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Heating Up the Melting Pot
| Article
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20624 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
2,083 Words |
| Author
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Charles B. Keely
Charles B. Keely holds the Donald G. Herzberg Chair in
International Migration with joint appointments in the
department of demography and the Center for Immigration Policy
and Refugee Assistance at Georgetown University. |
Americans have always been of two minds about immigration. Ben Franklin wondered whether Pennsylvania's colonial legislature would require translators so that the English and German speakers could understand one another. Oliver Wendell Holmes confidently asserted: "We are the Romans of the modern world, the great assimilating people". Quotations from the founders and cultural icons can be assembled on both sides of the scales and the outcomes would be a balance of opinion.
A new round in a debate as old as, and one might add as integral to, the Republic may be heating up. To both the delight and discomfort of conservatives, depending on their opinions, the National Review in its June 22 issue ran a 16-page, double-column article by Peter Brimelow, a senior editor at Forbes, advocating a reduction of and change of composition in immigration. His basic thesis is that culture counts and the number and origin of today's immigrants to American are arguably about to overwhelm assimilative capacity. Immigration, in short, is changing American fundamentals. That is not good and Americans do not have to stand for it. It is necessary to get beyond the "sacred liberal taboos" about ethnicity and race to raise questions about immigration policy and not fear labels or racism or bigotry, he urges.
Brimelow's article, as its venue would suggest, is aimed primarily at conservatives. Its length is read by some as perhaps endorsement by the editors, if not of Brimelow's arguments, then of the salience of his issue for the country and for the Republican Party. Correctly reading such signs may require powers not bestowed on most mortals. Does publication is late June in the political summer of party conventions reduce the importance of both its length and venue?
Questioning Brimelow
Unfortunately for American conservatives, Brimelow's article is historically, legally, and logically flawed in small and large ways. Many corrections are needed if serious discussion is to follow. On a minor note, for example, Brimelow claims that the record immigration for one decade was 8.7 million between 1901 and 1910. It was about 10.1 million in the decade before World War I (1905-14). It is only a 15 percent error, but it does affect his discussion of the absolute size and relative impact of immigration flows in the country's history. He repeats conventional wisdom about a "Great Lull" in immigration from 1924 to 1965. Like so many, he ignores the big switch that America pulled 20 years before the Europeans discovered guest workers. In 1942, the United
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