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The Making of Modern Immigration: An Introduction | xiii How Did We Get Here? In assessing the efficacy of our national policies or even of the value of our col- lective attitudes toward the immigrant, it is imperative to understand the historical context surrounding them. To the already large body of literature on immigration policies we should add something to the history of demography in this country. At least since 1755, colonists in America had been thinking long and hard about the kind of nation they wished to build and the population they wished to form. When Benjamin Franklin penned his famous essay, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind” in that year, it became one of the first treatises on demogra- phy to emerge from the new world. Premised upon an antipathy toward indentured servitude, Franklin thought those in America would attain true independence when no longer laboring under the yoke of remittances to the English homeland. How- ever, a major challenge presented itself to the colonies in the form of an unchecked proliferation of diverse ethnicities. Cautioning against admitting greater numbers of the “Palatine Boors” or the “Sons of Africa,” Franklin saw a cumulative dilution of the Anglo-Saxon race. Rising numbers were both a direct threat to economic prosperity, and, worse still, the natural proximity of races meant the purity of the English complexion could be sullied by encounters with blacks and “tawnies.” Franklin’s sentiments were widely held by other colonists who grew to detest the presence of so many polluting the country they had adopted and made their own. To modern readers, Franklin’s racism is shocking, but seen in its historical context, this founder’s sense of identity reveals a complex set of issues that are at the heart of current debates. Under what circumstances can the nation grow and prosper? What are the limits of that growth to ensure that the maximal number might reap the widest possible benefit? What taboos are still in place regarding immigrants from “undesirable” locales? How do we stereotype the other? Who or what counts in the formation of our national identity? Is a pluralistic society really all that it promises? What is gained or lost by immigration? How does racism or ethnocentrism factor into policy development on immigration affairs? If and when we finally put away both the subtle and overt forms of nativism still at work in this country, will this alter our sense of what it means to be truly free, to be truly American? Modern historians of immigration are still plumbing the depths of these and other questions, but they now have a clear set of historical patterns and socio- logical groups to formulate a calculus of the immigrant experience in the United States. This experience is hardly static, but it does allow for some theoretical mod- els of the experience itself. 2 Some historians of immigration, like Roger Daniels, have located five principal periods in the history of modern immigration. These are (1) high immigration and growing restriction (1882–1924) (2) low and decreasing immigration and severe restriction (1924–1943) (3) low but increasing immigra-