When people say that the United States is a “nation of immigrants” to support open borders and other shameful policies, that is a true statement.
What is also true that this “nation of immigrants” eradicated somewhere between 2 million and 40 million people who were here well before any of us.
So I am not sure what sort of great lesson I am supposed to take from this “nation of immigrants” crap?
“Nation of immigrants” is a trope that makes people feel good. It sounds better than settler or colonizer or imperialist. It locates people in the vague late 1800s-early 1900s. In this mythos, immigrants are good hardworking humble boot strappers, which is why you see people who are so far from being immigrants lay claim to this label throughout the political spectrum. Immigration was practically open borders for whomever the US considered white at the time. People like the idea of immigrants, but not actual immigrants or their children.
I distinguish “settlers” that is people setting up new societies (or branches of societies) and “immigrants” people joining an existing society (or branch thereof). Immigrants are expected to give up some of their identity and let the society they’re joining socialize their children. Mostly today you get migratns who are the worst of both worlds…
The US was founded by settlers, the immigrants came later.
“People like the idea of immigrants, but not actual immigrants or their children.”
IME it’s the opposite, people don’t like the idea of immigration but often have no problem with particular immigrants or their children. Where I’m from people hated northerners but almost everybody had some friends who were northerners.
To clarify a bit, when I say migrants I mean people (individually or collectively) who might move around but have the goal of _not_ joining any particular society and to prevent any local society they find themselves in from contaminating their children with its taint.
This includes both “expats” (upper class twits who flit around from country to country and blammer about being ‘citizens of the world’) and underclass migrants like the underclasses now found in Western Ejurope with middle eastern origins, two sides of the same coin.