Also alarmingly relevant, we were legislating immigration as soon as we had a legislature: the first Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, which charmingly limited natural citizenship to any "free white person," and contained a caveat that citizenship descended through fathers only.
On the Griswold-Lyon throwdown: Roger Griswold called Matthew Lyon a scoundrel who fought with a wooden sword. Lyon spit in Griswold's face while Congress was in session, which got him scolded on ethics grounds; Griswold (CT, sigh), unsatisfied by an apology, decided to go after Lyon with a cane while the Vermonter defended himself with a set of fireplace tongs. Civility!
Lyon: not the last politician to win in jail, either. In 2015, a Virginia state lawmaker was re-elected while under sentence for an alleged sexual relationship with his 17-year-old secretary.
Sedition laws have been an item of strong public opinion all along the way. Take, for example, this broadside ballad from 1803; a cartoon from 1918 showing Uncle Sam hauling out a bunch of undesirables as spies and traitors; and accounts of the "Michigan Six" trial under the Alien & Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act), which allowed the Truman administration to go after alleged Communists.