That half-century between 1860 and 1910 wrecked the Founders' America Even leaving aside the 48ers supporting Lincoln as legions of Irish migrants marched off the boats and into the invading armies, the Gilded Age migration of socialists and anarchists from Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe fundamentally transformed American politics for the worse and added a radical leftist bent that had been essentially absent before then The consequence of this was decades of feuding between capital and labor, American politics being pushed dramatically to the left, anarchist terror, and socialist subversion. That chaotic state of things, as represented by teh assassination of McKinley at the hands of some migrant and the JP Morgan bombing, is what brought about the 1924 Immigration Act, which saved America So yes, being a worse position than then is very much a bad thing