— Nathan Glazer[2]"Being a country founded and populated by immigrants, the United States has always contained groups with significant affective and political ties to their national homeland and their ethnic kin throughout the world.
Similarly, United States foreign policy in the mid-20th century was shaped in favor of South African apartheid, according to Catherine Scott,[4] as a result of the influence of people who identified with the Afrikaners based on a feeling of shared "whiteness."
Through whatever means possible, the ethnic activists among them sought to give direction to Washington on matters of policy that affected their overseas kin, making the United States a lobbying battleground between rival interest groups emotionally entangled in the war."
"[1] The ethnic identity groups had limited influence during this period because: Historian Samuel P. Huntington[6] writes that in the post–Cold War international system, there is uncertainty and confusion in the United States as to what are its national interests.
"[1] A less positive assessment comes from Tony Smith, who writes that at "present, the negative consequences of ethnic involvement may way outweigh the undoubted benefits this activism at times confers on America in world affairs.