This entire argument is fallacious and disingenuous.
You apparently don’t know, ot choose to distort, the meaning of the term “racism” Racism refers to a belief that differences in intelligence, physical aptitude, or intrinsic behavior are due to genetic groupings that are termed ‘race’.
Your misuse of the term is consistently inconsistent, and is a sophistic attempt to equate obviously distinct and different attitudes:
· Benjamin Franklin may have “railed against German immigrants”, but it was not a manifestation of racism – Germans are of the same race as Franklin.
· Henry Cabot Lodge may have opposed Irish immigration, but his race is the same as theirs.
· Italians are also of the same “race” as the congressional majority that passed the immigration act of 1924 – that was not an instance of racism either.
These are instances of “ethnocentricity”, the belief that one’s culture is better than another one. Most Americans agree wholeheartedly with that assessment, and apparently so do the thousands of people from other cultures who are lined up at the door (or sneaking under the fence) to come here.
We who oppose unlimited legal immigration, and abhor illegal immigration, recognize that cultural assimilation is an intrinsic and necessary aspect of the success of the American melting pot, and that unlimited legal immigration impairs achievement of that outcome, while measured inflow facilitates it. Demonstrators in Southern California, where we both live, demonstrate by waving Mexican flags instead of the stars and stripes, that this essential process is not occurring.
Immigration should be regulated, measured, responsive to the needs of the United States and most of all legal. Yes there is a term for that attitude, that ends in ‘-ism’: Americanism.
