Immigration: The Savior or End of America?
America is a nation of immigrants. It was built on wave after wave of immigrants coming to America, fleeing the government suppression imposed on them by monarchies and dictatorships or the inability to escape a society built on “class” to come to a country where embraced the concepts of human rights, democracy, capitalism, civil rights, and equal opportunity.
These values were so radical at the time and remain so radical, that many people around the world and even within America cannot embrace them. So, for example, many of the concepts above applied only to white men in early America, because the concepts were simply too radical for many people to believe they should apply to all humans. But slowly and often grudgingly our country has engaged in social, economic, political and in some instance military conflict to bring about those core values and to incorporate them into the laws of our nation.
Being a nation forged in war comprised of people from many different countries, with different religions, and different cultures, we had to develop something that would define us as a “nation” or distinct “people”. So, when we pledge allegiance to the flag and we get to the part where we repeat “to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, we understand what that means and we mean what it says.
Our country has struggled with “integration” since it first came into being. We struggled with religious integration, racial integration, ethnic integration, gender integration, and immigrant integration in order to make the words true… “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. And we continue to struggle to make that statement true. Millions of Americans have died to make that true. At every step, there were “identity groups” opposed to integration, men who did not want to share the right to vote with women. Whites who did not want slaves to enjoy the same human rights. Citizens who opposed the right of gay people to marry. And progressive liberals who believe the country is comprised of distinct social/racial identity groups rather than one nation.
In other words, there is a chasm of difference between fighting discrimination to realize “the dream” of “one nation” and incorporating division by labeling every citizen as a member of a distinct identity group and then trying to administer society based on these different “nations” within the borders of a country. Diversity, equity, and inclusion should be the product of integration and not separatism.
So, how does any of this relate to immigration? Because of the low fertility rate of around 1.8 births per woman in the US, the US is going to increasingly rely on immigration to sustain its population. Without immigration, the country will experience the population collapse that many other countries are going through. But without “integration” the country will self-destruct as competing identity groups struggle for power in a divided country… no longer “one nation”, but many competing nations. Without integration, the future will be marked by “civil war”.
Many progressive liberals today do not understand the “neo-Marxist” ideology that underlies their believes or that the same ideology dictates an eventual civil war between the “oppressed” and “oppressors”. They don’t understand that the civil war only ends when one identity group rises above all others and imposes an authoritarian regime. That authoritarian regime is supported by “the party” comprised of leaders of the identity group that triumphed as a result of the civil war. That is how it always ends.
So, while the US needs immigration, without integration we are doomed. Immigration means we reject any attempt to impose an “equity” standard based on race, gender, or any other identity group identification and we prosecute any business, educational, or governmental entity that discriminates against some because the belong to an identity group. Hopefully, identity group discriminatory DEI is out, and equal opportunity is in. Because we are going to need to integrate millions of people over the next few decades, rather than promote them as belonging to distinct and separate identity groups and reward some groups over others.
At the educational level, we need to bring back citizenship to public education. We need to teach every child, that America’s history is their history. It is fine for people to want to understand their past out of curiosity but moving forward we need to see ourselves as “one nation” and our educational system needs to support that goal. What gives America a better chance than other countries of pulling off this incredibly difficult challenge is that we are a nation founded on values and not ethnicity.
It is almost impossible for nations like China, Japan, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, etc., whose history is closely linked to an ethnicity to embrace the integration needed to survive in a world with is experiencing a population implosion. But the US can survive, if it abandons the divisiveness of neo-Marxist ideology and embraces integration. MLK’s vision is the vision America needs to embrace; and Malcolm X’s vision is the vision America needs to reject.
Only an “integration” grounded belief system can survive the immigration needed to move ahead in the future. An identity group belief system means everyone loses (even the eventual “winner”). As America struggles to determine what its immigration policy should be, it needs to figure out what it’s integration strategy will be.
