In their everyday life, most Americans seem to agree with Henry Ford who once said, "Histo

ry is more or less absurdity. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today. " Certainly a great—but now also deadlocked—debate on immigration figures prominently in the history being made today in the United States and around the world.

In both history and sociology, scholarly work on immigration was sparked by the great debates of the 1920s, as Americans argued over which immigrants to include and which to exclude from the American nation. The result of that particular great debate involved the restriction of immigration from Asia and southern and eastern Europe.

Reacting to the debates of their time, sociologists and historians nevertheless developed different central themes. While Chicago School sociologists focused on immigrant adaptation to the American mainstream, historians were more likely to describe immigrants engaged in building the American nation or its regional sub-cultures.

Historians studied the immigrants of the past, usually in the context of nation-building and settlement of the western United States, while sociologists focused on the immigrant urban workers of their own times—that is, the early 20th century. Meanwhile, sociologists' description of assimilation as an almost natural sequence of interactions resulting in the modernization, and Americanization of foreigners reassured Americans that their country would survive the recent arrival of immigrants whom longtime Americans perceived as radically different.

Historians insisted that the immigrants of the past had actually been the "makers of America"; they had forged the mainstream to which new immigrants adapted. For sociologists, however, it was immigrants who changed and assimilated over the course of three generations. For historians, it was the American nation that changed and evolved.

In current debates, overall, what seems to be missing is not knowledge of significant elements of the American past or respect for the lessons to be drawn from that past, but rather debaters' ability to see how time shapes understanding of the present.

In the first moments of American nation-building, the so-called Founding Fathers celebrated migration as an expression of human liberty. Here is a reminder that today's debates take place among those who agree rather fundamentally that national self-interest requires the restriction of immigration. Debaters disagree with each other mainly over how best to accomplish restriction, not whether restriction is the right course. The United States, along with many other nations, is neither at the start, nor necessarily anywhere near the end, of a long era of restriction.

Henry Ford's words are cited to______.

A．show the absurdity of history

B．indicate the significance of the history we make today

C．emphasize the role of immigrants in the U.S. history

D．introduce the debate on immigration worldwide