When large majorities of Americans oppose the idea of allowing Syrian refugees into the country, they're following an old, if not particularly honored, tradition.

Current polls have shown widespread opposition to the Obama administration's plan to admit as many as 10,000 refugees from Syria over the next year. President Obama and his aides have emphasized the extensive screening that refugees go through -- a process that can take two years or more -- but so far, that message has not changed many minds.

A new Gallup poll showed that Americans oppose the administration's plan by 60% to 37%. But, as Gallup noted, there's nothing new about American reluctance to admit refugees fleeing foreign war zones.

In the late 1970s, Gallup's surveys found opposition to admitting Vietnamese refugees at levels virtually identical to today's polls, 57%-32%. Twenty years earlier, almost identical percentages of Americans opposed admitting refugees escaping the Soviet invasion that crushed Hungary's brief anti-communist uprising.

By 57% to 24%, Americans in 1947, two years after the end of World War II, opposed President Harry Truman's request to allow 10,000 European refugees into the country.

And in 1939, Americans by 67% to 26% opposed the entry of child refugees fleeing the Nazis.