"There is still in our midst a group of idealists who... call "selfish," "un-American" any one who suggests further immigration legislation.... They believe this is the world's great "melting pot"... They produce such endless and impressive statistics to prove that our recent immigrants are far ahead of the native-born...

We sometimes cannot help wondering how our ancestors, of Anglo-Saxon stock, who originally settled the United States, ever had the genius and the wisdom and the courage to fight the Revolutionary War, or to develop our American democratic government. ...

Standing close behind these idealists come [big business]—all profiting directly through the influx of unlimited "cheap labor"... many of our idealists have been misled into cooperating with these "Big Money" interests... And politicians whose positions depend upon the votes of foreign-born...[call for] 'Asylum of the Oppressed'."

— Robert De C. Ward, 1916