The Immigration Catch-22: Economics, Demographics, and Right-wing Populism

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions, whom we shall welcome to participate in all of our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment — George Washington, 1781.

Sitting above the desk where I write is an otherwise unobtrusive shaving cup, maroon and white, its age belied only a small chip on the top. Shaving cups are a relic of a past age, and…