Immigration, Part I

To suggest that illegal immigration is a touchy subject in America would be a pitiful understatement. Some analysts have gone so far as to say that illegal immigration and border security will prove to rank as the central issues in this year’s election. Politicians in Washington will testify that rarely have they seen such a tidal wave of protests coming in from their constituents as they did last Spring, when a highly controversial bill that would have legalized millions of illegal immigrants was killed at the last minute. Congressional phone lines were flooded in the wake of Congress' slapdash attempt at “comprehensive immigration reform.” The prospect of a lax immigration bill actually becoming law, derided by opponents as a “pathway-to-amnesty,” struck a hitherto overlooked and exposed nerve of the American people, not unlike the sharp pain of a newly discovered, throbbing cavity in the back molar. The intensity of the shock stunned the DC and media establishment. Attempts by legislators to scuttle the bill through passage sans debate or serious challenges smacked of a new “corrupt bargain” and only served to infuriate Americans even further. We were angry. Across the political spectrum, Americans rejected what they saw as camouflaged amnesty. Votes in favor of the bill started to flake away, as legislators recoiled from the political albatross the bill represented. A bruised Congress decided it was best to kick the legislative can down the road and leave it for another day. But the issue has hardly gone away. We’re still angry.

Supporters of the bill frequently resorted to an old attack plan to undermine the opposition. Their argument was, quite frankly, a sanctimonious and unfair generalization of the opposing view. The generalization implied that those opposed to the bill were somehow guilty of borderline xenophobia and perhaps even veiled racism. Yep, that’s all there is to it: either you are compassionate and support the plight of immigrants who after all, are just trying to “live the American dream” or you are a heartless, and perhaps racist, cad. It’s as simple as that. Discussion over.

But the immigration debate introduces a slew of wide-ranging questions that reach down to the very depths of our cultural identity as a nation. This one should require, even demand, some soul-searching at the national level. The sound-bite culture spawned by the mainstream media has little patience for the serious discussion of stubborn minutiae like culture and identity. Acrimony, traded back and forth in the guise of attention-grabbing headlines, sells far better than philosophy.

So if we want to get to the heart of the matter regarding the illegal immigration debate, the first order of business is to cut through the static of the oft-repeated catch-phrases like, “workers in the shadows” and “compassion” and talk seriously about assimilation. The question is this: Should immigrants to the United States be expected to assimilate to American society and culture? The relevance of assimilation has been woefully overlooked by politicians and pundits who are far too pre-occupied with corralling a new constituency of victims (Democrats) or the forging of a domestic legacy (President Bush).