Politics and Immigration
There are three sides in the debate on immigration. The liberals. The conservatives. And what I will call Wall Street.
The crux of the difference between liberals and conservatives is assimilation.
Liberals believe immigration is humanitarian and immigrants will assimilate like the Irish, Italians, and Germans assimilated. Millions of new immigrants won’t reject our culture, our democratic principles, or our ideas of justice. They’ll embrace them.
Conservatives have a different view. To them assimilation has echoes of President Bush’s policy in Iraq where all it was supposed to take was one whiff of democracy for Iraqis to embrace our way of life and form of government. Conservatives fear immigrants won’t assimilate. That at best they will become a Balkanized minority as has happened in England, France and Germany. And at worst by not embracing our way of life and form of government they will weaken our democratic institutions.
A couple of years ago a Harvard Professor suggested the roots of American democracy lie in the English common law and our western cultural heritage. For that he was promptly lynched. But he put his finger on the nub of the problem most conservatives have with immigration. What are the consequences if we legalize twelve million new immigrants and they don’t assimilate?
The third force in the debate is Wall Street. Corporate America doesn’t care – not much – about assimilation. From Wal-Mart to wheat farmers in Kansas American businesses need cheap labor. They need workers, they say, and they need them now. Immigration is their solution.
And President Bush is going all out to give them what they want. To legalize 12 million immigrant workers and allow 200-600,000 more each year to keep stoking corporate America’s economic engine.
But in the long run there’s no avoiding the question of assimilation. It’s not the economy that is the key issue. If President Bush wants to convince the American people he’s right about immigration, he has to convince them he’s right about assimilation first.
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Politics and Immigration
There are three sides in the debate on immigration. The liberals. The conservatives. And what I will call Wall Street.
The crux of the difference between liberals and conservatives is assimilation.
Liberals believe immigration is humanitarian and immigrants will assimilate like the Irish, Italians, and Germans assimilated. Millions of new immigrants won’t reject our culture, our democratic principles, or our ideas of justice. They’ll embrace them.
Conservatives have a different view. To them assimilation has echoes of President Bush’s policy in Iraq where all it was supposed to take was one whiff of democracy for Iraqis to embrace our way of life and form of government. Conservatives fear immigrants won’t assimilate. That at best they will become a Balkanized minority as has happened in England, France and Germany. And at worst by not embracing our way of life and form of government they will weaken our democratic institutions.
A couple of years ago a Harvard Professor suggested the roots of American democracy lie in the English common law and our western cultural heritage. For that he was promptly lynched. But he put his finger on the nub of the problem most conservatives have with immigration. What are the consequences if we legalize twelve million new immigrants and they don’t assimilate?
The third force in the debate is Wall Street. Corporate America doesn’t care – not much – about assimilation. From Wal-Mart to wheat farmers in Kansas American businesses need cheap labor. They need workers, they say, and they need them now. Immigration is their solution.
And President Bush is going all out to give them what they want. To legalize 12 million immigrant workers and allow 200-600,000 more each year to keep stoking corporate America’s economic engine.
But in the long run there’s no avoiding the question of assimilation. It’s not the economy that is the key issue. If President Bush wants to convince the American people he’s right about immigration, he has to convince them he’s right about assimilation first.
Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.