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I don't think the "secret sauce" was ever that immigrants were universally viewed as just as good as anyone else. German immigrants, Irish and Italian immigrants, Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and now Mexican immigrants have always been viewed with suspicion and some resentment by large segments of the American society they were immigrating to. They came anyway because the opportunity afforded by the runaway growth of the American economy was irresistible to those with incredible grit or just those with no other options. And as a class they worked hard to seize that opportunity and to prove that they could belong just as much as native-born citizens, despite the suspicion they faced.
If something has changed in the modern era, I would argue that it stems from the welfare state. If you make it to America, you are effectively guaranteed some share in its riches whether you then work hard or not. This has the two-fold effect of removing the implicit filter on immigrant quality, and of creating larger proportions of the resulting immigrant population who bear out the nativists' suspicions. Also add to that the effect of explicit multiculturalism which weakened the incentives for immigrants to assimilate quickly.
It all adds up to a world where the nativists are increasingly justified in their complaints. If the dynamic driving modern immigration does not change, two out comes are possible. The nativists will eventually be strengthened to the point that they will kill the golden goose, using the power of the state to throw the baby out with the bathwater by cutting off opportunity for immigrants across the board. Or the center will not hold and American society will dissolve into disconnected groups of takers squabbling over their share of a rapidly shrinking pie.
I am amenable to data that shows otherwise, but it seems to be that in ye olde days you came to America assimilated and depending on who and where you were you might be prevented from doing so by disgruntled locals.
Today the (hispanic at least) immigrants make no effort and seem to have no interest in assimilation. Even outside of Texas and California you see signs in Spanish everywhere, official governmental communication in Spanish and so on.
This is a huge difference in character of immigration with respect to previous waves of it.
There were massive German-speaking enclaves in the USA until the world wars. You can still find enclaves where the older folk prefer Italian.
While I'm sure you had some exceptions I doubt you had the current situation where many states had problems with a flood of zero English effort population and the government was both forced to and decided it was fine to essentially instantiate a second official language.
And for instance the Pennsylvania Dutch are small, isolated, insular, and German - and still are. Very different from getting on public transit in NYC and getting surrounded by Spanish speakers.
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