Opinion: Old immigration vs. the new - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Today at 12:00 p.m.File photo/Julio Cortez/The Associated Press / Migrants walk on a dirt road along the Rio Grande in Mission, Texas, on March 23, 2021, after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.Few Romans in the late decades of their 5th-century A.D.empire celebrated their newfound "diversity" of marauding Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns and Vandals.These tribes en masse had crossed the unsecured Rhine and Danube borders to harvest Roman bounty without a care about what had created it.Their agendas were focused on destroying the civilization they overran rather than peacefully integrating into and perpetuating the Empire.Ironically, Rome's prior greatness had been due to the extension of citizenship to diverse people throughout Europe, North Africa and Asia.Millions had been assimilated, integrated, and intermarried and often superseded the original Italians of the early Roman Republic.Such fractious diversity had led to unity around the idea of Rome.New citizens learned to enjoy the advantages of habeas corpus, sophisticated roads, aqueducts and public architecture, and the security offered by the legions.TheTitle