Anbinder pushes back on "status anxiety" as a full explanation for anti-immigrant sentiment, noting that the strongest opposition to immigration historically comes from places with the fewest immigrants — not the places most economically threatened by them. From there, he dismantles a series of persistent myths: that today's immigrants assimilate less than past generations (the same claim was made about every wave, including Little Italy and Little Germany), that immigrants receive more government aid than earlier generations did (they receive less), and that today's immigrants simply refuse to "wait in line" (for most of American history, there was no line at all — and today, there mostly still isn't one).