The United States has never been a "nation of immigrants"

As always, the goal of leftists is to create and influence public opinion, as opposed to reporting the facts. And there is perhaps no greater illustration of this, than the commonly dispensed lie, that America is a "nation of immigrants."

The men who Founded the United States were all English subjects, and not a single one an "illegal immigrant." Moreover, the vast majority were natives born on American soil. George Washington was born in Virginia, as was Jefferson, Madison, and Henry. John Adams, Sam Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were born in Massachusetts. Benjamin Rush was born in Pennsylvania, etc., etc., etc. Most of them were born here as, at that point, there had been British colonies going back nearly 200 years prior to the Founding. The small minority who were not born here were born in England, Ireland, or other English possessions, etc., and therefore also English citizens.

"In all of them, express provision was made, that all subjects, and their children, inhabiting in the Colonies, should be deemed natural-born subjects, and should enjoy all the privileges and immunities thereof. In all of them, the common law of England, as far as it was applicable to their situation, was made the basis of their jurisprudence; and that law was asserted at all times by them to be their birthright and inheritance. [....] It is a well-settled doctrine of that law, that, if an uninhabited country is discovered and planted by British subjects, the laws of England, so far as they are applicable, are there held immediately in force; for, in all such cases, the subjects, wherever they go, carry those laws with them." - Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, Colonial Governments, 1840.

Story's account of this is drawn from well known Founding era material, such as the Continental Congress's Declaration of colonial rights, and he overtly references such nigh verbatim in his own work.

"Our ancestors, who first settled these colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects, within the realm of England. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy. [....] The respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England. [....] His Majesty's colonies are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters." - Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774.

The common law to which the colonists are referring, is expounded upon by British legal scholar William Blackstone, in his treatise "Commentaries on the Laws of England." (Said by United States Supreme Court Justice James Iredell, appointed by George Washington, to be the "manual of almost every student of law in the United States.")

"Natural-born subjects having a great variety of rights, which they acquire by being born within the king's ligeance, and can never forfeit by any distance of place or time, but only by their own misbehavior. [....] To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. ft. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband's consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain." - William Blackstone, Commentaries on the laws of England, Of People, Whether Aliens, Denizens or Natives, 1765.

The American Revolution, contrary to modern misconstruction, was not motivated by anarchy or a hatred for law or government. It was motivated by colonists being systematically denied what were considered basic English rights, as delineated in English common law, the English Constitution, their colonial charters, and tracing back to documents like the Magna Carta, the injustice of which they repeatedly articulated in great detail.  

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. [....] Men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fullness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever." - Magna Carta, 1215.

They chose violence only when it became undeniable that restoration of their fundamental English liberties could not be restored through any peaceful means. But I digress. 

The fact is the first colonists came here legally with the sanction of their governments, obtaining "charters" granting permission to establish their settlements, and according to English common law carried with them intact and unmolested all the rights of natural-born English citizens. The notion there's an equivalency between the colonists and modern "illegal immigrants" is a product of unadulterated ignorance or artifice, as the colonists were never non-citizens in the first place, and emigrated to a land with no recognizable established form of government or system of naturalization. Within the span of a few generations these colonists were surpassed in number by their native born progeny. Franklin states that in 1751 (169 years after the settlement of Jamestown and 25 years before the establishment of the U.S.), of one million English souls in America less than eighty thousand (8%) were foreign born. (Less than the current total, which according to American Community Survey data, is 13.5%.)

So, as usual with leftists, there is no truth in their assertion the U.S. is a "nation of immigrants." It's a fundamentally flawed, and outright inane notion, being that the United States was nowhere close to being comprised primarily of immigrants when it was established in the late 18th century. And when English settlements were primarily comprised of immigrants, there wasn't yet a "nation," but rather an inchoate pittance of sparsely populated and separate colonies.

We see such examples of conspicuously shared phraseology in other instances; it's not exclusive to emigration. The establishing documentation of the newly formed United States government, conveys its basis in the preceding colonial governance and the English common law from which such was derived, in multiple ways.

• Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, 1774.

"The inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts [....] are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent. [....] They have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal."

• Declaration of Independence, 1776. 

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

• U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, 1791. 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In closing, the United States is not a nation of immigrants, and it never has been. It's most certainly never been a nation of illegal immigrants, having conducted the colonization of the North American continent in accordance with established "legal" precedents of the developed world at the time, and transitioning into a predominantly native born populace shortly thereafter and well before the establishment of the United States.