Open borders, it sounds too good to be true, and it was. Yes, most white people were admitted at an international port of entry in the northeast, but for 100+ years, states ran international and interstate migration policy (not the feds) & states deported and excluded unwanted groups at will.
I worry that stating the point w/out the qualification that interstate boundaries did a lot of the work of international border enforcement (paging @unlawfulentries.bsky.social ) & that there was a lot of deportation (see Hide Hiroto's Expelling the Poor) risks undermining the overall point.
