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Notes -
That is not true. Ignoring the outlier year of 1991 (possibly a result of the Reagan amnesty?), the trend line of legal immigration is up and to the right from 1930 all the way until 2016.
This says nothing of illegal immigration, nor what the situation looks like now in 2023. Trump did (by jawboning) manage to reduce immigration.
Neverthless, foreign-born as a percent of the overall population keeps going up and will soon eclipse the all-time record set in the early 1900s.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
So we might set a new record soon, but it's only recently (last 10 years) gotten close to the level that was maintained pretty consistently from 1870 to 1920 (although this is also affected by the native reproduction rate--I think "we have more immigrants" may be less useful than "existing residents are having fewer kids"). So it's still not really accurate to say "There were never as many Italians or Irish then as there are Mexicans and assorted CA hispanics now." If this trend continues it might be true at some point in the future.
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