America was forged by immigrants who learned to speak the language, work hard, and adopt the civic habits that make liberty possible — a truth Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman hammered home on their show. They rightly remind us that the assimilation machine of the early 20th century produced citizens who put the Constitution and common culture ahead of tribal loyalties, and that confident civic identity is not incidental; it is essential.
Turn-of-the-century America welcomed waves of Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, and others through Ellis Island, and while life was brutal, those immigrants overwhelmingly integrated into American civic life and economic opportunity. Historic accounts show immigrants moved west, filled the factories and mines, and despite suffering, chose America over their old countries because it offered a future — not a permanent foreign enclave.
What’s changed is not the fact of immigration but the loss of the assimilation expectation and the rise of multiculturalism that treats nations like buffet lines for identity politics. Rufo bluntly accuses elites of letting the assimilation machine rust while importing larger and more diverse populations, and the result is a fracture in social cohesion and a decline in shared civic norms.
This isn’t abstract nostalgia — it’s a policy crisis. We must slow legal immigration to manageable levels, enforce our borders against illegal flows, and restore assimilation commitments: English proficiency, civics education, and public support tied to integration, not indefinite dependency. Those are common-sense, patriotic measures to protect working Americans and the fabric of the republic from the chaos of open-border ideology.
The real scandal is the ruling class that applauds mass migration while celebrating multicultural fragmentation, then wonders why communities unravel and wages stagnate. Left unchecked, this agenda rewards lawbreaking, erodes local cultures, and hands political advantage to those who would replace our civic inheritance with permanent grievance groups — a betrayal of ordinary citizens who keep this country running.
Patriotic Americans must demand leaders who will revive assimilation, secure the border, and put national interest above short-term political scoring. Restore the expectation that newcomers become Americans — not permanent guests — and we can rebuild the unity and prosperity that made our country exceptional in the first place.
