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I understand we need to get some control over the borders, and GWB's proposal does that - what I really want to know is what happened to this:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

an exhaustive summation of what Americans have traditionally thought about immigration.  Everything in moderation, man.

You wouldn't have guessed that reading all the recent immigration threads here - I'm not saying we should have wide open borders, especially with the threat of terrorism - I just don't see any realistic way to seal the borders, jail employers, and deport every illegal short of U.S.S.R. redux.

I'm not entirely sure of the point of this post. Best as I can figure out, it is that love of one's home, one's place, is a wholsesome and pietistic trait that we ought not to gussy up with things like ideas.

Given that one's home is always worth defending, the patriotism of nations flow very easily from this simplest of facts.

I am still not quite sure what you are protesting. Is it the fact that some on the right speak of our nation as being founded on ideas - rather than geography or race - and that membership can therefore be obtained by simply agreeing with those ideas?

If so, I am mildly sympathetic. I personally believe that 1) We have a definable culture, it is northern European in nature, with very deep roots in greek and hebrew thought and beliefs, 2) Our culture is superior to any other culture alive on the planet today, 3) one can tell this by the "cultural borrowing" that occurs (people want things American, not things Ugandan, for example), and 4) This culture has become inseparable from the place it has taken root.

One need not be American to wholeheartdely buy into American ideas or ideals. But one does not become an American simply by buying into those ideas. Becoming American takes generations.  

I think he makes a good point about assimilation can no longer be taken for granted anymore - where I disagree is that assimilation is impossible.  The great American "melting pot" has to succeed - if that means I have embraced multiculturalism too much, then I am guilty.

to see how it could be done is more metaphysical than empirical.  As to the bit about the poor, huddled masses, it always existed in "dynamic tension" with an understanding of the importance of a common culture and assimilation.  There never was, and, God willing, never will be, an open invitation to absolutely everyone, without distinction, to immigrate to America.  America is a place, not an infinite aspiration.

against the transformation of patriotism into a thing primarily ideological in nature. I don't mean to deny ideas their stature in American history and culture -- but I do insist that patriotism is, at base, a non-ideological, indeed non-intellectual thing. Its fountainhead lies in sentiment and passion, not in reason (though of course it may be defended by reason).

that assimilation is simply impossible. I said that it will become impossible if the decadence of our intellectual life leads to a condemnation real patriotism, which is, as I say, a love and preference for one's home.

The great American melting pot, if it is to succeed, must repudiate multiculturalism.

It could be done very easily - that's not my point.

How about a rephrasing: your inability to see how this could be done without transforming the US into an imitation of the USSR is more metaphysical than empirical.

And if repudiating multiculturalism requires that we create a new culture, based on a synthesis* of American and Latin American themes... how would you react to such a development?

Moe

*This question does, in fact, assume that part of that synthesis would include the establishment of Spanish as the second official language of the USA.

This is really problematic, because there is not a single American culture.  There are distinctive regional cultures and even within regions there is no real agreement about What America Means.

Unlike European countries, many of which came to being as cultural homogenous nation-states, America is not founded on blood, soil, language or ethnic affinity.  It's founded on a document, our Constitution.

I also love America and I do have some -- albeit limited -- fears that too much immigration will cause a dilution of our belief in critical aspects of American society.

For example, we have a horror of corruption and a love of rule of law that is really unusual when you look at the world at large.  In the majority of countries in the world, corruption is just "doing business."

I do worry that too much immigration at once, especially from Third World countries, will change the way Americans generally look at this kind of thing.

But as far as defending American culture -- I'd guess we'd have to figure out what American culture is, first.

Whether he values our current culture or the absence of multiculturalism more. Is that fair?

Although I disagree with much in it (this will not surprise you), this is an excellent post, Paul, because it really gets to the nub of the issue.  I'm short on time, but a few thoughts:

1.  Your opponents on the center and right are not "right-wing multiculturalists."  Despite my realpolitik and internationalist leanings, I do not for a moment suppose that all cultures are equal.  The Wahhabist culture of Saudi Arabia wherein women are powerless and justice is dispensed at the lowest common denominator is -- let's bring out the old terms -- evil in many important respects.  So was much of the white Southern culture that was dominant in this county in the first half of the 20th century and whose destruction has been the lasting project of prior 50 or so years.  
   
2.  Note that this is to say that the two cultures mentioned above are equally evil or evil in all respects; f'instance, I, for one, like good manners and (some) forgotten formalities, and both cited cultures excel at imparting a degree of each. I use a broad brush, here.
   
3.  But you're absolutely right that I, for one, try to place ideas over place; ideals over relations; principles over tribe or party.  You're right to call that out, because it is fundamental to the debate (and so often obscured).
   
4.  But that's the very point.  The Declaration of Independence is unique not because it defines a people by place or nationality; it's unique because it defines a people by their ideals.  That's a radical event, and you're right to notice that it's not a conservative one.  (Though the roots of the Declaration are undeniably conservative, drawing heavily from the Anglo-Saxon tradition.)  The Declaration did not destroy your notion of home and hearth patriotism, but it did modify and add to it.  Like it or not, patriotism now -- and should -- mean much more than loyalty to abstract notions of place or people.  It's also loyalty to idea.
   
5.  Is this idea-based patriotism more difficult to accomplish (as you suggest)?  Of course.  You're right that loyalty to an ideal is more difficult to grasp than loyalty to family and home.  But I fail to see why the fact that a thing is difficult necessarily makes that thing not worth doing.*  Or, if it cannot ultimately be done, aspiring to.

Sorry for any typos in the above; I'm out of time.

von

*Obviously, if it's difficult and not worth doing anyway, that's one thing.  But I only hear your criticism as one of "difficulty," and that seems insufficient.

I'll tell you right now that while there are distinctive regional, state, and local elements to culture, as a general rule, there really is a very common culture we share, complete with shared norms of behavior and assumptions. There's some different spices, but it's basically the same chili.

To see more, go to ewic.org and wait for the graphics to load. Aren't those images wonderful? Whatever you do, don't go to their membership list and then notice, tucked amongst all those business orgs, the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

As for GWB's proposal, the BP briefly conducted a survey in which they found that a large number of crossers were coming here because his plan was perceived as an amnesty in Mexico. If one of those non-amnesty amnesties passes, expect that to get worse.

If those non-amnesty amnesties include tough enforcement, don't they just do that now? If they won't do it now, should we trust their promises to do it later?

This is an excellent, excellent post.  Thank you.

In your fourth point, you write that the Declaration added a complex of ideas to our culture.  This is somewhat debatable, inasmuch as those very ideas arose out of a specific cultural milieu; they arose out of an Anglo culture, not a, say, German one.  But leave that to the side.  In your fifth point, you write of an idea-based patriotism.  

Why does this have to be a matter of either/or?  Why not both/and?

although I haven't covered the West Coast, I have covered the South and New England.

Also, I bet if you asked a European or even a Canadian, they would tell you there is an American culture.

Assimilation is the key, when it comes to immigration.  

I have lived in the Mountain States and in New York City ... and I think that the two are like two different countries.

consider the Statue of Liberty's location. It's not facing East, or South. It's facing Europe, which was where the original explorers and colonists had come from, whether it was a few Vikings in Newfoundland or an Italian accidently discovering the same continent, or thousands of British people immigrating to it. And the Statue was (mostly) donated by France.

The United States was always meant to be a European country, but with a fresh political system devoid of a stale aristocracy and troublesome monarchy. It was not meant to be a dumping ground for people not wanted in their own third-world countries.

But I want to be especially certain about his reaction to the incorporation of the specific culture I've mentioned.

And I don't want to answer for him, but I suspect you coulda picked Croatian or Kurdish or Laotian or Hutu and would get the same response.

And trust me, while they seem pretty different, after a little while, you realize how very similar they are.

1. I'm trying to avoid this debate about the ranking of cultures. It's an important and related debate, but not the one I'm hoping to have here.
   
3. I'm not trying to destroy ideas. Far from it. I'm not even trying to eliminate ideas as an element of patriotism. But I am insisting that essence of patriotism is not an idea, whatever the Declaration may say. The patriotic impulse in man is rooted in a different part of the soul than the rational part. It rests in sentiment and attachment and passion, animated in part by ideas. In C.S. Lewis's terminology, it is of the "chest" -- not the mind or the gut.
   
4. Obviously patriotism is not the ultimate. It is good but always limited. A man who knows only patriotism is an incomplete man. Indeed, ultimately, we are judged not by our loyalty to our country, but to our loyal to justice and truth.
   
5. Patriotism is really not "accomplished" at all, unless it is fair to say that love is accomplished. Like all loves, it is something of a mystery. How it is that a flag in the right context reduces grown men to tears?

Are you saying that America was meant as a country populated by white people?

Because that idea was screwed up almost immediately when colonists began importing slaves, something that happened in pre-Revolutionary period.

Disregarding the non-European native population for a moment, we also annexed large territories in the Southwest that were already inhabited by Hispanic people and granted those people American citizenship.

It seems that from earliest times, although the country has always been dominated by the descendents of European immigrants, we have imported, adopted or absorbed non-European populations without much hesitation.

I'm afraid I'll have to trust you, because I'm not sure that there is a way that I can dispute it!  But this is just from my experience, mind you.  I haven't been everywhere in the country and can't really assert much beyond what my own eyes have told me.

"Assimilation" by definition tends toward a love and preference for one's adoptive home.  Is that good enough?

I prefer American culture to Latin American culture, though I respect and in many ways admire the latter. There is a certain romance in it that appeals to me (as it has to many Americans).

But I do prefer my own culture, and would like to see it preserved (to the degree that any constantly changing thing can be preserved). I would not look with favor on the accomplishment of a bilingual/bicultural society.

Re: The Declaration of Independence is unique not because it defines a people by place or nationality; it's unique because it defines a people by their ideals.

Actually, Von, this is not unique. In fact there a massive and rather obvious precedent for this in late antiquity: namely, the Christian Church. "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek..." St. Paul wrote, and from there the Church became a common counter-culture that swept up everyone and anyone who assented to what, at the base, were deeply felt and loved ideas. With the result that the particular national cultures of late antiquity (which Roman rule had already softened up and prepared for the melting pot) were transcended and then transformed, ultimately not just south of the Rhine-Danube, but finally north and east of those boundaries as well, so that man could travel from Ireland to Rome and the east to Kiev and for all the diferences in language and law and even liturgy he would nonetheless find a place where he was a citizen of a common home.

I don't think you can take too much meaning from which way the Statue of Liberty is facing - ironically, she is directly facing Africa.

I note you addition of "adoptive": and I have no problem with it. Men can change homes, no doubt.

Christianity changed patriotism forever by diminishing its claims.

In your fourth point, you write that the Declaration added a complex of ideas to our culture.  This is somewhat debatable, inasmuch as those very ideas arose out of a specific cultural milieu;

I thought I alluded to this very issue when I wrote:  "[the Declaration of Independence was] a radical event, and you're right to notice that it's not a conservative one.  (Though the roots of the Declaration are undeniably conservative, drawing heavily from the Anglo-Saxon tradition.)"

Why does this have to be a matter of either/or?  Why not both/and?

Obviously, there's a degree of both/and (as I thought I suggest).  But the question at hand is whether "home and hearth" should trump "aspiration and ideal" when the two conflict (as they do, to some extent, in this debate).  My answer is that, where there is a conflit, we do better by cleaving to our (abstract) ideals than by cleaving to our (equally abstract) notion of "home."

I included "adoptive" just to be crystal clear.

I should have been clearer:  The Declaration is Unique as a founding document for a nation-state in that it defines people by ideals rather than by place or nationality.  (I think we can dispense with the counterargument that St. Paul's words were in support of a "Kingdom of Heaven" just by noting it.)

Statue of Liberty faces the MGM Lion - what grand, hidden meaning is in that?

the accomodation of the "Right" to liberal universalism in all its forms, rather than simply multiculturalism?  I use the scare quotes because I'm not sure that a Right wing that accomodates liberal universalism and accepts radical categories is really conservative.  I think that if conservatism is anything, it is at first particular, in privileging tradition and experience over rationalist fancies.  The triumph of ideology is a repudiation of this, as is the belief that the world should look like America, and America like the world.  It turns America from a place with a history, and the ideas on which America was founded, which were themselves the product of history, into a theology, floating off in the world of forms.  All of which is to say an idol, a word I use with some reluctance, but I think necessarily.

It faces Brooklyn.  I can see it out my window from here.  And Brooklyn is east of the harbor, so I guess you could say that it faces Europe as well.  Funny, because you'd think it would face south toward the opening out to the Atlantic.

Isn't it really the accomodation of the "Right" to liberal universalism in all its forms, rather than simply multiculturalism?

It may be indeed.

Great comment.

This is a great post. It is limited, in the sense he was not writing a term paper and thus left a lot on the table, but an excellent start nonetheless.

One important reality is that national identity can never flow from ideas, except as a sort of rallying cry. It is instead the sum of the people within the nation and their relations with one another. Now, in the case of the United States, there is relatively little history, so the nature of incoming immigrants is perhaps even more important than in a country where culture has a strong and immutable historical component.

Thus, "assimilation" is a two-way street. The immigrants are outnumbered by the people already living here, but nonetheless impart their culture on the existing one just by their very presence. This is actually rather obvious in practice: in California, for instance, the Spanish-language media, the stores and restaurants catering specifically to Mexican immigrants (legal or illegal), and so on.

In many Latin American countries, there is great tension between the ruling classes, who generally are descended from Europeans in large part, and the poor (especially rural), who are primarily of Native American blood. The Mexican government is run by the former, explaining their very clear and very open policy of encouraging mass illegal immigration.

Paul's point is so important precisely because of his criticism of "conservative" multiculturalists. Either wittingly or unwittingly, their pro-immigration policies have a detrimental effect on the unity and composition of the United States on a cultural level. This country is under no obligation to let in anyone by international law-- we choose how to set immigration policy. We most certainly are not required to allow millions of illegal aliens to cross into the country.

The "conservative" multiculturalists are so dangerous because they enable the leftist game of crying "racism," which frankly is a term that is so used inappropriately as to be almost useless. I have no dislike whatsoever for Mexico as a country or Mexicans. As a policy matter, however, I think the border should be militarized and as many illegal aliens as possible be deported.

The reality is that there is no "melting pot," there is a poly-pot... "assimilation" is an uneven process. The European immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries were similar in many ways to the people already here, but nonetheless culture changed quite a bit anyway. In places, Italian culture predominates. In others, Irish culture has a strong influence. The question is why we should desire rural Mexican culture to become 20-25%, or more, of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence, as discussed by some above, merely explained why some British people had to separate politically from other British people. It did not define the colonists by the ideas held within it, because those were their ideological positions, nothing more. Culture cannot be substituted by way of 'ideas,' though the illusion that can be done is very dangerous indeed. Napoleon thought it could be.

Mostly, multiculturalists on the right are just misguided and ignorant of history. But at the same time, their ideological position is deeply anti-conservative and has a very negative political and cultural (due to the political) effect. Instead of reading The National Review or something many erstwhile Republicans could use some Spengler or Santayana.

Keep going straight past Brooklyn, and her gaze falls upon the coast of Africa, NOT Europe.  I'm trying to look up the exact direction she's facing for you.

...I want to know, not suspect.

Moe

PS: Whatever you meant by your title went right over my head; dumb it down for me?  :)

For if we conceive of the present situation as one in which our allegiance to our home is in some measure of conflict with certain of our ideals, then I would prefer our allegiance to home to trump those abstract ideals: our ideals, government, way of life, habits of thought and speech and athousand other things have arisen out of a culture; they are one thing rather than another, and it is possible, by isolating one component of such a complex - the ideals - to unbalance the whole by admitting to it large numbers of people who neither accept the cultural synthesis we have achieved, nor care for it, who neither understand the culture nor its ideals, or if they understand them, understand them in a sense we, the native-born and assimilated, would not quite recognize and accept ourselves.  What is, as a known quantity, so to speak, should be preferred over what might be, given that we know it not, in such cases.

It defines the political grievances that justified the political separation of British colonists from their home country. They were the same culturally, so obviously it was political differences that forced the split.

If you made these arguments to the writers of the Declaration, they would either laugh at you or, more probably, be appalled.

is an entity unto itself.  I dare say you won't find another place quite like it in this country.

That being said, mountain states and NYC are very different, but most definitely American.

but rather two nations, living side-by-side under the same government.  Call me a pessimist or worse, but I don't think that will work very well or very long.  There are too many examples of it working poorly or failing.  Canada has the Québecois, Mexico has the rebels in Chiapas, India has numerous separatist movements and the constant specter of Hindu-Muslim sectarian violence, Britain has Wales and Scotland, which are none too happy with English domination.  The examples of failure are so numerous, and the successes  - only Switzerland comes to mind, and Switzerland is more homogeneous than the US will be in the coming decades - so rare.  Generally, such arrangements only work under heavy-handed domination or very loose confederation, if they work at all.  We tried the latter, and opted for a Constitution with a strong, but not overweening, central government.  To try the former would be to sacrifice the very ideals that our multicultural society was supposed to secure.  So, in short, no, I'm not in favor of that.  

There are several different themes and mindsets running through the immigration debate; rather than arrogantly assuming that I knew your own motivations better than you would yourself, I'd thought I'd simply try asking.

And now I have your answer.  Thank you.

About mixing cultures, you picked the wrong culture to lace into the question.

I'll add that the most important words in the Declaration -- "we hold these truths" -- indicate just the kind of unity that is threatened by mass immigration.

Let me know ...

I'm actually interested now.  To the eye, the statue appears to be looking east, but this might be a slight illusion, because the Hudson does not go exactly due north-to-south, which is how I always think of it.  I'm not exactly sure of the latitudinal position of New York compared to the African coast, although I know that we are considerably south of many European capitals.

And lest it hasn't been made clear.  Let me point out what is lost on some of those on your side of the anti-immigration / pro-immigration debate.

It is possible and coherent to:

1. Believe American culture is unique, special and something to preserve.
   
2. Believe that immigration is part of our culture and adds to it rather than competes with it. AND
   
3. That allowing more willing immigrants into the country is not something that will harm our culture much less overthrow it with another one.
   

-----------------------

You are straining your use of the term "multicultural."  Does it mean that we should promote multiple cultures as acceptable in America, including teaching in other languages, recognizing other country's holidays, etc?  Or does it mean allowing those who speak another language to move here and learn ours is okay, to bring their foods, music, and other cultural attributes and merge them into our existing dining habits and muscial preferences is acceptable?

The first is a mosaic of different cultures kept alive in their separation, the other is a melting pot of different backgrounds into one distinct and special Americanism.

I believe you oppose both of these types of people.  And by doing so you are bordering on earning the title nativist.  For it means nothing if it does not apply to one who opposes allowing all who are different from him or herself from being part of our country and part of our culture.

My wife is Chinese, and we would both like for our three children to learn to speak and read Chinese, but I can see it will be an uphill battle.  I take some solace from this, in that I now realize that it is harder than I thought for the "first generation" to pass on their prejudices and original culture to the "second generation".  It may be easier for parents who are both "first generation", but it is still hard.  Despite the best efforts of the MultiCult, the children will be the ones who make the cultural decisions for themselves.  We plan to take the kids to China when they are all old enough to fully comprehend the experience, and they will see, as I did, the truly profound differences within a large nation dominated by a single ethnic group.  

My best friend is a German expat, and he still talks about his "see America" trip that he took when he first came here twenty years ago.  He could barely speak English, but he was able to order his favorite "Wendy Burger" across I-10, up I-5, over I-90 and down I-95.  He was also able to find, repair, drive to pieces, and replace 3 junkyard VW Rabbit Diesels (Alabama, Wyoming and Michigan) on his journey.  He now lives here and is opening a sports bar which has already hosted a local Republican party event.  I believe he will do quite well.

I have traveled all over this country, and I find myself mildly disappointed when I can't find much difference beyond the superficial between people in various regions.

... wierd definition of "political differences" to come up with this critique.  Indeed, I'm fairly certain that were I to ask the founders why they were splitting from GB, they'd respond that it was primarily because GB failed to recognize their natural rights, which GB had heretofore recognized in its own tradition and constitution.  (I'm fairly certain that this would be their response because that's pretty much what most of them said at the time.)

I don't know if you're not reading what I've written; assuming that I hold beliefs that I do not hold; or not understanding what I've written.  In any event, I'm filing this under "things that make you go hmmmm."

in that poem is always skipped past:

"yearning to breathe free"

It doesn't say anything about "yearning to kill Americans" or "yearning to partake in the American bounty while refusing to obey the laws that would allow me to do so legally" or "yearning to make more money than I can in Mexico while receiving free education for my children, or while sending my extra money back to the rest of my family in Mexico" or "yearning to take advantage of all the opportunity afforded by the US Constitution while trying to turn the US culture into a carbon copy of my old one" or "yearning to be treated with all the human rights guaranteed in America while demanding that I be allowed to continue to live as if in the old world, not accountable to American laws" or "yearning to take from America while refusing even to learn the English language" or  ______ fill in your own example.

Bringing up the poem is an old red herring that hasn't any logical connection at all to our current situation.  Our immigration policies certainly shouldn't be driven by the words inscribed on a statue.  It should be driven by what's best for U.S. citizens.

Just in terms of immigrants. Africans didn't immigrate, they were taken by force.

A fair number of Chinese people did immigrate in the 19th century. But nevertheless, the US had always been closely tied to Europe both politically and culturally.

We have no such ties to, say, El Salvador.

I have lived in KY, GA, WI and Switzerland.  While there are cultural differences between the US States, it is tiny compared to how different Switzerland was.  And it goes well beyond language differences, although that is part of it.  150 years ago, GA and WI may have been different cultures, they arent now.  They are slightly different subsets of the same culture.

the term Multiculturalist to refer to the attitude that regards the preference for one's own culture as suspect, as evidence of nativism or whatever.

As to your three points, the first two we agree on. It is the third where we must part company, at least in the context of the current immigration regime.

When I speak of patriotism, I speak of love for my country, which would not exist but for the ideas on which it was founded.  I might love my home and community; a dog may love the sofa where he rests his head; a poet may love the look of the mountains or the long sweep of the praries.  Some of these things may be required to put patriotism into action (as you suggest, but none of these things are sufficient to make a patriot.  Even where you love hearth and home, patriotism requires something more -- a loyalty to an idea.  In the past, it might have been the idea of a King who ruled by divine right.  But not today.

I can't find the web page I was looking for, but the Statute of Liberty faces slightly South of due East - you can see that from this picture in relation to Manhattan:  http://photos1.blogger.com/img/172/1358/640/Liberty%20Island%20pre%209-11.j
pg

Also, here is a map showing the direction of due North - while the direction of Lady Liberty is not shown, you can tell she's pointed South of Governor's Island: http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/hh/11/hh11n.htm

I haven't observed the right-wing multiculturalism you describe (perhaps I just haven't recognized it), but your article is an incisive look at Patriotism, something that we take for granted without realizing either its complexity or its simplicity.

It should be driven by what's best for U.S. citizens.

Now that is pithy. Indeed it should.

can shield their children from American culture, especially when they hit their teen years.

I attended school with kids whose parents were Hindu immigrants from India.  When their son hit high school and started dating a fair skinned blond american girl, they almost had a heart attack, because they always expected him to marry a nice Hindu girl.

If you met them on the street, you would never realize their parents were immigrants to the US.

during those years, when Chinese were immigrating here that the roll to restrict immigration started?

Also, one thing with Latin America type immigrants is they aren't that far off from the US culturally, most of them are Catholic and their countries had quite a bit of European influence-assimilation for them probably isn't all that difficult once they learn the language.

Which is why I used the word "ironically" above.

I'm not sure my definition is much different from yours-- that isn't where I dissented from your view. You said the colonists defined themselves by their ideals, thus giving the United States that character.

"The Declaration is Unique as a founding document for a nation-state in that it defines people by ideals" - you

My contention was that the Declaration was a document justifying, politically and philosophically, the separation with Britain. It did not 'define' the colonists by those ideas, since as you say above those ideas were already widely held. The people in Britain proper did have representation, after all.

Culturally, the Declaration had little bearing on the colonies, except to unite them politically and thus forge something of a separate identity. That identity was not, however, one of ideas primarily.

A man is not a patriot simply because he loves his home; a man is a patriot because he assents to the ideals that, it is supposed, define his home. Thus the American patriot is really just a believer in the propositions of modern democratic capitalism; and assuming some nominal assent to those propositions, anyone can instantly become an American patriot. Moreover, since it becomes faintly un-American or unpatriotic to harbor suspicion about the entire project of modern democracy, many non-Americans are probably better Americans than Americans. Patriotism is subjugated to ideology.

...it looks as though I'm a kosher patriot despite my horrible case of Chronic Squishy Liberalitis! Hurrah!

I think Paul didn't really make it clear that he was -- I guess -- talking about liking your own political structure best, as opposed to the idea that Americans have a homogenous national culture like Germans or the Japanese. I also think he's conflating, perhaps via omission, the idea of borrowing and incorporating other cultures and worshipping them simply because they're not whatever "American" popular culture variant you were born into. Though, again, it seemed like the actual meat of this was about structural ideologies like the Constitution instead of about enjoying the native dances of the Fatherland above all others.

There's anything wrong with our native dances, mind.

Beats Morris Dancing any day.

Sure they can learn english or already know it, and are Christian (not that that's a requirement). But they come from a country that is very, very different from ours. Going back to the very nature of colonization-- the Spanish approach vs. the British-- there are clear differences.

The way I understand it, "Multicultural Melting Pot" would be an oxymoron, and I have always seen "Multiculturalism" used in contrast to the "Melting Pot"  Having said that, I could agree with all three of your points if you replaced "more willing immigrants" with "sustainable legal immigration".

I'd been thinking about the issue in terms of crime and economics.  I've always been appreciative of the late Rep. Bono's response to illegal immigration: "It's illegal, isn't it?"

The cultural angle is worthwhile, too, I now see after my diary and this post.  However, I think your characterization of the pro-open borders crowd on this issue isn't entirely accurate.  There are some who appear to think as you do, surely (just witness how some pile onto Michelle Malkin with as much force, though just not as much profanity, as the left does).

Others, though, are motivated by something other than multiculturalism, and that is Christianity.  They view open borders as a form of charity, a kind of sacrifice we can give to benefit the common man.

One reason I oppose opening the borders, though, is the same as a reason I oppose raising taxes: I don't think it's the place of the government to make a sacrifice for others.

Still, we must be vigilant.  Multiculturalism to the right can be as corrosive as it has been to the left.  That way lies the total relativism that has left the Left adrift.

Make that "There appear to be some who appear to think as you do describe."

Latin America is going to be able to find a Catholic parish to go to church in, a Hindu or Muslim is going to have a few problems.

I have never lived in a town that didn't have a Catholic church, I have never lived in a town that had a Mosque (although I have lived in towns that were within an hours drive of one).

Being from a different country is absolutely going to cause culture shock, but some similarity in culture will also allow for easier assimilation.

If 1 billion Chinese people moved to the US tomorrow, would that "improve" our culture?

Of course not. That is not possible, but the notion immigration is always good is a canard of the multiculturalist right (a phrase which Paul may have well invented with this post, by the way). If taken to it's logical extreme, that proposition fails.

Threatening to brand someone as "nativist" is a typical leftist move, easily adopted by the multi-righties, which is useful in that it avoids substantive discussion by playing the race card.

Personally, I don't think it's possible to do that and to be a conservative at the same time. I don't think it's possible to do that and be a rational person at the same time, but that's just my opinion.

"It is the third where we must part company, at least in the context of the current immigration regime."

I don't think the current immigration regime is sustainable either.  We just disagree on what the solution is.

Legal immigrants assimilate well.  Illegal immigrants don't.

Of course, Central American gangs are terrorizing Northern Virginia as we type. Part of the problem with our immigration policy is that we let in a lot of harmful people in addition to those that are industrious, whatever cultural quabbles we may get into on this thread.

IF we got immigration under control, it would give more credence to the assimilation argument. But even in that case, most of the immigrants are Mexicans, and there are so many they do not need to assimilate-- they are assimilating the Southwest US.

After this latest response, I think I get your beef.  

It [the Declaration of Independence] did not 'define' the colonists by those ideas, since as you say above those ideas were already widely held.

I think you're wrong:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.....

Find me the equivalent in the unwritten English constitution.  Don't get me wrong:  we agree that the colonists were swimming an ocean of English civil rights, some recognized as early as 1215 (and before).  But the DoI was a stroke in a new direction; it was the first time that a nation was defined by ideals.  (If you doubt this, note what happens when a nation strays from those ideals.)

...that I'm aware of the regional variations in German culture -- and to a lesser extent among the Japanese culture as well -- and I was using them as relative examples of homogeneity as compared to the USA. So no history lessons vis-a-vis that, please!

Dick Morris Dancing any day?  Now ther's a real toe-su... I mean, toe-tapper!

Perhaps New York City has too many illegal aliens, hmm?

the two cultures don't have equivelent outcomes.

One culture goes to war over soccer games, siezes forign assets and "nationalizes" them, etc.

The other is stable, wealthy, and protects individual rights better than any other culture I am aware of.

There are cultural artifacts that are essentially menu items; food, drink, music, dance and so on. But there are other cultural items such as ethics regarding property rights, state power, and so on that might at first seem subtle, but have significantly divirgent outcomes.

policy with regard to illegal immigration.

I do think that we should make legal immigration easier and cheaper, so that people who want to work, can come here and work, have the legal documentation and pay taxes.  

I am more in line with AdamC on this one, I just don't think that immigration, when it is legal is harmful, I do think there is much harm in illegal immigration, but I don't think allowing for more legal immigration for people who want to come and want the opportunities here, and are willing to work is going to cause great harm to our country or our culture.

Assimilation is the key, and I have known several immigrants that were legal, and the kids tend to assimilate quickly.  We have a large Bosnian immigrant community here, and the parents all work (one family owns a local pizza place that we make a point to visit).  I have seen almost all of their kids in school-if you saw them, you wouldn't realize their parents were immigrants.  I taught one 3rd grader last year, who told me all about his life in Bosnia before they moved here 2 years ago.  His English doesn't even have an accent, and if you met him you wouldn't know his parents were immigrants unless he told you about it.

you have stressing your point that legal immigrants assimilate well, while illegal immigrants do not; nevertheless, there is nothing true about that proposition that logically excludes the further possibility that too many, too fast and too concentrated, regardless of their legal status, will not assimilate so well.  I rather doubt that many of us who oppose the current immigration regime, as well as the proposed amnesty/guestworker/whatever proposals oppose them on account of some dislike for Latin American food, language, music, clothing, whatever.  I rather like all of that stuff.  What we oppose is a situation which will presage the emergence of a binational/bilingual nation - those things just aren't stable, especially when they occur in the context of our combustable politics of racial grievance.

"Personally, I don't think it's possible to do that and to be a conservative at the same time. I don't think it's possible to do that and be a rational person at the same time, but that's just my opinion."

Yes, I'm an irrational non-conservative.  Hope that makes you sleep better at night.

----------------------------------------------

If you'd like to head back toward rational discussion, I'll elaborate.

My proposal is to allow legal immigration rise to 1% of our total population a year.  That would be about 3,000,000 a year instead of the 1 million we now allow.  I think this is better for the country because legal immigrants assimilate much better than illegal immigrants and we can track them better so that we can make sure no terrorists are crossing the border.  I also think that we need to continue growing in population lest we fall into the trap that Europe and Japan set for themselves where they are now shrinking while trying to support more retirees.  They lose global power and they bankrupt their governments.

But to back up your fear, let it be know that I do believe that Immigration Is Good.

As for the comment that this borders on nativist, that relies on the fact that Paul's view on protecting American culture includes cutting down on immigration (not just of the illegal sort) and thus is a fundamentally anti-immigrant stance, not unlike the nativists in the past.

Unlike European countries, many of which came to being as cultural homogenous nation-states, America is not founded on blood, soil, language or ethnic affinity.  It's founded on a document, our Constitution.

I recall a PBS show on the English language; they had to provide subtitles for some of those interviewed in England.

Sweden and Norway may be largely culturally homogenous, but elsewhere it is less so.

One thing: a Turk living in Germany will never really become a German, but if he goes to America he can be an American some day.

For example, we have a horror of corruption and a love of rule of law that is really unusual when you look at the world at large.  In the majority of countries in the world, corruption is just "doing business."

Most places, it is about who you are and who you know. Certainly, that is the case with respect to Latin America.

Culture is more than preferences in food or music.  It is a symptom of late-modernism's lack of culture that it reduces culture to nothing more than a set of consumer preferences.  We are all postmodern selves now, you see, and can try on whatever we like, usually only faintly acknowledging that it is nothing more, or even slightly less, than dress-up.  Nothing changes our selves, which are, in the end, nothing themselves.  

Culture is not the food, the clothes, the "tribal dancing," or what ever else we so condescendingly adopt, but the stories that give them, and us, our meaning. At one time, we had a story of America.  It was rather exclusively Anglo-centric, with an emphasis on Whiggery and Protestantism, and it was why schoolchildren learned about their Pilgrim Fathers, even if their biological fathers came from Italy or a shtetl in Poland.  Adopting in large part this new story was part of the price of admission to America.  It loses its power when distilled into mere ideological propositions to which, I might add, we increasingly don't expect assent anyway.

Consider that the Declaration is a century or so after much of Locke's work, and of course a host of other political philsophers in the liberal vein preceeded and followed him. True, not every person held liberal views. But they don't have to for my view of the Declaration to be correct.

The text you paste is very important, because it shows that first of all, the colonists realized they had to justify their secession-- very much in line with Locke-- and that the reason was the failure of their government to do it's duty (protect liberty, etc.).

The ideas were not new or exclusive to the colonies or even to British people-- witness the French and some of the more liberal German states.  The colonies were the first real [i]use[/i] of those ideas to form a new government, which does make it a special case.

It does not, however, make them "define[d]" by those ideas, any more than Oklahoma City is defined by the fact it is Republican.

There are also those who oppose Big Government and thus support open (or more open) borders.  Fundementally, cracking down on immigration is a huge governmental distortion of the global labor market not unlike protectionism.

Is exactly what I have in mind.  1% of our total population per year.  And not that many would come every year due to differing supply and demand.

The world is so Americanized now that people can come from almost anywhere and get along. However, the problem is that most of the people that want to leave their country are poor, uneducated, and less Americanized (less access to media, less education so less english, etc.). That's not the case with Indian immigrants generally, but from Latin America and some other places it is.

can withstand the American Teenager's desire to rebel by conforming.  I mentioned A South Park episode on another immigration thread here, and now I am reminded of another point from that episode:  The people of the future had racially intermarried to such a degree that there were no more racial differences.  Maybe the surest way to a more homogeneous American identity which is free of ridiculous racial and cultural obsession is through assimilation by racial intermarriage.  It may be happening naturally right now.  

"with an emphasis on Whiggery and Protestantism"

Yup, and when it lead to anti-Catholic bigotry it lost favor over time.  I'm with you when show a desire for a national narrative and an understanding of "one nation."  I think the recent upswing in sales of books on the Founding Fathers is a good trend.  But when that desire transforms into an anit-immigrant stance, we part paths.  I think we should continue to welcome immigrants who want to become Americans into the country.  Make them choose one country as their home and only one citizenship.  Make them learn our history and culture.  But do not deny them passage because you want an "emphasis on Protestantism."

I think that if conservatism is anything, it is at first particular, in privileging tradition and experience over rationalist fancies.

Someone once said that there were no true conservatives in America. An American conservative tends to have the views of a "classical liberal".

By contrast, a liberal--a "modern liberal", that is--is essentially a leftist.

Whether you think uncontrolled immigration, or immigration controls, are a distortion depends on what you think of people.

If you think you can divide people by nationality, then it seems to me that the concept of an American labor market makes sense, and that market can be distorted by a foreign invasion.

If you fundamentally don't buy into the concept of nationality, and see the world as one big market, then I can see how you'd think of border controls as a distortion.

It seems to me that this goes right back to the conflict between patriotism and cosmopolitanism/multiculturalism.

You bolded the word and basically called him racist. And I sleep fine at night, because I know there are plenty of such people out there and there's little I can do about it.

What you don't say is how you plan to control illegal immigration, or where those 3 million immigrants will come from. Will you let people in and allow them to immediately collect welfare?

Do you really believe if 300 million Latin Americans moved to the US over a century the country would be better than it is now? Have you heard of Brazil?

...of which you speak is/was woefully insufficient. No kidding around, no Liberal revisionism, no self-hating neurosis here: the "story of America" -- even at the beginning -- wasn't exclusively Anglo centric since there were American Indians, the Spanish, and the French involved in the story. And a short time after the "beginning" there were blacks involved -- rather infamously -- in the story. And Germans. And bunches of other folks eventually.

So why are you so insistent that part of being American apparently involved "adopting" a deficient Anglo-centric cultural story? Is it for the most part because Anglo ideas were the ones that became enshrined in our founding structural documents? If that's the case then your statement that Anglo-American culture "loses its power [to act as a national culture] when distilled into mere ideological propositions" seems out of place. It's the ideological propositions that actually matter and stay consistent, "distilling" doesn't mean watering down after all.

I'm not saying that we need to teach lies and pretend like the Jamestown settlers weren't white -- drawing some 1607 fort portrait with a multicultural tableau of races -- so don't get me wrong there. But I don't understand your allegiance to this idea of "story" above all else, nor do I understand why you appear to want to tell an incomplete one that emphasizes the prologue, and the race of some of its protagonists -- more than the subsequent chapters.

The whole survey is worth reading, but here is a tidbit from a recent Economist survey on America culture:

Lastly, there is evidence that new immigrants, Hispanics especially, are joining the rest of the American people in the most direct possible way: by marrying them. Almost a third of all marriages involving a Hispanic or Asian partner cross racial lines (counting Hispanics as a race for this purpose). By most standards, American rates of mixed-race marriage have been low: one in 23 marriages in 1990, up to one in 15 in 2000. Latinos seem to be leading the way in breaking down that barrier. Nearly half of all the 3.7m inter-racial marriages in the country have one Hispanic partner. In states with a lot of Hispanic immigration, the rate is surprisingly high: 14% in California and Nevada, around 11% in Washington state, Colorado and Arizona. At this rate, intermarriage will soon stop being exotic and become mainstream. It is another way of stirring the melting pot.

with much of the content of the notorious "Syllabus of Errors," I must point out that, for the most part, the anti-Catholics won, by turning the Irish and Italians (and many Jews) into crypto-Protestants.  Most American Catholics are only nominally so, as can be seen by their continued rebelliousness vis-a-vis the Holy See.

As for losing favor over time, we all recall that Kennedy's Catholicism was at issue in 1960, long after the great wave of European Catholic immigration had receded.  It wasn't as a result of immigration that it ended, indeed I'm not even sure that it has ended.  It has receded, perhaps, because, on one hand,  as a result of an alliance between serious Catholics and Evangelicals to resist what the (still very anti-Catholic, BTW) libertines and liberal Protestants have wrought; and on the other, because liberals, by definition, are never, ever, bigoted.

that it was the Constitution which established the American nation, rather than the Declaration, though I am in agreement that the ideas underlying the Declaration were fundamental to how the Founders saw the founding, as they did not appeal to some ancient foundation myth the way the ancient Romans would have appealed to the tale of Romulus and Remus, but to eternal philosophical truths.

However it was not clear in 1776, or in 1783, that there would be a single American nation afterward. There could have been a Republic of New England, a Kingdom of Virginia (under King George I of the House of Washington) a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and so forth. Indeed, there was a Republic of Vermont for a few years, and of course a non-American British Canada.

Also, I would suggest we need to remember that the 13 colonies were not ethnically homogenous in 1776. Even disregarding the natives and the slaves and the free Blacks, there was a very large German community in Pennsylvania, a Dutch community in New York and a small French Huguenot community in South Carolina and Georgia. (And even the Britons could be subdivided into Englishmen, Scots and Scots-Irish).

It's interesting that the Founders took no cognizance of ethnicity in their founding words and deeds, other than, for historical (and ultimately tragic) reasons, to exclude Blacks and natives from American citizenship. Perhaps this was simply due to the fact that the 18th century had not yet learned to think of nationality in the way that we do (that was a 19th century development) but rather was still operating under the ghost of Christendom's Common Home, and of the fact that changing "ciztizenship" was easy in earlier periods when one need only swear and give fealty to the King of England to become English.

I didn't say government should or shouldn't regulate the market.  And I don't necessarily think this line of argument is the most important.

But any regulation of the flows of persons is an added external constraint on the labor market.  Some people think for non-economic reasons we should impose those restraints.  But those who are ideologically against Big Government are generally against government imposing those kinds of constraints.

And I see your last sentence falls into the same fallacy I see in the original diary.

One can believe that more immigrants is good for the melting pot of culture and still be opposed to the mosaic that is multiculturalism.  Conflating anti-immigration stances with anti-multiculturalism seems to be the argument du jour.

I am a patriot.  I believe America is unique and special.  And I believe we should let more immigrants in legally to be a part of our country and our culture.

have immigrants too. They also have the Lappish people living up in the Arctic.

which is why I used the word "story" instead of "history," with its largely undeserved connotations of "what really happened."  "What really happened" is always very complicated.  Man is a historical creature who makes sense of the world through stories.  Look at Plato's "noble lie," or, for a more academic treatment of the way in which people construct meaning, see N.T. Wright's "The New Testament and the People of God," which, as a preface to his multivolume exploration of the New Testament, discusses this in a thorough yet readable fashion.

Re: Most American Catholics are only nominally so, as can be seen by their continued rebelliousness vis-a-vis the Holy See.

Well, maybe. But if you look at history you will see that rebelliousness against the Holy See was rather common. Not just heretical and quasi-heretical movements like the Waldensees and the Utraquists, but also nationalist movements like the Gallicans in France.

I knew if I kept looking - this shows the SE  direction Lady Liberty points - you can draw a line from her gaze right to the African coast:

http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/liberty/solpix/harbor1.x.jpg

Please provide your outline to effectively implementing all those items while at the same time honoring our cherished American values.

My understanding is that they have been having lots of trouble with some of those immigrants.

Once upon a time, Sweden's relative homogenious makeup was part of an argument that socialism had a better change of success there.

Yes, I was influenced by this article today, that's why I said what I said in my last sentence.

"I am a patriot.  I believe America is unique and special.  And I believe we should let more immigrants in legally to be a part of our country and our culture."

I believe you.  I just don't understand how, then, you can insist that the law of supply and demand has any relevance to a discussion of who gets to live in this land, then.

...as long as we're not required to teach our students what is literally true -- instead telling them "noble lies" that serve not fact but our aesthetic and subjective desires -- then I don't see why my hypothetical "strawman" proposal about Jamestown is so bad, in principle!

Call this noble lying a "story" instead of "history" if you want, but that semantic distinction is plainly silly. You're presumably teaching this story in history class? If you're not -- if you're teaching reality instead, are you hoping that everyone will just pretend that your "story" and reality are both true at the same time? 1984 dealt with the "talent" for doing this sort of thing rather well, and I don't think it's too outrageous to bring up Orwell here.

You're being as bad as the sect of revisionists on the left. You want to call "history" a "story" so that you can rewrite it without the pesky "non" in front of your "fiction." You want to rearrange and revise history so that your vision of the world is forced on society at large and made "truth" by repetition. That's no good.

Of course, this is only related by tangent to this diary entry, but fascinating nonetheless.  Thanks for the correction and providing the data.

I agree that you can't take too much meaning from which way the Statue of Liberty is facing   ;  )

American values are supposed to be under threat from a proposal to deport illegal immigrants, fine those who employ them, imprison those who smuggle and exploit them, encourage assimilation by means of English-language instruction and familiarization with the history, culture and government of the United States, implement an effective, non-RFID ID system, and secure the border by means of some combination of more effective barriers and the deployment of either additional border patrol agents or National Guard units.  I don't see that any of these proposals would endanger American values - or rights; perhaps this is what you intend?  Unless the ability to hire labour at the lowest conceivable rate is, in your estimation, a cherished American right and value.

And if we don't understand the problem, our solutions are doomed to fail.  If someone thinks they can close the border entirely and do it for a cost that people will willingly pay, I doubt their sincerity.  We're talking $50-100 billion a year to do this on the Southern border alone.

When a much cheaper solution exists that has many other benefits: increase legal immigrantion.

We have a problem with illegal immigration that is driven by supply, demand, and a different set of opportunities across a political boundary.  The debate is (generally) on how to solve that problem.

How one looks at this issue without understanding supply and demand, I do not know.  But I expect their solutions will not solve the problem at hand.

I meant the values of Freedom and Liberty, you know, America being the shining city on a hill, always striving for the ideals in our Founding,  optimistic, capitalistic, free market, and that whole "yearning masses" thing (see above).

...and similarly agree that the solution is unclear. Supply and demand in the labor market is butting up against societal and cultural factors and it's uncomfortable. And I don't think we should close the border. That said, let's say Lou Dobbs is elected president on a "seal the border" platform. It would NOT cost $50-100 billion a year to close the Southern border. Combine, in your head, this article and this article for a cheap and self-sustaining solution that would certainly appeal to President Dobbs.

there's nothing in the idea of the "yearning masses" to indicate that we are opbligated to allow as many as will come, to come; never has there been so an idea in American history, outside a few small circles of libertarians and anarchists on the one hand, and a larger circle of economists and corporatists on the other.  So that isn't it.

And, for that matter, there's nothing inherent in the ideas of rights (the idea attaches to citizens, primarily), democracy, optimism, capitalism and free markets that entail either the idea of unrestricted immigration or the notion of a single, undifferentiated global labour market; a nation possesses a market, but is not a manifestation or emanation of the One Market.  Nationhood is prior to the economy thereof, and markets will adjust if they no longer have access to ilegal labour at $2 per hour; cutting off that flow will not somehow abolish capitalism, unless you're Ayn Rand.

So no, I still don't see the threat to American rights and values.

That's a fantastic solution (and a nice elision) if market forces are all you care about. Great. We've made it so that the immigrants are now all legal. No law is being broken. Hooray for formalism.

But if the point is to enforce the law, not for the law's sake alone, but for the underlying reasons for the law, then at best you're being sophistic, at worst dishonest. And I know you're not being dishonest.

That be said, since the "adjustment" you are proposing would send our recovering economy back into a recession (or worse), pardon me if I do not embrace it whole-heartedly.

I think markets are great ways to allocate resources.

I don't think markets are good ways to make laws and maintain our country.

That's why I think the law of supply and demand is totally irrelevant to the decision on whether to control immigration.

since I rather seriously doubt that the abolition of an entire economic class of underpaid, and to that extent exploited, illegals would be a sufficient cause of recession, where rising interest rates, near $70 per barrel oil have not.  And that entire line of argumentation is too suspiciously redolent of a certain line of ante-bellum argumentation.  Really.

Aside from the small point that the USSR had (as RWR so pointedly said) walls and gates to keep its citizenry in, not illegal aliens out.

Lady Liberty actually faces the Southern Hemisphere - therefore, she is inviting all such "wretched refuse" to our shores - seriously, I have not seen any credible "cost" of your proposal to our economy, but let's say it's $1 trillion per year until the market "adjusts", do you think that would be worth it?

"I don't think markets are good ways to make laws and maintain our country." -Neil Stevens

I hope I'm not just being trite and superficial, but is this the place where there's a "Y" in the conservative highway and social conservatives go one way and economic conservatives go the other? Shouldn't laws generally coincide with economic rules to avoid nasty inefficiencies and dissonances? What is classified as maintainance of the nation and how is it different from socialistic, elitist, or protectionist meddling? Don't get me wrong, I'm for laws that meddle in some cases -- or at least I have no bedrock principle against meddling -- but I'm just wondering how (ideologically) conservatives veer away from market forces, and why they do so.

I've lived all over--Alaska to Florida, New Mexico to the NE--and there is a distinct US culture.  I've also lived 10 miles south of the Canadian border, travelled across the border like I was going through a drive-through window...and in the first small town across the border known in my bones that I was in another country.  The differences are subtle (just ten miles away!)  But they are there.

My view is, frankly, that any illegal aliens are too many.  If our labor pool really requires additional people to the degree that we take them in illegally, we should reform immigration policies in order to bring these folks in.  If our labor pool really doesn't need them, we should keep them out.

Just realized after having read one of your comments below ...

I find myself contradicting myself as well, I think probably because I swing between a sentimentalism for this country as I know it now ...  And a realistic view that the labor market should have access to the workers it needs.  I guess it all comes down to what the priorities are.

And I'm not always quite sure in this case what they, in fact, are.

I think this is a place where conservative thinking and modern thinking will diverge.  Conservatives see tradeoffs with every option, modern ideologues see possibilities for utopia.

I think trade is great, but I don't think it's a total, universal good.  I think trade can have negative consequences, for example when it comes to arming Communist China.

In most circumstances, I think the benefits of trade far, far outweigh any negatives, but I just don't think that's always the case.  Certain trade goods (or labor) and certain trade partners bring with them danger that I just can't overlook.

That's just me, though, and only how I think recently at that.  I used to be more absolutist toward freedom, toward a libertarian approach, but I've markedly shifted toward conservatism since reading some Kirk.

I'm going to try to explain my point one more time.

First part: The Problem.

The problem is that there are too many willing workers who want to come into our country and are close enough to do it combined with the fact that we let in many fewer than there are willing workers.  That's the supply and demand part.

Second part: The Solution.

There are many solutions, some are based on economics some are not.  I think any solution needs to at least understand and consider the economics that drive the problem.

If we mean to cut the number of immigrants down to half a million a year, then we must realize that means finding a way to keep out 2.5 million people a year who want to come in.  We can make that choice, but it is important to understand the forces behind the issue.

3. My solution

I don't claim that mine is the only solution to the problem.  I do think that it is the best solution, but I hope others at least recognize that it is a a solution.  We should allow 1% of our total population in each year, right now that is 3 million a year.  This would make policing the border much easier and provide a stable, sustainable number of immigrants into the country each year.

We can debate solutions and how much economics or culture or crime or other things should inform them.  But if you really think you can understand the problem without understanding supply and demand, then we're definitely on different planets.

I do think it's a fantastic solution, that's why I advocate it.  I don't think there is an underlying reason for the exact number of immigrants we have decided to let in each year (1 million).  I think there is a reason to limit the number and I think the limit is too low for a number of reasons.

I think many anti-immigrantion (and all of the small faction of anti-immigrant) groups and individuals are using the "Rule of Law" as a cover for lowering the amount of immigration in the country.  If "Rule of Law" is the main issue, then one can achieve that through many reforms.  Personally I think a solution that allows for an easier enforcement of law, a steady flow of immigrant labor, and a drying up of the concentrations of illegal immigrants in shadow communities should be taken quite seriously.  And raising the number of legal immigrants would do all of those things.

The only reason to oppose it is if one is not only interested in "enforcing the law" but is also anti-immigration.  That's a fine and defensible position, but I'm not willing to let the anti-immigration voices claim "the law" as their cover.  We can enforce the law and let in more immigrants.  They aren't mutually exclusive.

each year in addition to the 1 million legal ones, then there is definite room to raise the number of immigrants we allow.

Right now our immigration laws are so archaic and unenforced the coming her illegally is worth the risk of getting caught-legal immigration is time consuming and expensive.  Illegal immigration for many just requires the desire and will to come.

If these people are going to come anyway, then let's make the proccess easier and cheaper for them, so they come legally, and are on the books and receiving fair pay and paying taxes on it.

Also, I think we need to make hiring illegals a risk employers are unwilling to take.

Avoiding another recession (or worse) is what's best for U.S. citizens.

One can apply the logic of supply and deamnd to ANY crime.  For every law on the books, there are more people willing to commit it, than commissions we're willing to tolerate.

The only way your solution works, is if you don't think the crime of illegal immigration is really inherently wrong.  That's why you link it with legal immigration.

And I think the reason we differ, judging by some of your rhetoric, is based in part of a denial of nationalism.  Why else would you belittle the difference between an American and a Mexican by reducing it to the two sides being "across a political boundary?"

But you're right, we've had it out, and I think we understand each other well enough, and haven't convinced each other, that we're basically done with this argument for now.

I hope you enjoyed yourself, or otherwise found it worthwhile.  I did.

A wall is a wall is a wall - matters little whether you are trying to keep people in or out - my reference to the U.S.S.R. was more directed toward a failed philosophy, economy, society.  That is what we cannot afford to lose.

That's why we all do this isn't it?

And it's an important issue to many people that touches on a lot of dimensions (crime, nationalism, economics, culture, charity, etc).

"belittle the difference between an American and a Mexican"

I find the difference smaller than say between many other cultures.  Also, I see through my personal interaction that most people become Americanized after being here for long periods of time.  Heck, in the Peace Corps, I noticed that many become Americanized without ever coming here.

Hard work, freedom, participatory democracy, the Constitution, family values, emphasis on education, faith in God, and all the other facets that make up what I think of as American are not restricted to those who were born here.  I am more worried about the idea of "guest worker" where one continues to be a citizen and has allegience to their former country.  We should be clear that if you want to immigrate to America, you are to become an American.

This may be because I consider American to be mainly a synopsis of our ideals, beliefs, and mindset more than location.  Unlike "German" or "Russian," I don't find Americanism to be a blood lineage.  And the masses of black Americans, Irish Americans, Native Americans, and others make it impossible for a blood lineage definition to hold up to scrutiny.

So FWIW, I don't deny nationalism if that means believing your country.  I do deny it if it means only believing in one race and one part of your history.  And I'm ready with open arms for anyone who wants to be an American.

And I'm out for the weekend... have a good debate, y'all.

in Maximos' suggestions would send the economy back into recession? If you had said we might see some wage-based inflation, at least in certain industries, I might agree with you, although propductivity throughout the economy as a whole is sufficient to absorb that. But recession?

about Canada. I grew up in suburban Detroit and jaunts across the river to Windsor were exceedingly common, along with occasional camping trips to Lake Superior Prov. Park and the odd weekend in Toronto. The measurements are in metric, the money is funny looking and there's outcroppings of French. But ignoring that I always felt that I was pretty much in a sort of America Lite, and the closer to the border I was, the more USA it felt like. The only part of Canada that ever felt foreign to me was (for obvious reasons) Quebec.

with masses of Canadians sneaking over the border in the dead of night and flooding our labor market with semi-illiterate, non-English speaking menial workers, I don't think we need to worry so much about the northern border.

I have already treated it as substance elsewhere.  And your math is entirely arbitrary.

If you cannot perceive the difference, nor why your analogy is morally repugnant and begs more questions that there are grains of sand in the Sahara, I fear for the prospects of reasoned discourse.

And the last word, too, heh.

Running up the cost or just about everything out there, and hrowing a significant number of small-business employers in jail, will have absolutely no effect on the economy - these are not the droids you are looking for - move along.

Of course - I admitted above we do NOT know the cost - so it is arbitraty.  As a hypothetical question, would you agree that a $1 trillion hit to the GNP would be bad?

Well, then, that makes it all very easy.

The only reason to oppose it is if one is not only interested in "enforcing the law" but is also anti-immigration.

No, I can think of several reasons to oppose it, while still favoring immigration:

(1) One wants to limit the total number of immigrants because one feels that we can only assimilate so many at a time;

(2) One thinks your number is wrong;

(3) One thinks that we should only allow immigrants from cultures (not races, so don't go there) compatible with ours, for ease of assimilation;

(4) One thinks that economics is a poor way to decide the health and welfare of a nation;

And so on.

Frankly, this is beneath you. I favor a very liberal immigration policy in many respects, but smearing those with whom you disagree isn't winning you many converts. And it's quickly losing you an ally, if your arguments are indicative of the folks with whom I've aligned myself.

Of course there's a difference between keeping  people in or keeping them out - what "matters little" is if we experience a failed philosophy, economy, society due to said wall.  Seriously, I found the "what direction the Statue of Liberty faces" tangent more relevant.

... there were German-American gangs, or Italian-American gangs, or Irish-American gangs ever.

Oh wait, there were all of those. So what was your point again about Central American gangs?

Of course harmful people are gonna come in. But they built a fine country down under starting with convicts, so how hard can it be for us to assimilate even the harmful people?

An excess of workers who want to come to America, relative to the number permitted to enter legally is a supply problem, not a supply and demand problem; such a phrasing of the problem would seem to indicate that the supply is eliciting the demand, and that it would be equally consistent to view such a supply-eliciting-demand situation as a distortion of an existing market, an opportunity to obtain labour at below-market rates, in much the same way that a merchant might prefer counterfeit designer merchandise, since his costs are lower, enabling his selling price to be lower to attract consumers who don't know the difference.  If this analogy is objectionable or flawed, the question still must be answered: why are borders and immigration controls more arbitrary than laws against counterfeiting and patent infringement?  Do Americans have no stake, no "ownership", of their own nation that entitles them to set the terms of its protection?

and mention me by well, profession :-), I guess I have to jump in to weave some additional sophistry.  j/k Paul.  But seriously....

My own position on the issue of illegal immigration has been put forth here and I think it's safe to say I echo Adam C's position on this issue: raise legal immigration (or guest worker or whatever) until illegal immigration is no longer necessary.

Having gotten that out of the way, perhaps I misunderstand the point(s) you are making, but it appears to me that you are essentially positing something along these lines:

• Patriotism, love of country, is an emotional, not logical, thing.
  
• Patriotism based on such non-logical emotion ("tender sense of home and hearth") is a good thing, akin to religious piety.
  
• The nature of the country or its ideology (or "home") is irrelevant to real patriotism.
  
• The multiculturalists of the Right are not real patriots, because they do not have the emotional pietistic attachment to the "home".  Instead, they possess an intellectual, ideas-based attachment to the principles with the "home" represents(?) or practices(?) -- a little confused here.
  
• When the MC's of the Right support immigration, they do so out of erroneous (or sophistic) belief that immigrants become Americans simply by assenting to the surface ideas such as democracy, rule of law, and capitalism.
  
• What these MC's of the Right do not realize is that they are endangering the "home" which inspires the real patriotism of emotions, because these immigrants might assent to the surface ideas, but they will never have the emotional pietistic connection to the "home".

Do I have that right?

I do not know that this is what you are arguing, so I will await an answer.  But while I do, let me ask a question.  You wrote: "But if patriotism is actually a deeper, more mysterious and elusive thing; if it derives not from mental propositions but from habit and custom, from real feelings about real places, from a tender sense of home and hearth, from smells imperceptible but unforgettable, from a thousand attachments subconscious but fierce -- then it must be nurtured by the delicate touch of time, by human passion fortified by experience and armed by a just appreciation of what is good and true."

Very nice prose, by the way, but... my question is this:  There are non-American soldiers fighting for this country in Iraq this very minute.  Are we to think them unpatriotic, or do we assume that they have somehow developed this "tender sense of home and hearth" while not being Americans?  Or do you simply think them mercenaries fighting for the money and a chance to become citizens?

Some other commenters on this thread have descended, I think unfortunately, into a position that I think is extraordinarily dangerous for Republicans, for conservatives, and frankly, for America as a whole: some sort of a culture wars type of stance with an express desire to protect "American culture" from foreign contamination. That stance is not only counterproductive, but doomed to failure, and brings to mind the character of Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York:

My father gave his life, making this country what it is. Murdered by the British with all of his men on the twenty fifth of July, Anno Domini, 1814. Do you think I'm going to help you befoul his legacy, by giving this country over to them, what's had no hand in the fighting for it? Why, because they come off a boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup.

Is this really what Republicans and Conservatives should stand for?  God, I hope not.

-TS

that the effects would be so dire; people would adjust, just as we are told they adjust whenever factories and jobs are outsourced and offshored.  Hyperbole.

providing an answer to a question predicated upon an unsubstantiated figure?

you haven't proven anything about the elimination of illegal immigration either entailing or causing a failure of public philosophy, the collapse of the economy, and indeed, all of society as well.  as I have stated elsewhere, we have had immigration restrictions in the past, and they did not undermine the American philosophy or way of life; neither did they undermine capitalism and the economy, much less society in its totality.  There is nothing in Americanism or capitalism that necessitates a single, global market for labour; that is a fiction of utopians.

you will draw the line.  For instance, if you could prove to me that the cost of building the wall and fully enforcing our immigration laws would be LESS than the cost to our economy, even I have to admit we should do that.

has any concrete figures for either of those things, there is no point in tossing figures around as though they meant something.

People (at least those left alive) adjusted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki too - that doesn't mean we should just go dropping atomic bombs willy-nilly though.

Please cite for me ONE prior "immigration restriction in the past" that cost the U.S. $7 billion per year.  That's just what Social Security stands to lose from tossing out every illegal who is now paying into the system:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050410/news_mz1e10ruben.html

would lessen the future financial burden of paying them benefits or having those benefits sent to their home countries.  Small problem now; larger benefit later.

all at once!  Really, drawing an analogy between the use of the atomic bomb and the alleged economic calamity that would ensue upon the cessation of most illegal immigration is to hyperventilate.  Take a breath.  You still haven't proven that recession would be our lot; your analogy suggests depression, and that is truly beyond the scope of conceivability.

in through the Northern Border is the biggest risk, but if just talking strictly about reducing illegal immigration for the most part the 700 million illegals are coming in do so from our Southern border.

given, on the first hand, the number of terrorist and terrorist-sympathizing organizations which operate quite openly in Canada, and, on the other, the increasing frequency of reports concerning Islamists in Central and South America.

Good night.

(above  :  )

I hate it when I'm at work so late.

I think former militia members highly trained in combat are a different animal from a few teenage "gangsters" of the early 20th century. Ask the people they cut up with machetes.

They are illegals, of course, which was my point.

But quoting a poem doesn't convince me.

BTW, the story of the Statue of Liberty, aka Liberty Enlightening the World, is a good one.  

www.legallanguage.com/poems/statuelibertypoem.html

An excerpt:

"The statue was funded completely through donations made by the French people to commemorate the centennial of the alliance between the United States and France during the American Revolution. On the 4th of July, 1884, the 151 feet (46 meters) tall 225 ton Statue of Liberty was delivered to the American Ambassador in Paris. The Statue of Liberty was then dismantled into 300 pieces and packed into 214 wooden crates in order to bring it to New York Harbor."

In those days, it seems that many of the French had better memories than some do today.

I've seen plenty of them on these last couple immigration threads - the $7 billion lost in Social Security is not good - I also liked Sophist's example:

"I believe cutting off the flow of illegal immigrants, even assuming it can be done through very costly enforcement measures, thereby raising the wages domestically, would mean one of two things (or both):

 Raises prices across the board, leading to inflation, leading to those wages we had thought were enough not being enough.  (If a head of lettuce costs $10, getting $5/hr to pick it isn't going to make economic sense for American laborers.)  In other words, real wage gains would be more or less zero.

 Stifling economic activity.  Some companies would simply choose not to engage in economic activity that doesn't make sense without the availability of cheap, dependable, hardworking labor.

Let me use an example that I think most of us could understand, as company labor management issues might be a bit too foreign: nannies.  There is no doubt in my mind that a large number of upper middle class families (let's say $150K+ a year) employ illegal immigrants as nannies.  They can only afford to do so because the nannies are illegal.  Legal, licensed nannies make roughly two to three times what an illegal nanny makes, putting them out of reach for most upper middle income families.

Now, this is illegal -- no argument there.  The issue is what happens if the flow of illegal nannies is cut off.  Most families would simply be unable to pay three times the rate, and stop using a nanny.  That's less economic activity across the board.  In addition, someone would have to stay home to care for the children -- even less economic activity.  That illegal nanny is buying food and transportation and spending money -- not anymore, so even less economic activity.  And so on.

Or, they may decide to pay three times the price for a legal nanny, but then have to go get raises themselves ("raising prices" across the board) until they are making two or three times what they had been, but still be in the same place in terms of living standards (assuming that they can get those raises in the first place).  So when "upper middle class" is no longer defined as $85K and above (or whatever it is now) but as $250K and above, everything trickles down to a point where $30K a year being a nanny seems like not worthwhile (as $30K = $10K in today's dollar terms).

There is another issue as well that I touched on above: dependable, hardworking.  I hate to say it, but when it comes to unskilled or low-skilled labor, Americans are just not that dependable or hardworking.  (At least in my neck of the woods in the Northeast.)  The skilled labor in this country is among the hardest working and most productive.  But when you speak to people who are managers of or employers of low-skill or no-skill labor (and I do know a few retailers and fast food operators and such), they cite time and again issues of absenteeism, employee theft, bad attitudes, and so on and so forth among their employees.  Without a doubt, all of these guys tell me, and I believe American history shows, that their best employees are the immigrants (all of them legal to work in these companies, but immigrants nonetheless).  Immigrants work hard, don't complain, have a positive attitude, are dependable, reliable, etc."

So, there have been plenty of arguments that caution us from throwing the (illegal) baby out with the bathwater.  That's why I thought a simple poem would be better.

So doesn't that mean we don't need to increase the limits at all?

...was never born.  That statue has come to represent a leftist view of what this nation is supposed to me.  It would probably not have been, except for a newspaper publisher's publicity scheme.  The poem that Lazarus wrote, which quite frankly I despise for what it has been bastardized to be, was not part of the statue's origin.

This "nation of immigrants" nonsense will be the end of us as a culture, a civilization and a nation if we don't wake up from our PC indoctrinated coma.

Go answer these questions before you rant back:

What's the highest percentage of foreign born this nation has ever had in residence?  

What's the greatest number of foreign born, before today, that this nation has ever had in residence?

How is today's number significant?

Are today's immigrants "different" in any way when compared to America's historical patterns?

Did the immigration reform of 1965 help America?

What's the difference between a "colonist" and an immigrant?

Where did the word "immigrant" arise?

If you know the Originalist answers to all of these questions and can think rationally about them, I cannot see how you can refute my points.

It makes me ill to see how indoctrinated even so-called conservatives have become to this political correctness nonsense.

to deal with terrorists entering the country are very different from those needed to cut off the flow of illegal immigrants.

And despite notions to the contrary it is actually harder to immigrate to Canada than it is to immigrate to the USA, though both countries are about equally easy to enter as temporary tourists.

The note I responded to claimed

"Avoiding another recession (or worse) is what's best for U.S. citizens."

Recessions don't happen because of a disruption in the supply of artificially low-cost labor.

Now, in this comment, you say

"the $7 billion lost in Social Security is not good"

Negative.  It is good.

Every additional worker added to Social Security increases its liabilities (obligations) more than he adds to its assets (income)--unless you're counting on all those illegals deciding they shouldn't collect since they shouldn't have been here in the first place.

Furthermore, even if your figure is correct, how much more is NOT collected because the illegal's income isn't reported?  Replace all those illegals with legal workers, and at least the SocSec shortfall is owed to legal workers.

"Raises prices across the board...."

Neutral to positive effect.

Possibly true, but so what?  If it will provide jobs for people now on welfare, that's good.  If their labor costs more as a result, it means we have been taking advantage of the illegal status of the previous workers to artificially hold down their pay.  

Some people are always complaining that the "government" hasn't asked us to carry our fair share of the burden in the war on Islamist extremists--no rationing, no war bonds, etc.  This will be our contribution.  We'll pay somewhat more for some goods and services.  It won't be any worse than the next Democrat call for a higher minimum wage level, which will now be postponed.

I believe the trade-off (higher costs in return for secure borders) is worth it.  I don't expect something for nothing.

"...real wage gains would be more or less zero."

Neutral effect.

In the end, if they don't come from increased productivity, wage gains all net to zero after inflation.

"Stifling economic activity.  Some companies would simply choose not to engage in economic activity..."

Doubtful effect.

If there is a demand for their product, their competitors will fill the breach.  If there's not, they won't last anyway.

"...nannies....someone would have to stay home...."

That's a positive for America.

"That illegal nanny is buying food and transportation and spending money -- not anymore, so even less economic activity."

Irrelevant and incorrect.

The money is still there.  It will just be somebody else earning and spending it in other endeavors.

"Or, they may decide to pay three times the price for a legal nanny, but then have to go get raises themselves..."

Positive effect, if they can do it.

How many people do you know that, if they could get a raise, wouldn't do so just because they don't "need" it right now?  If they can, it means they will have earned it.  Where's the problem?

So which is it?  Less economic activity, leading to a recession, or more economic activity, leading to inflation?

"...when it comes to unskilled or low-skilled labor, Americans are just not that dependable or hardworking....Immigrants work hard, don't complain, have a positive attitude, are dependable, reliable, etc."

Talk about reversing a stereotype.  The problem is, we don't want to base national policy on anecdotal evidence any more than we want to base it on a poem.  Besides, as you point out above, we'll be paying more, so we should get a better class of American sluggard.  Maybe they'll have aspirations to upward mobility.

all the positive effects from releasing Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas from the burden of having to educate, feed, and provide medical care for the children of illegal immigrants; children whose care should be provided by their parents or by the government of their native country, Mexico.

Re: Every additional worker added to Social Security increases its liabilities (obligations) more than he adds to its assets (income)--

This is not true. It depends on the worker. A high-scale, high-salary worker is a net plus to social security (assuming normal lifespan). A low-scale low pay worker is a net minus, since SS inflates the benefits of low income workers and depresses the benefits of high-income workers.

you know that I believe market forces are making illegal immigration necessary for our economy.

Frankly, the "law and order" argument is unconvincing.  It is illegal to enter the United States without permission (i.e., a visa), yes.  It's also illegal to eat an orange in a bathtub in California, or for a woman to be outside in a red dress after 7pm in Colorado.  Doesn't make any of those laws morally right or practically wise.

The other thread tackled the economic/practical arguments squarely.  This one, I think, speaks to something else: some sort of cultural element that I'm trying to understand.

One way to try to understand it is by answering the question: Are non-American soldiers of the U.S. Army fighting right now in Iraq patriots or not?

-TS

a "cleft society."  Seeing that we now probably have more illegal aliens here than the population of all but two or three states and a foreign born population that would outrank California in Congress if it had its own delegation, I'd say we're well on our way to being one.

But is not too late to stop it from happening.

I am simply noting there MAY be fiscal benefits to illegal immigration and provided a couple such examples.  What we need in this country is a full debate on the issue, and then we can make informed decisions, such as changing the law, if necessary.  Now, for specifics:

Re: Causes for Recessions (or Worse)

Depending on how suddenly we seal the borders, jail employers, and the cost for everything (except houses maybe if that bubble bursts) jumps, I think we are indeed looking at a recession.  Do you even know what caused the Great Depression?  Was that also a "positive effect" at the time?

Re: Social Security

Did you even read the article I posted - this is $7 billion paid in Social Security that was NEVER going to be paid back to those illegal immigrants - what part of fake ID and Social Security # are you not understanding?

As for how much more is NOT collected because the illegal's income isn't reported, who knows if replacing all those illegals with legal workers amounts to $7 billion shortfall (especially AFTER those legal workers receive benefits).  That's why I am advocating a full debate on the issues BEFORE we make any drastic decisions.

Re: Nannies

That is just one (small) part of the total labor issue - multiply that by 1000's to see that we do depend quite a bit on illegal immigration in this country - now the question is how to best solve the problems, but not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

We are debating above the "nanny" example you brought up in that other thread.

http://culture.redstate.org/comments/2005/8/26/12296/2962/168#168

Once you can get the Supreme Court to overturn all precedent granting those rights to illegal immigrants (probably have to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny citizenship to children born of illegal immigrants too), then you could address those costs as well.  Again, what happened to the ideal of America as the "Mother of Exiles" from whose torch:

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Are non-American soldiers of the U.S. Army fighting right now in Iraq patriots or not?

Of course they are!

It matters more in what numbers they arrive.  Jefferson acknowledged this:

"...But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies [the equivalent of today's despots, tyrants and kleptocrats]. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass."  - From Notes on Virginia

I get a bit emotional about this, primarily because so much of what I see today flies in the face of what I learned as a youth about my heritage and the importance of preserving it.

I find the notion that there is no unique American culture preposterous and am appalled at the extent to which some conservatives have bought into this multicultural nonsense.  It comes, in large part I think, from ignorance to the real history of American immigration.  The "nation of immigrants" mantra is a trivial reduction of the facts.  It lives in the same intellectual world as the first grade American history primer that frames George Washington as "the child who chopped down the cherry tree" and leaves it there, as if this is the only thing that matters about Washington.

is neither law nor Holy Writ.

"I find the notion that there is no unique American culture preposterous and am appalled at the extent to which some conservatives have bought into this multicultural nonsense."

Reading the rest of thread, you can see that I agree and explicitly state that America has a unique and special culture.  So you're attack is missing the mark.

Where we disagree is that it seems you desire to deny many immigrants the opporunity to become part of our country and our culture.  I don't think believing we are special and welcoming more legal immigration are at odds.  Those who want fewer legal immigrants can argue for it all they want, but acting as though we who support more legal immigrants are not appreciative of the unique American culture is a straw man.

Are non-American soldiers of the U.S. Army fighting right now in Iraq patriots or not?

Maybe, maybe not.  I don't know, and you don't either.  Maybe some are, while others, probably most, are merely mercenaries, seeking a paycheck or a ticket to legal immigration, or are simple adventurers.  Some people just like to fight, and join up looking for adventure.  See the Foreign Legion or all the tribes of mercenaries who fought for the late Roman empire.  I will say that I strongly doubt the foreigners carrying a rifle for America have, or could have, the sort of affection for this country that I have, who has lived here all his life, and whose ancestors came here in the middle of the 19th century and before.  

There are only people and the ideas these people have.  Liberty is an idea.  Capitalism an idea.  Freedom an idea.  Thus if patriotism is based on something that is not an idea or a person, then it is sadly misplaced.  Did you suppose that our Founding Fathers revolted over something else?

They receive significantly more legal immigrants as a percentage of the overall population than does the USA. Sames goes for Australia. That would strongly suggest that's it's easier to get into either of these places legally than into the United States.

they have very strict rules for who can and can't get in.

Also, unlike the US, if you get caught there illegally, you don't get to keep your job while everyone turns a blind eye, instead you get to go off to a prison camp while you wait for your case to be proccessed.

The data strongly suggest it's more difficult to gain entry into the United States than either Canada or Australia. Australia's net immigration, per CIA statistics, is 3.9 per 1000. That's a rate one-third higher than the USA's.

Canada's net immigration rate is nearly double that of the U.S., at 5.9 per 1,000. America's rate is about 3.1 per 1,000.

These figures -- at least for the US -- do not include illegal immigration, so one infers the actual differences will be smaller, and this likely means that the true net immigration rate for the United States is larger than for either Canada or Australia -- it's probably a figure closer to 9 per 1,000 (based on a true net total of between 2 and 3 million when illegal immigration is factored in).

My point is only that the net rate of government-sanctioned immigration is higher in Canada and Australia than in the United States, which, again, strongly suggests the contention that it's easier to immigrate to the USA is untrue.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/as.html

If anything, what the above figures imply is that nations whose governments make it practical to immigrate legally not only have a lot less illegal immigration, they probably have less total immigration (legal + illegal). Illegal activities, after all, are not subject to quotas or other regulations.

neither Australia or Canada share a border with a exremely poor and corrupt state full of people willing to risk life and limb to get there.

Although I don't disagree that a liberal immigration policy is bad.

I just think that you can't compare US stats to Australia.  Australia is still very picky about who those who get in are.  It is very difficult next to impossible for an uneducated poor person from a third world nation to get to Australia legally.  It isn't so easy to get into the US either, but then if one can get to Mexico, one pretty much has a smotth ride straight into the US, where nobody wants to enforce immigration laws of any type, even when you get caught.

American history is false!  The Founding Fathers rebelled against the authority of the English crown not on account of their refusal to accept the revocation of liberties anciently enjoyed by Englishmen, liberties rooted in time, place, custom and precedent, but on account of the ineffable movement of Abstractions in the Realm of  the Absolute Idea!  And all of the billions of men who have lived and loved their homes have been miserably deluded: thinking that what they loved was a tangible thing, they failed to realize that what they truly loved was accessible only to the intellect, by a process of the negation of concrete things!  Who knew?!

immigration is the fallacy that we've always had immigration, when in fact, the past forty years have been the most incredible abberation.  And there are many of us who, like those who began to rebel against open borders in about 1910, who view future immigration that does not include periods of near total moratorium as probably fatal to this nation.  

The immigration policy we had from 1924 to 1965 was a great policy.  It really is a shame that so many are ignorant about it, and to what it meant to assimilation of those who became what we call "our greatest generation."  Without that near complete halt to immigration, it is at least possible we would not have been cohesive enough to win WWII.

"Do you even know what caused the Great Depression?"

Yes.  What started it was a bursting stock market bubble, exacerbated by low margin requirements, aided and abetted by stock price manipulation and fraud.

What kept it going was the tight-money policy of the Federal Reserve at the time, which led to an epidemic of bank failures.  We know better than to do that now.

"Did you even read the article I posted...?"

No, I didn't.  But I correctly guessed that the argument was counting on the 'contributors' not trying to collect, didn't I?  That's an awful lot like what used to be called 'slavery.'  Or maybe it's just 'bait-and-switch.'  Of course it would be nice if a lot of foreigners would be willing to pay into Social Security without asking for the benefits.  Let's see if we can talk the French into it.

As for their replacements, didn't you argue that the cost to replace them would be triple the cost of illegal workers?  By that logic, we're passing up $21 million in Social Security taxes by using illegal aliens.  But their replacements WILL want the benefits.

"Nannies.  That is just one (small) part of the total labor issue...."

Yes, it is, but it's the example you cited.  I assert that my response will fit any other example you want to substitute.

If your point was that the issue should be dicussed before being solved, then I did miss it.   I thought you had claimed that if we control the illegal immigration problem it would lead to a recession.

MY point is that if you want to use economic arguments to support continuation of uncontrolled immigration, you have the wrong tool.  Furthermore, the security of the country and its borders isn't an issue for a cost/benefit analysis.  It has to be done, regardless of the cost.  Otherwise, we aren't a country and our borders are unnecessary.

we could get a better handle on how expensive they really are, and we could send a bill to Mexico for their support.

That neither Canada nor Australia border a state that actively encourages emigration and fights efforts to control it.  And no one walks to Australia, either.

just for the moment, just for the sake of argument (I don't, but I'll play along), what is the effect of allowing millions to come here who don't have the same ideas that the people already living here do, and then allowing them to retain their old ways and habits?

I always thought the Founders revolted over taxes, thwarted expansionism, and yes, a belief that their rights as Englishmen were being violated by o'er weening royal authority, which is not nearly the same thing as going to war to realize "an idea."  That is mere Jacobinism.  

Others, though, are motivated by something other than multiculturalism, and that is Christianity.

This is an important point, Mr. Stevens, and I would do well not to forget it; but I do not think it has been as Christians that the participants in these threads have argued for liberal immigration laws. Adam came the closest to making that argument on another thread, but, by and large, we have seen (1) the right-wing multiculturalist argument and (2) the libertarian or capitalist argument.

If Thomas, as an orthodox Roman Catholic, had set down a comment to this effect: "Paul, I take your point about culture and I take your point about nationality; indeed I certainly take your larger point about patriotism; these things worthy of conservation. I affirm that. But yet I must say that the claims of the Christian conscience precede these claims, and I agree with the prudential judgment of the bulk of the heirarchy of my church in believing that immigration is one area where the Christian can and must exercise his duty of Charity."

-- if Thomas or some other Christian had registered this objection to me directly, I confess that I would have great difficulty refuting it.

But none have. And thus the burden of my polemic has been against men who, whether Christian or not, have favored liberal immigration on non-Christian grounds.

Perhaps I'm just charitably reading more into the charity arguments than are there, heh.

Are non-American soldiers of the U.S. Army fighting right now in Iraq patriots or not?

Like Cyrus, I don't know. In addition to the mercenary, a character who is surely represented among them, and the adventurer (also surely represented), there may also be men who fight purely for the ideals of America. They are not, however, fighting as patriots, anymore than an idealist Frenchmen who fought for the American Revolutionaries was fighting as a patriot, or a foreign socialist in 1930s Spain as a patriot.

What is the proper name for this character, the hero for liberty, the man who thinks a cause so just it must be vindicated, even if it does not personally involved him? I don't know. But such characters, while often admirable and even almost saintly, are not, properly-speaking, patriots.

Knights-errant?

The immigration policy we had from 1924 to 1965 was a great policy.

Indeed it was, and thank you for making that explicit. Had this good policy not been demolished by Ted Kennedy (yes, it was his bill), we would not need to have these difficult and occasionally nasty debates, for we would all -- most of us at least -- agree.

Liberty as one of the reasons the founding fathers revolted.  Their Liberty (Not a tangible thing) was violated thus they revolted.  Not because of cultural identity (Which would be a pretty silly reason to kill someone over) but because they believed in Liberty and their right to it.

Are you unclear about the difference between an idea (Such as capitalism) and a thing (Such as an apple)?  True, cultural identity is an idea also, but it is a less compelling idea when compared to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happinness.

responding to the contention, upthread, that it is easier to immigrate to the United States than to Canada or Australia. If what we mean by immigrate is settling in a country with the permission of that country's government, then the contention is manifestly untrue.

I don't think anybody's arguing it's easier to sneak into Australia than the United States. Sharing a land border with a rich country makes it awfully tempting indeed (not to mention feasible) for denizens of a neighboring poor country to sneak in for economic reasons. The end result of this situation, coupled with America's niggardly immigration quotas, is the surge in illegal immigration that both sides in the debate want to curtail.

I have to say that your original post is an all-time gem.  Were I in a position to spend more time, I'd love to comment at greater length.  But there's a three-year-old in the next room who takes precedence.

I'll just add this, for now.

One thing scares me terribly that pulses as a malignant undercurrent to most of the responses in this thread: the uninformed presupposition that the status quo on immigration is in close proximity to,if not exactly in line with, the character and volume of American immigration throughout history.

I view the 1924 reform as a crucial "adjuster" that brought the nation back in line with what really works in this nifty little culture. Few, if any, of your commenters know, for instance, that prior to Kennedy's folly between one-in-four and one-in-three of our immigrants left. Further, there is no recognition that the flood of cheap labor is a key stifler of innovation; anyone who truly desires cheap farm products for the long term ought to support policies that increase wages to the point at which it becomes economically smart for agribusiness to ratchet up R&D on harvesting technology.

To me, it is clear that a nation that ceases to innovate will soon cease being a leader. I can understand the leftist viewpoint that this should be the case for America, but I'm appalled at the conservatives here who are apparently unable to connect the dots.

Based on what I've learned over the years about immigration, I have concluded this nation has been the most united when its number of foreign-born residents has been at or below 7 percent.  Thus, my argument for a moratorium, at least until we force it back below that threshold.  Then, and only then, would I feel comfortable with a resuption of immigration, but it would have to be once again based on merit and the ability to assimilate (including linguistically).  There should be no quotas.  And "family reunification" should refer to making sure those who want to be reconnected with their extended families have that opportunity - in their homelands.

By the way, you've been Blogrolled over at my site.

the diversity of the American colonists.

"Also, I would suggest we need to remember that the 13 colonies were not ethnically homogenous in 1776. Even disregarding the natives and the slaves and the free Blacks, there was a very large German community in Pennsylvania, a Dutch community in New York and a small French Huguenot community in South Carolina and Georgia. (And even the Britons could be subdivided into Englishmen, Scots and Scots-Irish)."

The Constitution was "sold" to the citizens of the new nation in large part on the basis of its peoples' homogeneity.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

-John Jay, Federalist Paper #2

Due most probably to the relative geographic isolation of the states (when compared to European Christendom), the 250-year colonial period was one in which a common protestant-centric (if not puritan-centric) worldview took root.  It is, at best, a far stretch to posit that the first American citizens were an heterogenous bunch.  

I'm a bit surprised at the amount of attention given to the Statue of Liberty in this debate.  I want to believe that people are just being humorous, because it is completely irrelevant to the topic of immigration.  I mean, just think about it; immigration is one of the most important and complex issues facing our nation, and some people want to take into account a statue!  

I don't deny its symbolic value, but to be held hostage by it in seeking genuinely conservative reform is absurd.  Its no different than the rattling off of the whole series of nauseating platitudes about immigration that some people actually think constitutes an intelligent and reasoned argument.  

Its almost a shame that the oft-quoted plaque were ever added to the Statue grounds.  

Jacobinism.  It's an ism, brother.  Those are big things.  Racism, Communism, Creationism, Capitalism.  Some good, some bad, none mere.

Re: The Constitution was "sold" to the citizens of the new nation in large part on the basis of its peoples' homogeneity.

America is 1787 was NOT homogenous.

That's one of the big reasons we ended up having a Civil War 73 years later.

America today is more culturally homogenous than it was in that day and age.

are very choosey about who they admit as legal residents. The numbers are irrelevant: it's the skills and education that count. To immigrate to Canada you have to be able to demonstrate that you will be a net contributor to the Canadian economy (or that you are a VERY close relative-- minor child, spouse or domestic partner of someone who is already). So the Canadians  admit lots of entrepreneurs, investors, college educated middle class people and so forth, while admitting far fewer landscape day laborers, illiterate welfare cases, busboys, great-aunts and third cousins of other immigrants etc.

My comment was not necessarily about the QUANTITY of immigrants but the QUALITY. And my contention is therefore valid: it is harder to become a permanent resident of Canada than of the USA. (By the way it also costs $1000 to even apply to Canada-- plus a complete background check and health screen, whether you are accepted or not, and another $900 to be admitted to the country is you are accepted. Exceptions are made for only for a set number of refugees under international agreements).

some of the same rules.  IIRC, you must have a skill/profession that the Australia society has a demand for or you can not live there.

That just sounds terrible, like a country club that tries to weed out all the undesirables.

are nothing if not tangible conditions characteristic of a way of life; if they are not embodied in the habits, practices, laws and concrete circumstances of a culture, they are illusory.  If they were nothing more than ideas, then one might as well say that citizens of the old Soviet Union had great liberties because they could conceive of them intellectually.  Liberty, as an idea, cannot even be conceived without reference to its specific cultural and political conditions and modes of manifestation; every doctrine of liberty is just such a vision of a way of living together in society for the mutual security in certain goods, rights and opportunities.  The Founding Fathers had a specific set of empirical grievances against the English crown; their conception of liberty was, at a minimum, a vision of a form of government in which those grievances were rectified and were unlikely to recur.  

My point is simply that ideas and the concrete circumstance of social life exist in dynamic relationship; to conceive of them separately is to fail to think, on the one hand, or to negate the world, on the other.

I forgot about all the Muslims, the Chinese, the Pygmys and the large groups of peoples who practiced  animist rituals and performed clitoral circumcision all over the colonies. Hookahs were endemic in some areas.  And let's not forget the colonial-era Buddist and Hindu temples we have up there in the northeast. I also forgot about the Somali Bantu who fought for our freedom and established the town of Lewiston, Maine.

Yep, them folks was a diverse bunch.

It should have occurred to me that the protestant world view did not predominate, quite uniquely from a macro perspective, in the colonies that would become the United States.  

In all of our colonial multiculturalist splendor, it is truly amazing that we were ever able to get along.  No salesmanship or public relations was necessary to get the peoples of all the colonies on board for ratification.  The Federalist Papers were a waste of time and effort.  We can't glean a thing from them.  Jay, Madison and Hamilton were idiots.  What they thought was, and remains, irrelevant.

I stand corrected. I'll skulk off with my tail between my legs.  I'm so humiliated.

At least for me, you are not.  I am a born-again Christian and not ashamed of it - however, in these current times, I also understand that the State must have SOME secular purpose for anything it does - hence the economics   ;  )

You mean "platitudes" like the "American Way"?  Values of Freedom and Liberty, you know, being the shining city on a hill, always striving for the ideals of our Founding Fathers, optimistic, capitalistic, and free market thing?  Excuuuuse me for bringing up anything like that.

NO ONE knows what economic impact of mass deportions, sealing the border, and jailing employers - my point is that we should take into account all possible consequences, including the possibility it would lead to a recession.

I never said it was law or Holy Writ.  We all have to agree what direction America takes.  But, if you want America to no longer be the "Mother of Exiles" that's not a country I want to be part of.

is not needed.

A good read on the topic of the diverse strands of early American settlement is Albion's Seed. The English settlers were not clones of each other.

a business should hire anyone and everyoene who applies no matter what their skills and background, and churches should accept pretty much everyone as members whether or not they believe in the church's doctrine or not.

The numbers are irrelevant: it's the skills and education that count.

Well, the numbers aren't irrelevant to the narrow question I was addressing: whether or not it's easier to (legally) immigrate to the United States than to Canada and Australia. Again, the fact that these two countries permit a significantly higher net immigration rate than the US srongly implies it's easier to gain entrance to these two than to America. The only other explanation would be that Canada and Australia are more desirable destinations for would-be immigrants. I have no doubt that some people would opt for Canada or Australia over the United States, but I doubt this is true as a valid general rule.

Although I follow the immigration issue closely, I'm admitedly not conversant with the minutiae of US immigration law. I hear for instance, that having a blood relative in the US increases one's chances of gaining admission. Well, I can't think of a more arduous requirement than requiring that one possess a relative residing in the States. My point is that, for someone with a good work ethic and some marketable skills, we largely do not, as Canada and Australia do, make it feasible to immigrate to the United States. I can only base my understanding of the situation on my own observations. But, for instance, I know a good number (10-12) of Chinese graduate students. We're talking about people with a legendary work ethic, and people, who, in this case, are extremely well-educated and intelligent. It is a truism among this set that Toronto or Vancouver are feasible destinations for permanent immigration, while the US is not, because of the near-impossibility of getting permission from the US government to stay here and build a career.

I have no objection to taking a look at immigration requirements. We may well be able to further strenghten the country by attracting the best and brightest from around the world, as opposed to accepting the world's second cousins. I fear we're losing out to other rich countries in this regard, and that's one of the several reasons I think justifies opening up the country to more legal immigration. It would give us greater scope to examine, and adjust for the benefit of all Americans, the composition of immigration to this country.

good thoughts.  But an idea is never concrete or tangible by virtue of the fact that different folks think of them differently and by virtue of the fact that they do not exist in the physical world.   They can affect the physical world but ideas remain ephemeral.  Always have, always will.  For that reason we need to prioritize them, as they are only our imaginings many may be severely flawed.  I say, for instance, liberty trumps cultural identity.  I also say physical needs, food, shelter, clothing, medicine, trump almost every ideal.

missing the point of my post, which is that an idea only exists with reference to either an actual or possible - in the sense that the idea is regarded as integral to its realization in the world - state of affairs.  So the Founding Fathers did not simply proclaim "liberty" as a numinous abstraction, but proclaimed a liberty having a determinate, specifiable content.  This is the reason for priveleging culture over mere ideas; ideas not rooted in, derived from, or consonant with a specific culture will generate only instability, disorder, social tension, or outright reaction.  And the goods in your list are such as only exist and are realized within a culture.  It is true that in a strict sense, ideas exist only in the mind; but this is not a very useful mode of analysis, inasmuch as the mind is not conscious except insofar as it has an object, and if that object is an idea, it is an idea of something - ie., it refers to reality, actual or possible.  Especially if it refers to something so messy as politics and social organization.  Even differing perspectives, and thus ideas in some sense, are differing conceptions of something real, be it a state of affairs, a set of relations, a quality or characteristic...

It is a very good book on the micro-differentiation between four archtypes, but it absolutely does not indicate that this nation was ever "multicultural" as defined today.  "Narrowly diverse" is the broadest possible description of societal condition at the time this nation was founded.  In today's terms, multiculturalism is antithetical to this nation's origins.  

Most of the people migrating here now do not have roots in, nor can they fully comprehend, the concept of "Providence;" however, this key concept was shared by the colonists/first citizens almost universally, regardless of their micro-archetypical ancestry.  American culture still remains immersed in the afterglow of the notion that Providence works through us.  The multicult is a serious threat to the positive manner in which this powerful shared belief affected the course this nation has followed.  That is why it, along with its sociopathic cousin, political correctness, needs to be "taken out," to borrow a phrase from Pat Robertson.

My family traces its roots to all all of the major groupings Fischer covered.  We cherish the ethos, stories and artifacts handed down and placed in our care.  When conversation in my extended family turns to discussions of our ancestry, as it often does, the exclusive consensus is that our mores and values are lineal descendants of Protestant English culture.  None of us would consider our heritage to be "diverse," even in the most narrow definition that can be offered.

What words are you referring to?

I quote:

"Avoiding another recession (or worse) is what's best for U.S. citizens."

In the context of the discussion, that clearly implies that "if we control the illegal immigration problem it would lead to a recession." [my words].

In an earlier note to Maximos, you claimed,

"That be said, since the "adjustment" you are proposing would send our recovering economy back into a recession (or worse), pardon me if I do not embrace it whole-heartedly. "

Are you saying that's NOT a flat out statement that border control will bring recession, when the 'adjustment' you refer to is clearly Maximos's statement that "markets will adjust if they no longer have access to ilegal labour"?

When you accepted my challenge, "If you can make that argument, make it," by joining the fray with examples and rhetoric, you seemed to confirm the intent of your original statement.

I don't see that I put any words into your mouth.  You also said,

"I am simply noting there MAY be fiscal benefits to illegal immigration and provided a couple such examples.  What we need in this country is a full debate on the issue, and then we can make informed decisions, such as changing the law, if necessary."

Seems to me we were having some of that debate.

BTW, after you explained yourself, in my next (and last) comment I said, "If your point was that the issue should be discussed before being solved, then I did miss it."  I missed it because you hadn't said it before then.

Any immigration policy is discriminatory.  There is no such thing as an immigration policy that doesn't discriminate in favor of someone at the expense of someone else.  Our current policy, primarily by default, discriminates strongly in favor, not of true "exiles," but of people who, by accident of birth, as jjayson put it elsewhere, hail from Mexico.  Since we're going to discriminate, as even an "open borders" policy would do, your side has to explain why it is desirable for America that we discriminate in the particular way we do, and not resort to some statement of principle that you are, in fact, not honoring now and have no intention of honoring, since we're not going to make it as easy for a poor Nigerian to come here as it is for a poor Mixtec to come here by, say, opening a consulate in rural Nigeria and handing out plain tickets.  You owe us that, and not this tedious cant from Emma Lazarus.  Tell us why these immigrants and not some other immigrants, and tell us why this many, and not some other number.  You're the ones trying to remake America, not us.  Tell us why it should be remade, and why it should be remade the way you're remaking it, and not another.  I await your answer.

were all English settlers.

and shows how perverse our system is.  We actively discriminate against highly qualified immigrants such as the Chinese graduate students you mention in favor of low-skilled people with the good fortune to have relatives here.  Yet, because skills are not equally distributed across populations, any call to discriminate in favor of skilled immigrants will have racial and ethnic consequences, favoring East Asians and Europeans over Latin Americans, and will therefore be shouted down as racist by the usual suspects whose goal is enlarge their disgruntled client base at the expense of the rest of us.  We're so concerned with appearing non-discriminatory that we willingly import wards of the state while Canada snatches up potential future Nobel prize winners who would probably rather come here.  

I await an answer as well.

You're way too smart to make some sort of non-sequitur like this. This is just so far our of the strike zone that I can't even take a good swing at it.

You seem to be saying that a group (a church, a nation, a firm, etc) "should" (implying it is morally preferable not just legal -- your word not mine) have any restrictions they want to keep any quality they want dominant in the group, regardless of what that quality is.

Should a country club not admit Jews just for being Jewish? Of course not, but that seems to be what you just said. So should a nation not admit those culturally or socioeconomically different just for being different? The same answer seems demanded -- no -- because keeping those qualities is directly racist in the Jewish example and indirectly racist in the other example. These are qualities that are irrelevant in a just society. At the heart of the Rule of Law is the idea that societal status should be irrelevant, and trying to use that status to sort people into lists of who are and who are not deserving to enter the U.S. directy attacks it.

However, things such as skill level for a firm isn't racist or classist at all. It is understood as integral to the operation of the firm. And we as a socity understand that while rejecting somebody for religious purposes is generally wrong, it is acceptable in the narrow confines of hiring for a religious body.

How does saying that a firm should hire the skilled worker translate into the obligations and actions of a nation? A nation doesn't exist to employ us or to make products, and its differences with a private firm are far greater than its similarities. The U.S. government doesn't exist to dictate culture, tell us what lanauge to speak as a private citizen, or make sure our neighbors look just like us. So why should socioeconomic status be used to determine entry?

discrimination and not another?  Skills, aptitudes, and interests aren't evenly distributed across groups, so any discrimination based on skills will have consequences that tend to result in disproportionate representation of one group or another.

"not races, so don't go there"

Being the second or third person to defensively bring up race or imply that I have called someone racist, can you show me a comment in this thread or another where I have brought up race in regards to immigration.  I have never "gone there" to my knowledge.  I believe in a race-blind society so I rarely bring it up in these topics.

FWIW, I find Hispanic culture very compatible with current American culture with the sole major exception of language.

And I must again say that "economics is a poor way to decide the health and welfare of a nation" has never been my argument.  I continue to point out that economics is the root of the problem and any solution must recognize it.  But even a 100% closed border solution is a possible solution, it will just take sufficient resources to keep the natural market forces from working (as we use them in many other cases).  

can be summed up by focusing on your last post.  When you wrote "ideas exist only in the mind; but this is not a very useful mode of analysis."  I have to disagree.  People seem to forget that many popular ideas came from the fanciful ponderings of an ordinary joe and in doing so they imbue this ideas with almost religious import.  The ID vs evolution debate is a good example.  Can scientists prove evolution or ID?  Of course not.  Should any reasonably intelligent person be able to see that and put these ideas in their place?  Of course.  Why is the mainstream scientific community so scared/enraged by the teaching of a competing philosophy?  Why are others pushing so hard to teach ID when both are only ideas based on little but circumstantial evidence and conjecture?  Because they know ideas surrounded by pomp are often accepted as gospel.  When we forget the origin of an idea and believe it to be a tangible thing instead of (dare I say it) a guess (What is The Wealth Of Nations after all besides a very long and complicated guess at how and why our crazy economy stays afloat) this is when we begin to see the irrational furor that leads to violence, injustice and hatred.  Granted, the 3 results I just listed are only ideas themselves.  But can you name the cultural context in which we might estimate the manisfestations of them to be good?

Re: Most of the people migrating here now do not have roots in, nor can they fully comprehend, the concept of "Providence

I'm not sure what you mean by "Providence". As a purely theological concept it was a Puritan notion not shared by other Protestants, like the Church of England folks who settled much of the South.  But in the much broader sense of a soveriegn God who is involved with the world, not remote from it, it is shared by all Christians, by the Jews and even by the Muslims--while it was specifically rejected by the 18th century Deists who were among our Founders.

semns pretty sound to me. We should admit as permanent residents only those who

A) have skills or resources that will benefit us

B) will sign on to the basics of American political culture (no Jihadis or Communists need apply)

Additionally we should permit very close family members of the above (people should not be separated from spouses or minor children) and, for the sake of charity and humanity, a certain number of refugees from tyranny, war and natural catastrophe.

This is our country, and I don't see why being selective  about who we invite in is any more a sin than my being choosey about which guests I will invite into my home.

Got you mildly mixed up with Moe. My bad.

My last point on this, as this is now a very old thread, is that where I took offense was in comments like these:

The only reason to oppose it is if one is not only interested in "enforcing the law" but is also anti-immigration.

That particular argument is beneath you. It assumes too much about your opponents -- or in this case, your fellow-traveler. I'm to the left of Paul on immigration, but that doesn't mean I think there should be open borders. That, however, does not make me "anti-immigration."

And that's all I have to say about that.

or state outright that this is a result of "natural" market forces, but it isn't, at least not entirely.  It is a result of government policy that subsidizes low wage immigrants with countless public benefits, ranging from education, to free health care, to food stamps, to affirmative action that puts immigrants who just crossed the border into the same "protected class" as American blacks who've been getting the short end of the stick for four hundred years.  Across the border, Mexican government policy further contributes to the problem by encouraging illegal immigration, dual citizenship, and revanchism.  No, this isn't just a "free market" problem.  It's the result in large part of destructive, and yes, market-distorting, policies.  A freer market, where immigrants bore the cost of immigrating, might be an improvement over the current state of affairs.

I believe that we may be at a point of speaking past one another.  With respect to all political conceptions, however ideal or abstract, they always, of necessity, refer to circumstances that, at a minimum, could be rendered concrete.  ID and evolution - well, that is another can of worms I have no desire to open - refer to, in principle, research paradigms for the investigation of empirically knowable things; ID is somewhat more philosophical, but is rooted in a perception that, if the assumption of materialism which guides empirical scientific investigation is just that - an assumption which cannot give us an exhaustive account of existence, which cannot of itself exclude supplements and all alternative accounts - then perhaps something of this limitation of method will be observable.  It is still rooted in a perception of what reality tells us about itself under investigation.  But modern science is so far removed from primary experience - at the level of, say the evolution/ID debate (which is itself a misnomer, since there is nothing in principle to forbid some meeting of the two...) - that I don't consider it a fitting analogy for society and politics, although there are thought to be specific sociopolitical consequences from the adoption of one or another....

I do not like talk of dialectic - there can be a lot of metaphysical baggage attached to that term - but on the level of the purely social, it is expressive of a truth: that ideas and concrete realities exist in dynamic tension, that they are mutually contextualizing.

of the actions or non-actions of foreign governments. I fail to see why we are obligated to serve as the clean-up service for the failed policies of any other government except our own. "Market forces" would be a curious name for that.

that it was the Constitution which established the American nation, rather than the Declaration,

Too much time has passed, but I think it's better to say that the Declaration established America as a nation, and the Articles of Confederation and later Constitution established how the nation would be governed.  Among other things, after the Declaration there was no going back.

re: Locke, et al.

I'm not suggesting that the colonists came up with all of the ideas expressed in the DoI; far from it.  (Indeed, many of the notions in the DoI preceeded Locke by about 500 years.)  What made the DoI novel was the basis on which the rebellion occurred, in that it recognized that a government's legitimacy was not derived from might, the divine right of kings or cultural/ethnic similaries.  Nor was it derived solely from the consent of the governed.  Rather, legitimacy was derived from both the consent of the governed and when the government respected certain natural rights of the people (regardless of consent).  

Aleks, we don't agree often, but it sure feels good when we do.

as to why you consider the immigration policy from 1924 to 1965 to be a great policy.

A blog, a diary, or even a response (although this one is getting kind of long) would be appreciated.

You see, were it not for the immigration reforms of 1965, I and all of my family would not be here.  But personal feelings aside, I'd like to know what about that policy you liked so much to understand it.

Thanks,

-TS

My logic semns pretty sound to me. We should admit as permanent residents only those who ...

But you just listed what you think should be immigration policy. My point wasn't one of economics, but a deontological claim. When you start filtering immigrants by socioeconomic status, you get to a really ugly area I wouldn't like the country to be. It reminds me of an elitest country club. It's a morally repugnant position as I laid out in my last comment in response to you.

on more than you think. I'm one of those annoying people who mostly posts when I want to argue about something. I know we're on different pages when it comes to gay marriage (maybe gay issues in general) and when it comes to an analytsis of Islamic culture and the nature and degree threat we face from that direction. But I suspect we probably agree on a lot things that never come up.

that ideas and physical realities may often seem to exist in dynamic tension between each other, not all ideas need have a counterpart in reality.  Some ideas are simply false.  For false ideas that led to political truths thanks to people not keeping ideas in their place see:  The Salem Witch Trials (False idea: Some women are witches and our local gov't must do something about it), The Nazis (Fals Idea: There is a line of man, the Aryan, superior to all other lines.  An International Conspiracy of Jews has been thwarting this line and must be dealt with, as must other nations which seek to curtail the dominance of the Aryan line.), Slavery (White Man is superior to Black.) and on and on and on.

My point is, if you are wrong, and so often as a species we are, there may not be a physical counterpart to your idea.  The dangers of multiculturalism strikes me as an erroneous fear and so I sought to put it in its place by reminding us all that it is only an idea.  Lets hope that as with the witch trials, nazis, and slavery we don't create the physical counterpart to the erroneous idea.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of "we're a nation of immigrants" and "immigration made this country great" and "diversity is our greatest strength" and "unless you're a Native American then..."  Just about anytime you hear immigration debated, someone will say these and act as though they have just said something profound, when in fact they have betrayed the weakness of their argument by having to come up with such inane phrases.  

But none of the things you mention -- the American Way; values of freedom and liberty; ideals of our Founders, capitalism; etc -- are in any way dependent upon or directly related to unending mass immigration.  To say we must accomodate mass levels of immigration, legal or illegal, in order to consistent with the American Way or the intent of the Founders is ludicrous.  To imply that dissent from this ridiculous view is somehow indicative of being 'ashamed of America' is absurd.

The only comparable wave to the current one in terms of size and length was the European one of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was cut off in the early 1920s.  Impugn the motives of those who did so if you wish, but the results were over 40 years of low-moderate levels of immigration into this country.  And that was a good for the nation.  

So it is simply a false analogy to use the past to argue in favor of the present.  

certain ideas are simply false; but even false ideas are rooted in a perception, albeit incorrect, of reality, or in an attempt to remake reality.  Even PC, as laughable and absurd as it is, is both a reflection of how some leftists interpret reality and an effort to refashion that reality; it still exists only with reference to real states or states thought, or sought, as real.  There is no idea which exists wholly without reference to a state of affairs, real, imagined, or undertaken as a project.

Really?  I always thought the roots of the concept were in Calvinism.  Yes, the Puritans had the concept, as did the Jews.  It is a chapter in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.  It also is woven into the foundation of the Methodist and Baptist sects.

If I actually were to buy into your position, I'd have a hard time reconciling it with this:

"...acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence,

which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in

the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter..."

Thomas Jefferson - First Inaugural Address

or this:

"...Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as

that most evils are the means of producing some good."

Thomas Jefferson - Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush

or this:

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Decaration of Independence

or this:

"Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of caused & effects Providence punishes national sins, by national calamities."

George Mason - Comments at the Consitutional Convention, 1787

or this:

"I conclude, that believing a Providence we have the Foundation of all true Religion; for we should love and revere that Deity for his Goodness and thank him for his Benefits; we should adore him for his Wisdom, fear him for his Power, and pray to him for his Favour and Protection; and this Religion will be a Powerful Regulater of our Actions, give us Peace and Tranquility within our own Minds, and render us Benevolent, Useful and Beneficial to others."

Benjamin Franklin - On the Providence of God in the Government of the World

or this:

"When we consider the magnitude of the prize we contended for, the doubtful nature of the contest, and the favorable manner in which it has terminated, we shall find the greatest possible reason for gratitude and rejoicing; this is a theme that will afford infinite delight to every benevolent and liberal mind, whether the event in contemplation be considered as the source of present enjoyment or the parent of future happiness; and we shall have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves on the lot which Providence has assigned us, whether we view it in a natural, a political or moral point of light."

General George Washington, Circular Letter to the Governors of the States, June 8, 1783.

Also, please note that John Jay, in Federalist Paper #2 invoked "Providence" three times.  

It goes infinitely beyond absurd to posit: "As a purely theological concept it was a Puritan notion not shared by other Protestants..." or "it was specifically rejected by the 18th century Deists who were among our Founders."

It always amazes me when apparently intelligent people sieze upon the "Deism cliche" when it really doesn't matter what the "Founding Fathers" believed at all.  They were savvy and intelligent enough to know that from a public relations standpoint they needed to frame all of their speech, writings and deeds in terms that would resonate with "The People," lest the fragile nascent alliances between states that became this nation be injured.  The People had to have been almost universally very much in tune and in faith with the concept of Divine Providence or the concept would not have been so quickly invoked by our Founding Fathers.

I'm pulling two quotes with which I wholeheartedly agree from my archives.  Here they are:

"Let me emphasize here that the restrictionists of Congress do not claim that the `Nordic' race, or even the Anglo-Saxon race, is the best race in the world. Let us concede, in all fairness that the Czech is a more sturdy laborer...that the Jew is the best businessman in the world, and that the Italian has...a spiritual exaltation and an artistic creative sense which the Nordic rarely attains. Nordics need not be vain about their own qualifications. It well behooves them to be humble.

"What we do claim is that the northern European and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But... [t]hey came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. They added to it, they often enriched it, but they did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it.

"We are determined that they shall not...It is a good country. It suits us. And what we assert is that we are not going to surrender it to somebody else or allow other people, no matter what their merits, to make it something different. If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves." [Representative William N. Vaile of Colorado, Cong. Rec., April 8, 1924, 5922]

"American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by people who had a background of self-government. New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration. It would lie well to make such immigration of a selective nature with some inspection at the source, and based either on a prior census or upon the record of naturalization. Either method would insure the admission of those with the largest capacity and best intention of becoming citizens. I am convinced that our present economic and social conditions warrant a limitation of those to be admitted. We should find additional safety in a law requiring the immediate registration of all aliens. Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America."

[President Calvin Coolidge, 1923 State of the Union Address]

I happen to love the America that my ancestors conceptualized, then fought, bled and died to create.  If Political Correctness stands in the way of my having a voice in keeping it, by squelching my birthright obligation to defend its origins in speech, in writing and sometimes even in thought, then it truly is a disease that needs to be killed just as surely as the Immigration Act of 1965 does.

The Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 were intended to preserve the America that most Americans understood at the time to be "theirs."  Yes, there have been many who have painted them as bigoted and racist, but it has been exclusively for the promotion of their own agendas that would weaken our sovereignty, ethos or culture.

Americans in the majority have the right to protest, to organize and to stop our government from fundamentally changing the nature of our culture, or allowing there it to be fundamentally changed through neglect or co-option, without regard for the yelps and whines of those in the minority whether they be actual minorities or privileged elites.

I truly fear that there are already too many here who have the privilege of citizenship, but lack a deep awareness of what it really means to be an American. The easiest way to spot them is that they prattle endlessly about Emma Lazarus' words as if she were a Founding Father. To me, it doesn't matter where they were born at all.