Nativism and the New Know-Nothings

As it absorbs these latest waves of immigrants, the United States of the mid-21st century will be a different place from the nation that assimilated white European immigrants over the last two centuries. That inevitability may contribute to the anxiety experienced among some U.S.-born Americans of European descent, especially if the current job insecurity, income inequality and stagnating social mobility persist. A dramatic transition will be underway. Will the nation be psychically prepared for it, or will it still be revisiting 19th-century battles over cultural and political turf?