America’s Broken Melting Pot

How America’s immigrant culture came to distrust immigrants

The idea of America as a cultural ‘Melting Pot’ is now a historical footnote. It no longer represents an America constantly accepting and integrating immigrants, a country defined by acceptance of “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” For many the ‘American Dream’ is now for Americans only, something to be to be protected and not shared. For conservatives in particular, America is no longer as Reagan put it, “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” Instead, it is now a dark mountain fortress where we protect ourselves from those who would seek to take advantage of our power, wealth, and freedom.

The evolution of the immigrant within American culture has been a long process. It has been the steady transformation of others, individuals with familiar European and Judeo-Christian backgrounds, to the other, individuals perceived as so different that they are incompatible with American society. There have been a few key stages in the reversal of America’s understanding of the immigrant. First came the closing of the West at the end of the 19th century which reduced the need for rapid population growth, and thus the need for large amounts of immigrants. Next was the rapid industrialization of America through the development of advanced…