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Assimilation and Skeptics

By Robert Stacy McCain on 1.23.09 @ 12:21PM

J.P., I didn't mean to start a flame war between you and Kathy Shaidle, or to provoke a discussion of immigration politics. On the other hand, this sentence of yours is provocative:

That's not what immigration skeptics are concerned about though -- it can't be, because of the way that people have historically assimilated in the U.S. and that first generations always have trouble leaning the language.

Assimilation has occurred historically under conditions much different than conditions that now exist in much of America. It seems obvious that, as a general rule, there would be less assimilation where the natives-to-immigrants ratio is lower, and where new arrivals are constantly replenishing the pool of the unassimilated.

If we are going to compare anecdotes, I'll match your Vietnamese barber with my childhood friend Andy Marquez. Andy is Puerto Rican, but there was no "Puerto Rican community" in Douglas County, Ga., and so he was just another kid in our Scout troops and on our baseball teams. Nobody thought of Andy as any different than anyone else.

But what would the situation have been if one-third of the kids in our school had been Hispanic? Would there have been an undertow of group solidarity to inhibit Andy's assimilation? Would the presence of a larger group of Hispanics have created more possibilities of ethnic conflict and friction?

Many people use "assimilation" in the same way that a magician uses "hocus pocus" -- a ritual incantation of supposedly magical power. But assimilation doesn't occur magically, and it seems to me that our current immigration policy tends to hinder, rather than encourage, assimilation. Adding amnesty and "guest workers" is a step in the wrong direction.

View all comments (31) | Leave a comment

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 1:11PM

Americans and the English are two peoples separated by the same language.
it is so nice not to have to talk to hispanics who dont speak English. talk is so cheap in the age of the chittering, maddening crowd.

familiarity and contempt are one and the same. silence isnt merely golden, it is all that is good.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 1:36PM

...so the Tower of Babble isn't so bad if you consider we don't have to hear what those who don't speak the same language as us are saying.

J. Peter Freire| 1.23.09 @ 1:44PM

Sure you didn't, Stacy. SUUUURE you didn't mean to initiate the flame war.

In context, that sentence is far less provocative. Pressing 1 is a symptom. I agree that a guest worker program that creates a permanent immigrant underclass (as with Turkish in Germany) is a quixotic effort. Amnesty is a tough call -- expulsion by attrition simply doesn't seem practical to me because you're assuming that people will want to move once they see enforcement underway. What is an example of a country exporting an entire population over a short period of time? I don't mean to argue it reductio ad Hitlerium with that point -- I just don't know if that gets done peaceably ever.

Regarding your example, sure, the area becomes more Little Italy, and less midtown. Let's say that the school community is predominantly Hispanic. But the curriculum is focused on American history. If lessons are taught about Mexico, it's about its relationship with the U.S. I can think of worse things for schools to get up to.

J David| 1.23.09 @ 2:35PM

An Albuquerque TV news show broadcast a warning last week that Mexico might shortly be a failed state, and Mexican intelligence agencies have been warning for many months now that the government there is a hollow shell. We propped up a failing state for 8 years, allowing it stay afloat on currency, untaxed, flying out of our country, and on charity to a bribe-maintained narco-terrorist Bandito Nation. We didn't shut the border to all illegal human and drug trafficking, and we didn't build the MANDATED Border Fence Bill (George W Bush BROKE HIS OWN LAW). When that country becomes a "failed state" we will have to prop it up at enormous cost, and will certainly have to absorb it, economically, and will fail to do so culturally.

The Bandito Nations to the south LIVE on the bribe. Over 4000 people have been killed there in violence in the last two years, about as many soldiers as the US has lost since we went to the Middle East in 'o2. A majority are poorly educated, and our taxes will be going to foreign nationals, for "humanitarian" reasons. who never earned that money, and many of whom are actively breaking American laws.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 2:44PM

J. David,
that is one hell of a sobering post.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 2:52PM

these times make the '80s and '90s seem like a 4H Club picnic.

J David | 1.23.09 @ 2:58PM

Get ready to enter the draft lottery, and join the Obamunist's "National Security Force", especially after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed and gay soldiers are taking community showers with straight professions. You ain't seen trouble yet!

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 3:17PM

It sucks to live in a border state. Big time.

J David| 1.23.09 @ 4:02PM

[Should be]"... straight soldier-professionals..."

I'm about an hour from the invasion zone, where "New" Mexico will shortly once again become Mexico, but as a ward of Norte America. The "Reconquistas" will come in, backwards, to what they have been seeking for years. They are revolutionaries, from a country and a culture of violent revolutions...we are in for a wild ride.

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 4:34PM

It's been an E-Ticket ride living in California for a long time now and this wacky roller coaster is coming off the tracks . Will it help if I fasten my seat belt tighter?

J David| 1.23.09 @ 4:44PM

No, it won't help. Only getting off of the roller coaster will keep you from puking, but I'm not sure there is anywhere to get off of it now. Even states not directly affected by an international border will be profoundly affected by a collapse, and subsequent absorption of Mexico, and then other nations to directly follow. Those like R.S. McCain who laugh at those who believe in a movement toward a One World Government are going to wake up one morning, turn on the TV and blow coffee out their noses at the announcement that the entire North and South Americas are essentially one country, with a common currency and a single trade language(which is already true, to a degree), and that we have become a Euro-style bloc-nation.

J David| 1.23.09 @ 4:49PM

I used to live in Californication, and my brother still has a residence there, but I saw that it was too expensive to make it there way back in '87, and left, never to return. Californication is about to " reap the whirlwind", and I'm glad I'm not there.

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 4:53PM

J David, thanks so much for your sweetness and light. Much appreciated. Don't think you're safe, though; California is just first--then the rest of the country follows.

BJC| 1.23.09 @ 5:13PM

Bravo to "The Other McCain" for bringing up these points! And I'd like to discuss a couple of these codewords. First, I'd view JPF's claims of fair-mindedness and good faith with less of a jaundiced eye if he'd abandon the term "nativist" when referring to those of us over here on the E. Pluribus Unum side of the immigration argument. "Nativist" is the dismissive label the Wall Street Journal and associates use with curled-lip sneers for those of us who believe there's more to our country than a physical place where people can make money. There really isn't in current parlance an accurate and fair descriptive term for our side, which demonstrates how steeped in falsehoods and imbalances the immigration debate is.

Second, I believe the word "assimilation" is useless nowadays, as RSM notes. It seems to be a passive term for what used to occur mostly on its own as new immigrants really got to know and appreciate those citizens already here. But there is a somewhat-dated term, still surprisingly in use by a few civic and volunteer organizations I've worked with -- and in my estimate quite useful -- and that's "Americanism." As talk radio pioneer Barry Farber often states, the U.S. of A. is the only country you can go to and become identified as its citizen -- you can become an American here, in a way you'll never be French in France or Pakistani in Pakistan. These civic organizations had (and some still do have) "Americanism" programs offered freely to new immigrants alongside existing citizens, to promote education and greater understanding of the foundational principles guiding our nation. But these were (and are) active programs but are surely disdained and surely at times even thwarted by the ingrained multicultural relativism revered by Leftists keen on keeping people segregated into ethnic blocs, which are easier to manipulate politically than a healthy citizenry of individuals engaging in the hurly-burly of one-to-one democratic debate and action.

Kathy Shaidle| 1.23.09 @ 7:07PM

JPF,

You're totally kidding, right??

Violating Godwin's Law is bad enough, but -- you do know that the Jews expelled from Germany were, like, legally GERMAN CITIZENS, right?

Not to mention often a) decorated war vets and b) among the highest IQ, most productive German citizens?

Please elaborate on their similarity to non-citizen, Mexican lawbreakers with low literacy who've contributed far less to US society than they've stolen?

Jeremiah| 1.23.09 @ 7:57PM

Kathy --

Your posts are insolent and vile. Get religion, woman.

There are reasonable people who disagree on immigration. I myself lean heavily towards mercy for people who have endured a life of low-paid toil and hardship, but I understand those who insist the integrity of our laws requires us to respond to illegal immigration.

Your posts are simply hateful and ignorant.

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 8:31PM

Kathy is not hateful or ignorant, Jeremiah. In fact I bet you she's very nice and very bright. She's just a realist who knows that all of the compassion in the world cannot feed, clothe and house every immigrant who wants to live in our fair country. We don't value our country, and when you don't value something you lose it; we are losing our country. Why don't you liberals see this, Jeremiah, why don't you care? All you do is viciously indict those of us who do. Where's your compassion?

Interloper| 1.23.09 @ 10:28PM

Kathy Shaidle does indeed appear to be a small-minded, uneducated and bigoted person. Her behavior has earned her enmity in her native Canada, including a lawsuit. She is published only at racist sites such as American Renaissance and VDare. It is not surprising that equally intellectually and morally deprived persons like her.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 10:32PM

Jeremiah's position contains more political schizophrenia than our living room in 1969. "i lean heavily to the tillie the toilers...but i understand our laws must be [dis] respected..." what vacillating, invertebrate twaddle. why come here, Jeremiah? to pick our brains?

the leftists say to me "oh, but hispanic women are so beautiful".
what those guys want from them is not a hard one to figure. "come to America, chiquita, and do me..."

everything is becoming so tawdry.

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 10:49PM

Intergroper should understand that the reason so many of us on the right regard liberals/stalinists and socialists/commies like him as traitors is because of his unrelenting hatred and bigotry for his fellow American citizens, his dogged belief that anyone who innocently disagrees with his beliefs is a vicious and hateful racist (or a kluxer as he routinely calls us). Intergroper detests all that is America and would be truly gratified to see mushroom clouds dwarfing any number of American cities. Would serve us right, wouldn't it Intergroper? Damn straight it would in your sick, twisted mind. You are a pathetic human being and I feel sorry for you.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 10:53PM

why don't the jeremiahs get it that this is a rightwing blog? we're supposed to be mean, not squishy & mushy.

we're not purple prancing plastic people.

that's from a song Jer. name it. let's see how much you know about music.

Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 10:57PM

the marketplace of ideas is segmented. so if you want gay nudist vegetarian anarcho-trotskyite blog, you tap your little fingers on the keyboard.

you want rightwing blog, then you get what you deserve. The Life You Ordered Has Arrived.

ruth| 1.23.09 @ 11:00PM

Alan, Intergroper is the nasty one, well nastier.

Alan Brooks| 1.24.09 @ 12:36AM

yeh but Jeremiah is smart than intergropen, Jerry knows better, Jer's more touchyfeely than Swaggart on viagra.
if only they had something new to say, but maybe they're saving it for their books? so they dump their platitudes on us? perhaps they want to sacrifice us for their social engineering fantasies?
we'll turn the tables.

Alan Brooks| 1.24.09 @ 12:47AM

just from experience, let this be a preliminary summation:

it's not their nastiness, it's their coyness. i grew up with these people!
Jeremiah is too smart not to know better than to preach what we can see right through... he's confused and subconsciously posts here to pick our brains-- everybody wants something.
why would a smart young guy like Jeremiah with better things to do comment at AS when the Jesse Jackson Rainbow Pushy Queer Site is up n running?

Jeremiah| 1.24.09 @ 1:05PM

Ruth et al --

Some of you people cannot fathom what it means to see the reasonableness and justice of an opinion you nevertheless cannot share.

I have listened to people on the immigration issue who obviously do NOT hold idiotic and racist opinions about hispanics or others, but who argue well that illegal immigration endangers this country.

I largely accept their arguments and respect them. I thought George W Bush, whom I supported very rarely, except as Dodgeball Player in Chief, for which I love the man, but honestly he seemed to combine in his policy respect and empathy for the hard lives of immigrants with an understanding that the law must be followed. For this he is to be commended.

It's not unlike my stance on the Palestinians, which is dominated by a firm belief in Israel's right to defend herself, but tempered by an moral insistance that Palestinians have tremendous and just grievances.

Some of you responding to my position on these matters seem incredulous that a person can sympathize with and even feel a certain amount of moral solidarity with aggrieved and oppressed people, while at the same time acknowledging the need to preserve order and security.

Jeremiah| 1.24.09 @ 1:07PM

As for the Harpy, come down from Canada, I've no use for her, anymore than I have use for a faction of skin-heads, or pleurisy, or plague, or cancer.

ruth| 1.24.09 @ 1:34PM

Alan, of course you're right about liberal guile. I know this; that's why I insult them. I see through their BS. Jeremiah, I don't dispute your contention that many immigrants' lives are difficult. I've been involved in chuch/community outreach programs all of my life and I've actually tried to make a difference. My point of contention with you is that you think you're compassionate by opening our borders to all. But you're not because your compassion is selective--why not accept EVERY person who wants to live here? Obviously this is impossible and will only destroy our country. I don't understand why you don't give a damn about your own country. How does it behoove you to lose your nation? Typical liberal, you call Kathy Shaidle a harpy but you cannot refute one point she's made. Not one. You and your ilk are the cancer--terminal cancer.

Jeremiah| 1.24.09 @ 2:08PM

Ruth --

I'll not refute a woman who simply gives racist opinions. She doesn't use reasonable argument, and her knowledge of this topic is non existent.

ruth| 1.24.09 @ 3:10PM

Jeremiah, whether you like it or not, Kathy is right. I live it and I do know the facts. You still haven't refuted one of her points, which makes you unreasonable and ignorant.