Teddy Roosevelt’s 1919 Quote on Immigration Is the Single Best Take We’ve Ever Heard

President Theodore Roosevelt lived an eventful life — a thoroughly American life. And it was at the very end of it that he penned what might be the best description of what the American immigrant should be.

Perhaps you’ve seen it before; while it’s a quote attributed to Roosevelt in 1907, it was actually written on Jan. 3, 1919 — just after the end of World War I and three days before he died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 60.

Roosevelt’s time in the White House was then almost a decade in the past, and his unsuccessful third-party run — although the only time a third-party candidate has finished above a Republican or Democrat in electoral votes in post-Civil War electoral history —

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