In this episode of the America at 250 podcast, Professors Beverly Gage and David Blight discuss Gage's first DeVane Lecture on immigration and the United States' identity crisis in the early twentieth century. The conversation expands on the classroom lecture's treatment of the competing melting pot and guarded gate visions of American immigration policy, drawing out the political and cultural stakes of the debate. Part of the companion podcast series to Yale's America at 250: A History course, the episode is intended for listeners following the full DeVane Lecture sequence on United States history from 1776 to the present, taught across the semester by three Yale historians.