In The Unmaking of Americans, John J. Miller draws on lessons from the Americanization movement of the early 20th century, which helped the Ellis Island generation of immigrants adapt to their new home. In doing so, Miller makes the first modern defense of a patriotic social crusade that many "tenured radicals" have come to scorn as nothing more than a gentrified form of ethnic cleansing.

Miller sets out to convince conservatives concerned about immigration that the real threat to American unity is not the huddled masses of hard-working newcomers, but longstanding left-wing policies that actively inhibit assimilation. Proponents of bilingual education refuse to teach children in English, racial preferences encourage harmful group loyalties, welfare rules threaten the work ethic, and the citizenship process is under constant pressure from people who want to dumb it down.

The Unmaking of Americans reveals where and how the system of assimilation fell apart - and lays out a specific plan of action for correcting the problem that conservatives, libertarians, and sensible liberals can support.