US American empire and the telos of US immigration law from 1924 to 2024

Reflecting on the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Immigration Act, this brief essay suggests that the idea of "US American Empire" forms the telos of the last one hundred years of US immigration policy. Whether in the twentieth or the twenty-first centuries, or under Republican or Democratic leadership, US lawmakers have sought to restrict immigration to those who were deemed most "assimilable." Such moves are not only about preserving or instituting a particular racial character of the United States but ensuring a particular role for the United States globally.