The percentage of Americans who are immigrants was lower in 2010 than it was at any time between 1870 and 1920. The America of Thomas Edison and Teddy Roosevelt had a larger immigrant population than the one we have today.
But of course Ingraham isn't actually talking about immigration rates. She's talking about this. 
And why is Ingraham going after legal immigrants? And why is the Trump administration going after naturalized citizens? This is why. (Hi, mom!)
And now I've got people in my mentions accusing me of "cherry-picking" because I noted that our recent stretch of relatively high immigration is comparable to a previous time of high immigration. People are weird.
"The percentage of Americans who are immigrants was lower in 2010 than it was at any time between 1870 and 1920."
WHAT ABOUT BEFORE THAT? AND AFTER?
"Oh. Well, it was lower than it is now. I'd have thought that was obv..."
HA! GOTCHA!
WHAT ABOUT BEFORE THAT? AND AFTER?
"Oh. Well, it was lower than it is now. I'd have thought that was obv..."
HA! GOTCHA!
And of course @KevinMKruse has done a lovely job limning the connections between the white supremacists of that immigrant era and this one. Just want to add a couple of things...
The Marx Brothers, children of Jewish immigrants, were born in the early part of this era, and rose to their first fame in the polyglot melting pot vaudeville of the early 1900s.
The immigrants of this era gave America pizza, the hot dog, the hamburger, and the ice cream cone, all within a few years of the turn of the century.
There were daily newspapers in New York City in something like two dozen languages a hundred years ago—daily newspapers.
The immigrant culture of the turn of the last century was vibrant, exciting, inventive, seminal in producing American culture as we now know it.
As @KevinMKruse has noted, the opponents of immigration today are the children of the nativists of a hundred years ago. But those of us on the other side have roots and precursors in that era as well.
Immigration is as American as hamburgers and ice cream. Literally. It's not their country, it's ours. All of ours.
If you're here, you're one of us. Period.
And to the knucklehead who’s scandalized that I mean all of us when I say all of us: I live in New York City. Half a million of my neighbors are undocumented.
And every one is a New Yorker.
And every one is a New Yorker.
You don’t get to tell us who our people are.
