# George Washington — "The bosom of America is open" > [!quote] "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." > — George Washington, Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association and Other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland Who Have Lately Arrived in the City of New York, December 2, 1783 ## Context Written weeks after the [[Revolutionary War]] formally ended, in reply to a group of recently arrived Irish immigrants in New York City. Washington — not yet president, but already the most authoritative voice in the new nation — framed open immigration and religious pluralism as founding commitments rather than later concessions. The full passage goes on to specify that the welcome extends to "Mahometans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or … Atheists," making the religious-liberty scope explicit. ## Why this matters This is the headwater. The oldest receipt in the presidential record establishes that "the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions" were to be welcomed as a matter of national identity at the founding — by the founder himself. Every later president who invoked the "nation of immigrants" was, knowingly or not, restating Washington. It is also the cleanest rebuttal to the claim that pluralism is a modern, left-wing imposition on an originally homogeneous republic: the first president put the open door in writing in 1783. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Founders Online (National Archives), George Washington to Joshua Holmes / the Volunteer Association, 2 December 1783](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12127). - **Status:** Verbatim from the authenticated manuscript transcription (spelling modernized in the callout from Washington's "wellcome … previleges"). Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Franklin D. Roosevelt - descended from immigrants and revolutionists]] — the same founding-stock argument turned against nativist gatekeeping 155 years later. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Nation of Immigrants]] — the bipartisan pro-immigrant consensus the modern right abandoned.