David Brooks writes in his column:
Over the past few decades, American society has been transformed in a fit of absence of mind. First, we've gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation. If you grew up between 1950 and 1985, you grew up at a time when only about 5 percent or 6 percent of American residents were foreign born. Today, roughly 13 percent of American residents are foreign born, and we're possibly heading to 15 percent.
By truncating the story and fitting it into a frame of his choosing, Mr. Brooks distorts history. He may be right that "we've gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation," but he's forgetting (or intentionally omitting) that before we were a low-immigrant nation, we were a high-immigrant nation. As Smartertimes has noted before, in fact census data show that the number of foreign-born Americans peaked in 1890 at 14.8%; the levels in 1910 of 14.7% and 1870 of 14.4% are all higher than the 13% that was the level in 2010.
Finally, while Mr. Brooks makes it sound like 15 percent is a "high" number, he also does not mention that the levels in smaller regions, like New York City, are much higher — about 40 percent in 2001. Compared to all-American New York City, a 15 percent foreign-born population is not much.