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274 look upon themselves as foreigners and to be looked upon as foreigners by the native population.

It is common to hear Americans speak of the United States as the melting pot. They are proud of the adaptability of the American. They take a certain pride in the easy way in which the European populations have been blended into the body politic. They have not shown the same willingness or ability to absorb non-European stocks or to be absorbed by them.

The American people have declared by law that they will not allow an opportunity to arise under which Chinese may be absorbed, and the Japanese are excluded by law plus administrative regulation. They have refused to absorb the aboriginal Americans and alliance with the imported non-European stocks brings social ostracism. Mexicans in the United States hardly fare better. If they are of Spanish ancestry, that fact is emphasized and any prejudice against them disappears—they are then Europeans. If they are not, they suffer the same discrimination as other mixed blood or non-European peoples. The same unyielding prejudice follows the American settler in Mexico. He is proud to remain a foreigner, and he looks with disfavor on any alliance of his sons or daughters with any Mexican not of pure European ancestry.

The physical features of the border have contributed to the lack of good understanding between Mexico and the United States. They, of course, largely determined the settlement or the lack of settlement of the region. The broad dry strip of territory stretching northward from the Gulf of Mexico toward the mouth of the