Below is a link to documents and speeches by our founders on immigration.
Our founders were very concerned that the quantity of immigrants should be kept low enough to encourage assimilation.
http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/index.asp?category=7
We are seeing that problem with the new immigrants (legal and illegal) from Mexico.
Here is the link to Thomas Jefferson's 1787 "Notes on the State of Virginia"
RE: The number of its inhabitants?
http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/index.asp?document=37
[snip] "...Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason.
To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants.
They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another.
It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children.
In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.
I may appeal to experience, during the present contest, for a verification of these conjectures. But, if they be not certain in event, are they not possible, are they not probable?
Is it not safer to wait with patience 27 years and three months longer, for the attainment of any degree of population desired, or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?
Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here..." ~ Thomas Jefferson
PING to my #3 post.
(The founding fathers speeches on immigration and the moral conditions of Citizenship)
You might want to bookmark that LINK.
Regards