Immigration and Anti-Americanism

Immigration is a phenomenon that contrasts with the stark disdain both progressives and conservatives have shown for America in recent years. Immigration is a stubborn fact of American history that challenges both perspectives.

Progressive circles embrace an outward ridicule of the United States that immigrants falsify with their feet. Migrants leave everything and travel thousands of miles based on rational understandings about where they and their families will best flourish. The overwhelming choice of people of all races, including people of color, is to come to America. Yet the progressive worldview is that systemic racism in this country holds these people back. Do Nigerian immigrants find a society so rigged against folks with dark complexions that it doesn’t even make sense to come here? Are they writing home to their cousins saying: “Stay away. It’s horrible. The police are intractably racist. Black people cannot get ahead here?” Or are they writing: “OMG America is fantastic! You’ve got to come here at the first opportunity if you want a chance for a better life?” Immigration flows demonstrate it’s the latter.

Conservative circles embrace outward symbols of America while, in recent years, increasingly oppose the very essence of America. To be anti-immigrant is the most pure form of being anti-American, because it directly attacks the very lifeblood that has made us great and exceptional. This identitarian worldview longs for the cultural and racial homogeneity of Western Europe without realizing that such social uniformity is precisely what keeps Western Europe mediocre. Diversity is the source of our dynamism. Competition among communities keeps us climbing. The melting pot of immigration is America’s true national identity.

Immigration is thus the real world knocking on our door. Will progressives and conservatives wake up from their ideological slumbers at the sound of our GDP trying to grow?

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.