That statement is historical nonsense. At one point in time, Chicago had the largest polish newspaper in the world. The Denver Post was originally in German. I could list SEVERAL items like this, but I won't. The cries of threat and cultural fears of being overwhelmed were similar, too. Google on the cultural backlash against Chinese immigrants in the 1890s. Or the Irish in the 1860s (they WERE English speaking, to be sure), or the Italians in the early 1900s. Same tired arguments. Same hysteria. Same lame accusations. Wasn't true then. Ain't true now.
The big difference is that we were not creating a permanent underground group of people. If you showed up at Ellis Island with medical clearance and a script showing you were not a criminal, they let you in. If you showed up WOP (without papers), they kept you for processing, and screened you there, and let you in. This idea that in the past immigrants lined up in orderly little lines at the American Embassy in Naples, Krakau, Hong Kong, Dublin, or Moscow to get visas is complete and utter bullshit, and the freepers who advocate that this current group should go "back to the LEGAL way their forefathers did it" are historically ignorant. If they did it the way the earlier generations of immigrants did, they would show up at the border and we would issue them a visa and they would come in.
No, it's not the same, and your saying so doesn't make it true.
Immigrants were EXPECTED to learn English or they got NOWHERE...THEY WEREN'T CATERED TO. It was either sink or swim....they swam.
Wow. Guess my parents and everyone else who escaped Hitler and Stalin lied about how they came here LEGALLY, after years of waiting in line, having to learn English and the Constitution, be healthy, have sponsors and/or jobs depending on age, women and children came first and the fathers followed sometimes years later.
People will always hang out with others who share their culture, but no one in the 1940s and 1950s had official government and business documents translated (for "free") into their language to cater to them. These were people escaping true horrors of war, not just for "economic opportunity" to send all their money back to the "homeland."