The years 1880 and 1920 bookend a famously high period of immigration to the United States. The era’s “Great Wave” was so large that it remade cities, sparked social and political upheavals, and challenged the nation’s self-identity. With the foreign-born population peaking at 14.8% in 1890 and then at 14.7% in 1910, the scale of immigration was unprecedented. 

Until now.

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Due to decades of mass immigration, both legal and illegal, culminating in the surge of 2021-2024 under former President Joe Biden, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population stands at 15.8% as of January. It’s the highest share ever recorded in a government survey. 

Ever since mass immigration began anew in the late 20th century, advocates have pointed to the “Great Wave” to insist we could handle it. After all, the foreign-born share, even by 2010, was still below the “Great Wave” peak. “We’ve been here before,” they would say. 

It’s no longer true. We have not been here before. Modern immigration is testing our nation’s absorptive capacities to an unprecedented degree, and there are several reasons to be pessimistic about the outcome. 

Start with the trends. After the foreign-born share hit its 1910 peak, the outbreak of World War I reduced the number of new arrivals, and restrictive legislation passed in the early 1920s kept the immigration numbers low for the next four decades. The respite from mass immigration offered the country a chance to welcome and incorporate the newcomers. However, unlike the “Great Wave,” there is no end in sight to today’s record-breaking immigration. The Census Bureau recently projected that the foreign-born share will increase throughout the 21st century, breaking new records year after year. In fact, the projections have proven to be underestimates, as the Census did not expect the U.S. to reach 15.8% foreign-born until 2042.

Although the new administration’s vigorous enforcement of laws against illegal immigration is a welcome change, the U.S. will continue to accept more than a million new permanent residents each year, plus hundreds of thousands of long-term visitors. Absent a legislative change, these immigrants will push the foreign-born share upward over time. How can the U.S. maintain its national identity, or sense of peoplehood, without even a temporary break from the demographic makeover it is experiencing?

The matter of national identity leads to a key difference between today’s immigration and the “Great Wave,” and another reason for pessimism about assimilation. The immigrants of the 1880-1920 period arrived in a nation committed to assimilating them. Schools and civic groups emphasized English, taught patriotic history, and discouraged “hyphenated Americans.” By contrast, the prevailing ideology today is multiculturalism, which emphasizes our differences rather than our commonalities as Americans. In this context, “assimilation to what?” is a fair question.

Even with the advantage of an immigration slowdown and an assimilationist ethos, the “Great Wave” still caused lasting changes to American culture. We often think of the descendants of European immigrants as a relatively homogeneous group in the sense that the particular countries their ancestors came from matter little today. However, scholars have found that when groups import cultural traits from their ancestral countries, some of those traits have remarkable staying power.

For example, European-origin Americans with the highest levels of social trust tend to have ancestors from European countries with the highest levels of social trust today. This remains true even when considering Americans whose ancestors arrived four or more generations ago. Similar cultural connections have been identified for environmental attitudes, savings behavior, and even financial literacy.

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In my research, I have found that views toward economic redistribution also tend to persist across generations. Put another way, Americans, even fourth-generation Americans whose ancestors came from countries that favor high levels of redistribution, tend to favor redistribution themselves. Clearly, immigration does have long-term effects on a nation’s culture. Today’s record levels of immigration will be no different. 

While controlling the border and deporting illegal immigrants is a necessary step in establishing any functional immigration system, the system should ensure that legal immigration remains low enough to absorb newcomers and avoid rapid cultural change. The goal of immigration policy now should be to gradually reduce the foreign-born share from its record high to a much more manageable level.

Jason Richwine is a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies.