Reply #2: Yeah, to Franklin it was the Germans who were a "colony of aliens" who would "Germanize us".

[pampango]

"In 1751, Benjamin Franklin described the influx of German immigrants who were moving into Pennsylvania as "a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our Complexion."" (His reference to the impossibility of Germans "acquiring our Complexion" is a bit of a head-scratcher.) Interesting that Franklin's father was an immigrant, though from England which was "better", while his mother was a "real" American or colonist or whatever they called themselves back then, born in Nantucket. :)

If he had lived til the 1840's (tough since it would have made him 135 years old), he probably would have been even more distraught about the numbers of Irish "scum unloaded on American wharves".