Immigrant nation
Compromise, yes, but the debate will go on
Immigration is back in the news, as Congress endeavors to find common ground on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program of the Barack Obama administration. Unfortunately, it is hard to have a reasoned conversation about the issue — as debate usually devolves into mutual accusations of bad faith. ButI’m going to try, anyway. The upsides to immigration have long been evident. James Madison praised it for promoting “commerce and the arts” via “mutual emulation and inspection.” Immigrants bring new ways of doing things that make everybody better off. Moreover, immigration tends to attract intrepid OldWorld denizens, willing to risk everything for a shot at a better life. These are the kinds of people who, when they get here, are worth having around.
This longstanding appreciation has run parallel to an equally ancient anxiety: Will new arrivals become like us, or will they remain a world apart, so to speak? In a republican nation where the majority rules, this is not merely a cultural question. Self government, in the American conception, requires certain civic habits, which must be transmitted from generation to generation. This is one reason that Americans have long been committed to public education, despite otherwise being skeptics of government. Will immigrants, who presumably grew up without such habits,embrace them?
Little wonder then that whenever there has been a massive wave of immigrants into this country, there has been a corresponding reaction. Prohibition of alcohol and “Blue laws” restricting businesses on Sundays trace back, at least in part, to Protestant concerns in the 19th century that Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, were bringing along “bad” habits. And while we usually think of nativism as a domain of the political right, it was also an integral aspect of the early American left. The Progressive movement of the early 20th century was, in part, a reaction to massive waves of immigration fromsouthern and eastern Europe.
Today, we are in the midst of what might be called the “Third Wave” of immigration, from Latin America and Asia. The share of foreign-born people in the population is up to levels not seen since the early 20th century, the last time immigration was a major public concern. Little wonder that theissue is salient once more.
Taken in the abstract, these values — promoting dynamism and protecting civic identity — seem mutually exclusive. But in practice, that is just not the case. There is, I am convinced, a reasonable middle ground between encouraging immigration while remaining mindful of our distinctly Americanhabits.
Unfortunately, immigration also hasbeen a political problem that inevitably clouds the debate. Immigrants have typically voted disproportionately for Democrats. It was this way in the 1840s, the 1910s and, yes, today. This gives Democrats a political incentive to increase immigration above and beyond what might be good for the nation, as they anticipate that the more immigrants become citizens, the more votes they’ll get.
Republicans, of course, have the opposite incentive, namely to reduce immigration to levels below the level that would vitalize the nation, for fear that new arrivals would diminish their political power.
This is not to accuse anybody in particular of bad faith. It’s just to say that there is another, narrow ly political dimension to the debate.
Complicating matters further is the ethnic/racial component to immigration. The United States has long struggled to reconcile the universal human principles of its founding to the enormous diversity of the human species. Religion has played a similar role, as when native Protestants were wary of immigrant Catholics who worshiped God differently. So, immigration is an issue where genuine bigots can hide behind seemingly legitimate calls for more restrictions, and, correspondingly, opponents can falsely accuse all restrictionists of being bigoted.
How do we untangle this knot of cultural, political, religious and ethnic problems to find a common-sense solution? In all likelihood, we don’t. Immigration has been a hot-button issue for generations, and I reckon it willbe for generations to come.