The First World is staggering under its current burdens, many of which arise due to uncontrolled migration from the Third World. That flood and its consequences have intellectual as well as political implications. One arises from the notion buried in the title of this piece.
The United States experienced a previous large increment to its population: the immigrant tide of the late Nineteenth / early Twentieth Centuries. The overwhelming majority of those immigrants were from European nations. While they retained some of the customs (and languages) of their origins, they integrated into American life relatively smoothly. They became law-abiding and productive citizens of their new nation.
The contrast between the immigrants of that earlier wave and those of today could not be starker.
This has caused several commentators to question the old proposition of the U.S. as a “melting pot.” We saw those newcomers from other lands as ingredients to a national stew. The ultimate flavor would be American, if perhaps a bit lumpy in texture. And for a while, the proposition seemed to hold true.
But the immigrants of the late Twentieth / early Twenty-First Centuries aren’t “melting.” Indeed, some strive to create exclaves that are inhospitable toward those not of their origin or creed. Those immigrants have no intention of becoming Americans in the sense that applied to the earlier immigrant tide.
There is considerable evidence that the “melting pot” proposition had a more limited scope than our forebears imagined. Specifically, it’s now contended that there are “unmeltable ethnics” who cannot accept the American way of life or its overarching principles. The contention appears to be gaining adherents. Yes, I’m one.
We’ve had insular sub-populations before this. American Indians tend to keep a certain distance from the main currents of American life and thought. American Jews tend to have a reserve about them, as well. And of course we have histories of such social experiments as the Oneida Community and Robert Owen’s experiment with socialism. Those sociocultural islands stood somewhat apart from the broader American society, but they weren’t hostile to it.
What’s before us today is quite a bit different. Significant numbers of recent immigrants are actively opposed to one or more essential American ideas. Some of the newcomers dispute American sovereignty or its jurisdiction over its lands. Others openly propose to “transform” the nation into something patriotic Americans of other creeds would find repugnant.
If the “melting pot” is incapable of dealing with such “unmeltables,” we have a duty to face it without flinching from its implications. Some point to the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act as the genesis of our troubles. They have a point. Before that, our immigration system openly strove to maintain a national ethnic balance that resembles that of the early Republic. We knew from experience that persons from certain nations would “melt,” because their forebears already had.
Yet as I wrote the above, it occurred to me that even the earlier immigration scheme would be of questionable value today. What constitutes a Briton in 2026? What constitutes a Frenchman, or an Italian? What constitutes a Swede, a Finn, or a Norwegian? Those nations have undergone their own sociocultural convulsions due to unmanaged immigration. That some of the immigrants were never legally admitted is only partly to blame.
Public policy must change, to be sure, but that’s not the whole of the matter. We must also undertake the examination of questions many have long believed were “settled.” One of those, perhaps the most painful, is about national identity and to what it couples most closely:
- What defines a nation?
- Does the answer tell us anything critical about these United States?
- What does it mean to be an American? Is more involved than just geography?
- What are the requirements for becoming an American?
- Which other populations meet those requirements, and which do not?
Food for thought and more.
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