that the United States was designed to absorb limitless migration while changing its civic identity, language norms, and public culture to accommodate permanent subcultures.

That’s not immigration.

That’s national self-erasure.

The Myth: “America Must Bend”

Let’s be blunt: the “bend the host country” narrative is an update to an old trick.

Take a true phrase — “nation of immigrants” — and then smuggle in a false conclusion:

If you believe immigration is good, you must accept illegal immigration too.

If you believe immigration is good, you must accept unlimited immigration too.

If you believe immigration is good, you must abandon assimilation too.

If you believe immigration is good, you must treat English as optional too.

If you disagree, you’re immoral.

That’s not an argument.

That’s a moral hostage note.

America is a nation of immigrants.

America is also a nation of laws.

And it’s a nation with a distinct civic identity — one that has always required newcomers to join the project, not rewrite the project.

A Country Is Not a Location. It’s a Contract.

Here’s what people forget on purpose:

A nation is not just a place to stand.

It’s an agreement.

It’s people bound together under shared rules, shared institutions, and a shared public culture that makes cooperation possible.

You can’t run elections, courts, schools, markets, or civil society without common ground.

You don’t need everyone to be the same. That’s not the point.

You need enough unity to function as one people.

That unity is not automatic. It doesn’t “just happen.” It’s maintained — deliberately — through law, culture, and expectation.

And the biggest expectation in American immigration has always been assimilation: become American.

Not “erase your heritage.”

Become American in your civic identity.

America Was Never “Open Borders by Design”

People talk as if the U.S. was built on the idea that anyone can come, anytime, anyway, and the country must accept it.

That’s historically false.

From the early days, citizenship and naturalization were treated as legal statuses with legal requirements. The U.S. created rules around belonging very early in federal law. (You can dislike parts of that early history, and still admit the basic point: America did not operate on “anything goes.”).

Over time, the country repeatedly revised immigration policy to control flows and outcomes. One well-known example is the Immigration Act of 1924, which created national-origin quotas and reflected an explicit federal decision to shape immigration levels and composition.

You don’t have to celebrate that act to understand what it proves:

The United States has always asserted the right to control who enters, how many enter, and under what conditions.

That’s not tyranny.

That’s sovereignty.

A nation that can’t control entry is not deciding its own future.

The Assimilation Deal Was the Whole Point

When America’s immigration story works, it works because the terms are clear.

You come here legally.

You learn the language well enough to participate.

You adopt the civic framework — Constitution, laws, elections, equal rights, peaceful transfer of power.

You keep your heritage privately — family traditions, food, faith, holidays — while the public square remains American.

That’s how the “melting pot” worked.

Not because America is “superior” in some ethnic sense.

Because America is a civic project. A shared operating system.

And this is not some made-up cultural preference. Assimilation is baked into the citizenship pathway.

Naturalization requires English and civics knowledge (with specified exemptions), and the process includes an oath to support the Constitution and laws of the United States.

That’s not “racism.”

That’s literally the expectation: you are joining a nation, not renting a room in a hotel.

Illegal Immigration Isn’t “Just Another Kind of Immigration”

We’re told to soften language now.

“Undocumented.”

“Asylum seeker.”

“Migrant.”

Sometimes those words are accurate. Sometimes they’re used to blur the issue.

Here’s what doesn’t change: entering the United States outside lawful processes is illegal under federal law.

So when someone says, “It shouldn’t matter how they got here,” what they’re really saying is: the country’s laws do not deserve enforcement.

That’s not compassion.

That’s surrender.

A society that won’t enforce its foundational rules teaches everyone — citizen and non-citizen — that rules are optional if you feel strongly enough.

That corrodes trust. It corrodes citizenship. And it corrodes the legitimacy of legal immigration.

Because legal immigration only stays politically supported when the public believes the system is real.

When citizens see chaos, they don’t become more welcoming.

They become more hardened.

And legal immigrants who did it the right way get punished by the backlash created by lawlessness.



That’s not humane.

That’s reckless.

Scale and Speed Matter Because Capacity Is Real

Immigration isn’t only a moral debate.

It’s also a capacity problem.

Housing.

Schools.

Hospitals.

Courts.

Policing.

Infrastructure.

Wages.

Community cohesion.

Assimilation bandwidth.

All of that has limits.

And those limits aren’t bigotry. They’re reality.

The foreign-born population has grown dramatically over the last 50 years — 46.2 million people in 2022, about 13.9% of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.

Lawful permanent residents (“green cards”) alone: nearly 1.173 million people became LPRs in FY2023, per DHS OHSS.

Those numbers aren’t inherently “bad.”

But pretending numbers don’t matter is childish.

If you bring in people faster than you can integrate them, you don’t get unity. You get separation.

And when separation becomes the norm, the national identity weakens.

That’s how you end up with a country that shares a zip code but not a culture.

Assimilation vs Accommodation

Here’s the pivot America has been pressured into making:

Old model: newcomers assimilate into American civic life.

New model: America accommodates permanent non-assimilation.

That’s the crux.

Accommodation sounds kind. It sounds inclusive.

But the long-term effect is not harmony. It’s permanent division.

If the message becomes “You don’t have to learn English, you don’t have to adopt the civic culture, you don’t have to integrate, and the host country must adjust to you,” then what you’re building is not a unified nation.

You’re building parallel societies.

A shared nation requires shared norms.

That’s not a “preference.” It’s structural.

Language Is Social Glue, Not a “Vibe”

Language is not just communication.

Language is a nation talking to itself.

A common language is one of the key things that allows a multi-ethnic country to exist without splitting into rival blocs.

America historically functioned with English as the default language of civic life — courts, contracts, business, education, politics.

And in March 2025, English was designated the official language of the United States by executive order (EO 14224), with federal agencies given discretion around non-English services.

You can argue whether that order was wise. That’s fine.

But you cannot pretend language doesn’t matter.

If you want one nation, you need a shared public language.

Otherwise you get:

Information silos.

Workplace silos.

 School silos.

Political silos.

Media silos.

And then people start voting and organizing as blocs, not as Americans.

That’s not theoretical.

That’s predictable.

Subcultures Are Fine. Permanent Sub-Nations Are Not.

America has always had neighborhoods and communities with strong heritage.

That can be beautiful.

Food, festivals, churches, family traditions — no problem.

That’s not what people are worried about.

What people are worried about is the rise of permanent subcultures that function like sub-nations: separate language expectations, separate politics, separate loyalties, separate moral frameworks, and a growing insistence that the host country has no right to remain itself.

At that point, you’re not celebrating cultural richness.

You’re dismantling the shared civic identity that makes the richness possible.

A society can’t run on endless fragmentation.

Eventually, the only “identity” left is grievance and group power.

And once that becomes the organizing principle, you don’t get unity.

You get a fight.

“This Isn’t Bigotry.” Correct. It’s Civics.

This is where the conversation gets poisoned.

If you argue for assimilation, you’re told you hate immigrants.

If you argue for legal immigration, you’re told you hate foreigners.

If you argue for border enforcement, you’re told you’re cruel.

It’s a cheap tactic designed to silence normal people.

Wanting a country to enforce its own laws is not racism.

Wanting immigrants to assimilate is not racism.

Wanting manageable immigration levels is not racism.

Wanting the host culture to remain the host culture is not racism.

It’s self-preservation.

And honestly, the truly insulting position is the one that says immigrants can’t assimilate.

Millions did. Millions do.

They learned English. They worked. They served. They raised American kids who became fully American. They didn’t demand the host country abandon itself to make them comfortable.

That’s not because they were “forced.”

It’s because they understood the deal: you came to America because America is America.

So don’t destroy the thing you came for.

What Assimilation Should Mean (In Plain English)

Let’s stop using mushy language.

Assimilation means:

You follow U.S. law.

You learn English well enough to function in work and civic life.

You accept the Constitution as the governing framework, even when you disagree with outcomes.

You do not import the political tribalism, corruption norms, or ethnic resentments of the country you left and replant them here.

You are free to keep your heritage — food, holidays, worship, family customs — but your primary civic identity becomes American.

That’s the deal.

Not because America is “perfect.”

Because America is a specific civic system. And if people don’t buy into it, it stops working.

A Pro-Immigration Position Can Still Be Pro-Border

Here’s what sane people believe — and what elites pretend not to understand:

You can be pro-immigration and still demand control.

In fact, if you want immigration to remain politically supported, you must demand control.

Because when citizens believe immigration is out of control, support collapses. And the policy swing that follows is rarely gentle.

A sane immigration posture looks like this:

Enforce the border and immigration law.

Prioritize legal immigration that is paced to match national capacity.

Vetting that is real, not ceremonial.

Strong interior enforcement against illegal employment incentives.

Clear assimilation expectations — cultural confidence, not apology.

Citizenship as a privilege earned through joining the civic culture, not a prize handed out because feelings were hurt.

That’s not anti-immigrant.

That’s pro-America.

And it’s the only way legal immigration survives without triggering nonstop backlash.

The Golden Goose Problem

America is the golden goose.

Not flawless. Never was.

But unusually stable, unusually wealthy, unusually free compared to most places on Earth.

People want in for a reason.

That reason is not “because America has no identity.”

It’s because America has strong institutions, a functioning economy, rule of law (imperfect but real), and a culture that rewards initiative more than most societies do.

If we keep pretending borders are immoral, law is optional, and assimilation is “hate,” we kill the goose.

We don’t get a kinder America.

We get a weaker America.

A more divided America.

A poorer America.

A resentful America where people organize by subgroup instead of shared citizenship.

And then the opportunity that drew immigrants here dries up.

That’s not compassion.

That’s national malpractice.

The Bottom Line

No, the United States was not built on allowing anyone to enter illegally and then bending the host culture around them.

No, the United States was not built on importing other countries’ politics and tribal divisions.

No, the United States was not built on making English optional in the public square.

America was built on a shared civic identity strong enough to absorb newcomers without dissolving itself.

Immigration can be good.

Legal immigration can be great.

But it has to be paced, vetted, and paired with assimilation.

That’s not bigotry.

That’s law, civics, and common sense.

Why This Matters

If immigration becomes “limitless, lawless, and expectation-free,” the result won’t be unity.

It will be instability.

A functional immigration system protects three things at the same time:

Social cohesion — so we remain one nation under one civic framework.

Legal immigrants — so doing it the right way still means something.

America’s future — so the opportunity people chase here doesn’t get destroyed by fragmentation and institutional overload.

Practical takeaway: if you want America to stay America, you can’t outsource national identity to slogans. You need borders that work, laws that are enforced, and the confidence to say to newcomers: welcome — now become one of us.

References

Associated Press. (2025, February 28). Trump signs order designating English as the official language of the US.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2024, April 9). The foreign-born population in the United States: 2022.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Homeland Security Statistics. (2024). U.S. lawful permanent residents: 2023.

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. (n.d.). The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act).

U.S. Government Publishing Office. (2025, March 6). 90 FR 11363: Designating English as the Official Language of the United States (Executive Order 14224).

U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. (n.d.). 8 U.S.C. § 1325: Improper entry by alien.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (n.d.). English and civics testing requirements (Policy Manual, Vol. 12, Part E, Ch. 2).

White House. (2025, March 1). Designating English as the Official Language of the United States (Executive Order 14224). 

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this post are opinions of the author for educational and commentary purposes only. They are not statements of fact about any individual or organization, and should not be construed as legal, medical, or financial advice. References to public figures and institutions are based on publicly available sources cited in the article. Any resemblance beyond these references is coincidental.