Immigration: Will America Escape Europe’s Fate?

In the article “From France to Sweden to the US - Immigration gone Wild” I talked about the what was going on in Europe. One article I referenced was the Brussels Journal’s article “Swedish Welfare State Collapses As Immigrants Wage War.”

Now the Brussels Journal covers the question “Will America Escape the European Experience?”

???The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.???
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

And so America has never truly had to face existential questions of what immigration might do to a nation. This is not to say that it was not at points a burning concern: the Know-Nothings of the mid-19th century were profoundly worried ??? the point of mob violence ??? at the Catholic influx; and the Exclusion Acts targeting Asians were reflective of the racism of the period. At bottom, though, we know that the attendant fears were unjustified. America and the American identity stayed broadly the same: rooted in Judeo-Christian concepts of morality, Anglo-Saxon concepts of governance, and what Max Weber would consider a ???Protestant??? ethic. This did not appear to change no matter how many Italians, Irish, Greeks, Norwegians, or Russian Jews were added to the mix.

Culture did change slightly but the assessment is correct. The ethics and concepts stayed rooted in both Judeo-Christian concepts of morality and the concept of governance stayed the course with a Democratic Republic. Now enters the change in pattern of immigration.

The old pattern of immigration had two things in common: first, it was almost wholly legal, cross-oceanic smuggling being then and now perilous and rare; second, it was allowed according to a very different set of criteria than we have today. The primary concern of the drafters of immigration law prior to the Second World War were concerned with basic questions of pragmatism and identity: Whom can we absorb economically? Whom can we absorb culturally? The result was a quota system that allowed in, relative to those wishing to immigrate, disproportionate numbers of Europeans. The Immigration Act of 1924 allocated immigration quotas by country specifically in proportion to preexisting communities within the United States.

Now the issue comes to a boiling point because you have two groups that don’t necessarily want to be absorbed. The Illegals from Mexico and radical Islam. For differing reasons and motivations they have more desire to absorb than be absorbed. One is for economic reasons and the other for purely religious. The illegals from Mexico could be solved in Mexico actually had an economy. The problem with radical Islam has no solution politically or economically. It seeks to rid the culture of infidels on its own path to immortality with their deity and 72 virgins. Will the troubles Europe has faced over the last decade and most recently spill over to the US? That remains to be seen but the beginnings of it have already started.

Whatever your view point on the issue you will find the Brussels Journal article worth the read. There is some interesting information/perspective on American history involving the immigration issue.

Tags: Conservative