The United States of America was built on the backs of Immigrants and it will continue to be built.  Furthermore, Barack Obama said in the video, “We don’t simply welcome new immigrants, we don’t simply welcome new arrivals — we are born of immigrants.” Most American citizens, unless if the family is Native American, every American family came from someplace else.  Immigration is part of the American identity.  However, throughout American history, new immigrants were never treated as equals to American citizens.

New groups of immigrants are repeatedly discriminated against. Starting at 10:35 minutes in the video, Barack Obama says, “the biggest irony of course was — is that those who betrayed these values were themselves the children of immigrants. … And we suggest that somehow there is ‘us’ and there is ‘them,’ not remembering we used to be ‘them’ .” There is a pattern to the discrimination through each group of new immigrants. New waves of immigrants themselves are discriminating. Americans that come from immigrant families can become content as American citizens. As problems arise in the United States, the American people find new groups and races of immigrants to put blame on. Each period of racial discrimination was caused by catastrophic social and/or economic events.

One of the most racially discriminated groups, if not the most discriminated groups in American history, were the Asians. So far as to there were racially targeted federal acts and laws restricting Asian immigration and rights. Every new ethnic group of immigrants  struggled as they faced racism, not just because they were a minority but also in the form of legalized discrimination.  However, unlike the Chinese, Japanese and other Asians, no other ethnic group faced legal immigration restriction acts that were specifically geared towards them.