The US Census Bureau is reporting that the US is on the cusp of the Second Great Wave of Immigration where the immigrant population of America is at or near the historically high level of 15%.    Most people, especially the youngsters in the Open Borders movement assume we have been pouring immigrants into America at high levels forever.  Not so!  We dramatically reduced immigration levels around 1920 because the nation needed to catch its breath and immigrants needed to assimilate.  The public demanded the slowdown.

That all changed in 1965 when Senator Ted Kennedy was among those pushing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (a bill signed by Lyndon Johnson).  Previously most immigrants to America were Europeans, this law opened our doors to Latin Americans, Africans and Asians and so the cultural leap they would have to make to assimilate became even greater.

Today assimilation is a dirty word and the motives of the immigration lobby are frankly to push America toward more socialism (Dems want the voters), more diversity (frankly less whiteness) and for others (some Republicans/big business) it’s all about a cheap labor force.

So for those of us who think Senator Sessions makes enormous sense, I fear that common sense is not in vogue these days.

Before you read this, check out the Migration Policy Institute graph (to get to the graph click on ‘Number and share total US population 1850-2012’) which puts us much closer to the 15% mark than does this Census Bureau report.

From The Hill (hat tip: Robin):

If Congress passes immigration reform legislation this year, it will dramatically add to what the Census Bureau is calling the “Second Great Wave” of immigration in U.S. history.

Opponents of the legislation have seized on the Census Bureau’s analysis of migration patterns to warn of an explosion of foreign-born population over the next few decades.

“Once again, the country is approaching a percentage of foreign-born not seen since the late 1800s and early 1900s,” the Census Bureau wrote on its blog this week. “Will this proportion continue to increase, perhaps exceeding the high of nearly 15 percent achieved in both 1890 and 1910?”

The agency estimates that 40 million people living in the United States in 2010 were born elsewhere, approximately 12.9 percent of the population. That is the highest population of immigrants, percentage-wise, since the 1920s, according to the Census Bureau.

Opponents of granting citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants and expanding legal immigration flows have pounced on the study.

“After 40 years of large-scale immigration, rising joblessness, failing schools and a growing welfare state, would not the sensible, conservative thing to do be to slow down for a bit, allow wages to rise, assimilation to occur, and to help those struggling here today?” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Thursday, when he delivered the keynote address to commemorate the Tea Party Patriots’ fifth anniversary.

An aide to Sessions estimated the number of foreign-born people living in the United States has now reached 45 million.

Sessions’s office estimates that number could swell by at least 30 million over the next decade if Congress passes the Senate immigration bill.

For readers reaching retirement age, look back to the early 1970’s and see that things have really changed in the last 40 years (you aren’t wrong to have suspected it).

The immigrant population reached a low in 1970 when 9.6 million people — 4.7 percent of the total population — residing in the United States were born in another country.

If you missed it, check out our post last week about MENA (Middle Eastern/North African) immigrant populations in the US, a group that will resist assimilation more than some others.  That post went off the charts for some reason with 1,000 readers in one day.