诗人艾玛拉撒路于1883年写了一首名为“新巨像”的诗，以帮助筹集三年后完成的自由女神像的资金。这首诗经常被引用作为美国移民方式的代表，其中部分内容如下：“给我你的疲惫，你的穷人，你的蜷缩的群众渴望自由呼吸……”但对欧洲裔美国移民的偏见也很普遍。时间拉撒路写了这首诗，基于种族等级制度的移民配额于1924年正式通过，并将一直有效至1965年。她的诗代表了一种未实现的理想 – 而且，遗憾的是，仍然存在。当欧洲国家开始在美洲殖民时，他们遇到了一个问题：美洲已经人口稠密。他们通过奴役并最终消灭大部分土着居民来解决这个问题 – 将其减少约95％ – 并将幸存者驱逐到未开发的贫民窟，政府毫无讽刺地将其称为“保留”。如果美国印第安人被视为人类，那么这些苛刻的政策就不合理。殖民者写道，美洲印第安人没有宗教信仰，没有政府，他们实行野蛮行为，有时甚至是身体上不可能行为 – 简而言之，他们是种族灭绝的可接受受害者。在美国，这种暴力征服的遗产在很大程度上仍被忽视。非裔美国人在1965年之前，美国少数非白人移民经常不得不克服相当大的障碍才能在这里定居。但直到1808年（合法）和此后多年（非法），美国强行招募非洲裔美国移民 – 连锁 – 作为无偿劳动者。你认为一个国家如此残酷地努力将移民强迫劳动者带到这里至少会在他们到达时欢迎他们，但非洲人的流行观点是，他们是暴力的，不道德的野人，可以使他们变得有用只有被迫遵守基督教和欧洲传统。奴隶制后的非洲移民遭受了许多同样的偏见，并面临着两个世纪前存在的许多相同的陈规定型观念。英国人和苏格兰裔美国人当然，安格斯和苏格兰人从未遭受过仇外心理？毕竟，美国原本是一个英美机构，不是吗？嗯，是的，不。在美国革命之前的几年里，英国开始被视为一个邪恶的帝国 – 第一代英国移民往往被视为敌意或怀疑。反英语情绪是约翰亚当斯在1800年总统大选中击败反英，亲法国候选人托马斯杰斐逊的一个重要因素。美国对英格兰和苏格兰的反对继续包括美国内战在内;只有在二十世纪的两次世界大战中才有英美。关系终于好起来了。 19世纪40年代后期，华裔美国华裔工人开始大量涌入，并帮助修建了许多将构成新兴美国经济支柱的铁路。但到了1880年，全国约有11万华裔美国人，而一些美国白人并不喜欢种族多样性的增长。国会回应了1882年的“排华法案”，该法案规定，中国移民“危及某些地方的良好秩序”，不再容忍。其他回应包括奇怪的当地法律（如加利福尼亚州对雇用华裔美国劳工的税收）到彻底暴力（例如1887年俄勒冈州的中国大屠杀，其中31名华裔美国人被愤怒的白人暴徒谋杀）。

Poet Emma Lazarus wrote a poem titled “The New Colossus” in 1883 to help raise funds for the Statue of Liberty, which was completed three years later. The poem, often cited as representative of the U.S. approach to immigration, reads in part: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” But bigotry against even European-American immigrants was rife at the time Lazarus wrote the poem, and immigration quotas based on racial hierarchies formally passed in 1924 and would remain in effect until 1965. Her poem represented an unrealized ideal — and, sadly, still does. When European nations began to colonize the Americas, they ran into a problem: The Americas were already populated. They dealt with this problem by enslaving and ultimately eliminating most of the indigenous population — reducing it by approximately 95% — and deporting the survivors to undeveloped ghettos that the government, without irony, referred to as “reservations.” These harsh policies could not have been justified if American Indians were treated like human beings. Colonists wrote that American Indians had no religions and no governments, that they practiced savage and sometimes physically impossible acts — that they, in short, acceptable victims of genocide. In the United States, this legacy of violent conquest remains largely ignored. African Americans Before 1965, the United States’ few non-white immigrants often had to overcome considerable hurdles to settle here. But until 1808 (legally) and for years thereafter (illegally), the United States forcibly recruited African-American immigrants — in chains — to serve as unpaid laborers. After all, the United States was originally an Anglo-American institution, wasn’t it? Well, yes and no. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Britain began to be perceived as a villainous empire — and first-generation English immigrants were often viewed with hostility or suspicion. An anti-English sentiment was a significant factor in John Adams’ defeat in the 1800 presidential election against the anti-English, pro-French candidate Thomas Jefferson. U.S. opposition to England and Scotland continued up to and including the American Civil War; it was only with the two world wars of the twentieth century that Anglo-U.S. relations finally warmed up. Chinese Americans Chinese-American workers began to arrive in large numbers in the late 1840s and helped build many of the railroads that would form the backbone of the emerging U.S. economy.  You’d think that a country that had put so much brutal effort into bringing immigrant forced laborers here would at least welcome them when they’d arrived, but the popular view of Africans was that they were violent, amoral savages who could be made useful only if forced to conform to Christian and European traditions. Post-slavery African immigrants have been subjected to many of the same prejudices, and face many of the same stereotypes that existed two centuries ago. English and Scottish Americans Surely Anglos and Scots have never been subject to xenophobia? But by 1880 there were some 110,000 Chinese Americans in the country, and some white Americans didn’t like the growing ethnic diversity. Congress responded with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which stated that Chinese immigration “endangers the good order of certain localities” and would no longer be tolerated. Other responses ranged from bizarre local laws (such as California’s tax on the hiring of Chinese-American laborers) to outright violence (such as Oregon’s Chinese Massacre of 1887, in which 31 Chinese Americans were murdered by an angry white mob).