Can't believe your comparing legal Italian and Irish immigration to illegal Mexican immigration.
Italian's and others spoke English as a first language and fought in WWI and II. All other legal immigrate were proud to be an American and assimilated into the culture from that time period. My father and his father's generation were all Americans first!
I don't see Mexicans and Muslims assimilating at all or joining American armed services to help with Iraq. I just see invaders that hate America and want to take it over for themselves.
They choose to be some off-brand hyphenated flavor of American:
African-america;
Mexican-american;
Hispanic-american;
Muslim-american, Homosexual-american (a strange little culture)
and the rest.
Interestng story, I spoke with a legal immigrate from West Africa last summer. He was a taxi driver and I was in the back talking to him. He was happy to be an American citizen and he said he busted his bum to become one.
I asked him if he was a Afican-American? He replied with an astounding NO! He said he was an AMERICAN, period. I thought what he said was an early 1900's proud American response.
A.P. Giannini an legal Italian immigrate created Bank of America.