Comment by SpicyLemonZest
6 days ago
It does mean you need to pretend that. Reagan has a famous quote about it.
I mean, it's a free country, nobody can make you accept an idea you don't want to. But the nativist ideas you've adopted are not considered by most Americans to be acceptable. If you go around telling people that immigrants aren't real Americans, you will not be accepted even in many conservative circles. Even much of the Trump movement views nativists as useful dupes; the Vice President and Secretary of State, for example, clearly would not welcome your theories that their kin are diluting "the voice of Americans".
You are wrong. My ideas aren't "nativist", they are the mean feeling on this subject for 250 years in this country. It has taken a tremendous amount of effort to convince people that things like "borders", "state sovereignty", and "being discerning about who you let into the country" is bad, evil even. That's why you think you can throw around the word "nativist" as a pejorative. I don't like Ronald Reagan for many reasons, and I don't know which quote you are referring to (though I can venture a guess), so I'm not sure what the point of that appeal is. Like I said, if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine. But you won't get me to agree with you. If you want the country to be more left wing and increasing immigration gets you closer to that goal, just say that, it's cleaner.
There simply does not exist a substantial political movement of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations. It can't, because the vast majority of Americans do not satisfy this criterion. My own family is homegrown by any conceivable standard, but we've "only" been here for six generations, although perhaps we might go around telling people it's twelve if we didn't have the records.
And again, I'd really like you to consider the honesty of the people who've told you this is a thing. In your readings about this movement to protect the voices of people who've been here for a dozen generations, did they ever mention to you that the current President is a third-generation immigrant and the Secretary of State is second-generation? If not, why do you think they didn't?
I don’t understand your point. Is it that because Marco Rubio is Cuban I need to accept unlimited immigration, forever? This isn’t a position held by anyone in this administration, recent immigration history or not. My point is actually really narrow. The actual political movement with power and influence wishes to increase immigration to dilute the voice of the people already here, because the people already here do not vote in the way that the movement prefers and the immigrants do. Your condescending tone aside, I think it’s very easy to observe that my observation is correct because I can do things like “drive around my hometown” or “visit a major city” and the difference between today and, say, 1999 would make the conclusion obvious.
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> if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine.
That smacks of entitlement. Yes. I know that the other side of the argument also smacks of entitlement. But I believe I have the 14th amendment on my side.
Also, there are a lot of assumptions baked into your statement. If you think that everyone here who can trace their roots back "a dozen generations" has your ideals, well, I've got $24 worth of trinkets to sell you.
Conversely, if you think that everyone here who is newly immigrated does not share your ideals, well, I have more trinkets.
The Mythology of America that I bought into was that it was a welcoming place where you could re-invent yourself in a way that was rarely possible in the country your were leaving.
And yes. I know it's a mythology--with kernels of truth to it.
But you have your own Mythology--and I find it unpalatable, both to me and my immigrant parents.
Nothing I am saying conflicts with this mythology of yours. I think the part of mythology that does not get told often enough is that every instance of large scale immigration into this country has resulted in strife and violence. The Ellis island stories, for example, were largely embellished and were done so after the fact, and it took the Second World War to finally integrate the different groups that came here over the preceding decades. The problem I have with the immigration of today is that the levels of cultural distance are much, much higher than Ellis island. America is the only country in the world where people who do not live here and have no connection to it claim a positive right to enter. I don’t blame them for wanting to enter, and you should not blame me for having the disciple to say no.
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