Roughly a century ago, steamships carrying about 2,000 migrants would set sail daily to Ellis Island. They were the migrant caravans of their day.
It shouldn't bear repeating that for centuries, persecuted people with little to no economic opportunity have been willing to risk everything for freedom in the United States. And with each migrant iteration — from Germans to Irish to Italians to Russians to Chinese to Mexicans and now to Central Americans — the reaction of existing Americans has been the same: This time it's different.
In 1751, Benjamin Franklin even fretted about German immigrants, writing, "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?"
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