John F. Kennedy coined the term “a nation of immigrants” for his 1958 book of the same name. Kennedy was proud of the immigrants who built the most prosperous nation on earth. He wanted more of the same, as do all Americans.

But that’s not what Americans are getting. Instead, they’re getting a government that’s been manipulating immigration policies for over half a century to maintain political power. In the process, they are undermining a foundation that turned a fledgling nation into a global power in less than 150 years.

Democrat policies (aided by Republicans) have encouraged millions of, at best, loosely vetted immigrants to live in America. They’ve simultaneously dismissed the importance of good moral character and the need to integrate immigrants by having them adopt American values. No wonder almost 90% of Americans believe that uncontrolled illegal immigration is a threat to America.

Biden and his Cuban émigré Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, excuse the crisis by invoking Kennedy’s “nation of immigrants” term and insisting that the problem isn’t because of their policies. The system, they say, has been broken for decades. That’s rich. In fact, they follow a long tradition of corrupt Democrat politicians who, since the 1960s, have been selling America’s soul for political gain and fame while outrageously presenting their actions as humanitarian.

JFK celebrated America’s diverse European immigrants. They wanted nothing from America but a chance to improve their lives and build a great country. And that’s what they got and what they did. Hundreds of thousands of wannabe immigrants were turned away or later deported because they were likely public charges—and Americans applauded.

Image: An English language class for immigrants in Michigan. 1909. Library of Congress.

After World War II, Americans were happy with immigrants who worked hard, were self-reliant, law abiding, valued education, and learned or spoke English. Like Kennedy, they wanted immigrants to integrate—to become Americans by adopting America’s values, just as they had. That formula still works, as we’ve seen with the waves of Asian and East Asian Indians who have embraced America’s values and thrived.

As the descendant of Irish Catholic immigrants, JFK knew first-hand that when Irish Catholics integrated as Americans, the sky was the limit. However, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, didn’t care if immigrants integrated by adopting American values. LBJ saw unintegrated immigrants as the ticket to Democrats controlling the government forever.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965 made America an all-comers nation. People from countries that hate or love America—along with those who love or hate Jews, Christians, blacks, whites, or Asians—were all welcome. At the act’s signing, LBJ said the Act “does not affect the lives of millions.”

That promise didn’t age well, but it was not because the Act made America the world’s most “diverse” nation. America had already demonstrated that it had a formula to dispel the conflict inherent in increased diversity. The problem with the act was that LBJ supported torching the idea that immigrants must be integrated through adopting American values.

There’s a body of research (see here and here), including the rocky history of diversity in America before people figured out that newcomers needed to be educated in America’s common values, that true integration is the only way to resolve ethnic, racial, and religious discrimination. And only in that way can both immigrants and the host countries succeed. Democratic leaders, however, framed integration as hegemonic and attracted new immigrants to their party by saying that, once in America, they didn’t actually need to become Americans.

Because so many new immigrants were non-English speakers, English was the first American value to go. Indeed, by producing everything from product information to voter information in Spanish, Latinos lost their motivation to learn English. “Immigrants from Mexico have the lowest rates of English proficiency (34%), followed by those from Central America (35%).” Many of those who speak only Spanish have lived in the United States for more than 20 years.

Next on the chopping block were the values of self-reliance, working hard, and valuing education. To complement an all-comers immigration policy, LBJ introduced an all-comers welfare policy that allowed immigrants to be eligible for welfare virtually on arrival.

There were foreseeable outcomes for an immigration policy that had no expectations about speaking the English language, working hard, valuing education, or being self-reliant, which is that immigrants failed to thrive. Then, they complained about discrimination, allowing Democrats to contend that the problem was racist Republicans.

That finger-pointing hid the fact that all immigrants to America faced discrimination until they earned respect as Americans by adopting the values of their new homeland. If Democrats admitted this truth, they would run the risk of immigrants integrating, seeing the American dream within reach, and gravitating toward Republicans.

In the 1980s, President Carter, through the Refugee Act of 1980, put in place another piece of legislation that could facilitate a strategy to ensure permanent Democrat control over the government. He made it possible for a future president to permit an unlimited number of loosely vetted refugees from failing nations to become naturalized American citizens. An accompanying refugee resettlement package made it possible for them to dismiss adopting American values, too.

Things in America would have been different if Kennedy’s vision, enshrined in 1958’s A Nation of Immigrants, had remained America’s official policy. However, the intensely political Lyndon Johnson didn’t see immigrants as people yearning to succeed in a free country. Instead, he saw them as the ticket to the Democrats gaining permanent control over the federal government, and a central part of this strategy was to negate any legal or cultural press to have immigrants adopt American values.

Richard Nixon didn’t realize the scope of the problem and focused no energy on the issue. That left the field open for Carter to facilitate Johnson’s strategy—and of course, Reagan was bamboozled into accepting amnesty.

Thanks to these deliberate Democrat policies, America went from being a shining city on a hill to being the world’s largest permanent refugee camp. And that is the foundation on which Biden and Mayorkas are operating as they have implemented one immigrant-related policy after another, all to bring to America those millions of loosely vetted, unintegrated, twilight immigrants to our shores.