President. I know that there are some who will attempt to brush all this aside. They will make the point that. despite this early development. this country. during the past halfcentury. has received millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and elsewhere. They will point out that these immigrants were of very different ethnic and national backgrounds from those of the earlier settlers. that they were accustomed to very different institutions. and sprang from very different cultures. but that these immigrants have nevertheless. become just as good Americans as the descendants of the earliest Virginians. The point. however. Is this: These were people who were emigrating from their native lands to America. That is a very different proposition from a proposal which would have American statehood emigrating from this country to embrace the shores whence these people came. The immigrants who came here in late decades settled among established Americans. amid established American institutions. surrounded by established American characteristics and ways of living. which they were bound to pick up and adopt as their ownthus. indeed. becoming Americans in fact as well as in technical citizenship. But the bestowal of American statehood on a foreign land will not make its inhabitants Americans in anything but name. If. for example. a native of Sicily were to settle among us. after several years he would pick up our language and customs. he would acquire a grasp of American institutions and culture. and he would adopt the ways of those about him.
Keywords matched
immigrants emigrating