America's False Creed

Why America Cannot Be a Nation of Immigrants 

It’s more than plausible this was entirely written by the Anti-Defamation League.

 Almost all of our political leaders believe as a matter of faith, or feel compelled to publicly profess, that America is a "nation of immigrants," as even President Trump has alleged. President Obama before him cited America's history as a "nation of immigrants" as "a source of our strength", as did George W. Bush before him.

The phrase "nation of immigrants" is rhetoric, but rhetoric matters. This phrase is tossed around casually today, and it looms as the unchallenged premise of every national debate over immigration, as if it were a foundational tenet of Americanism.   

In fact, John F. Kennedy himself helped to propagate the “nation of immigrants” creed when he literally wrote, or at least put his name to, a book called A Nation of Immigrants, written in 1958 and published posthumously in 1964 through the Anti-Defamation League. The fiftieth anniversary edition features a foreword by ADL chief Abraham Foxman, which notes the ADL “reached out to the junior senator from Massachusetts in 1957 to highlight the contribution of immigrants . . .”, thus leading to a remarkable piece of propaganda imbued with the Kennedy mythos.

Kennedy begins A Nation of Immigrants with a digression on Alexis De Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who studied and chronicled the institutions of the new American nation. Tocqueville found that the immigrants drawn to America’s shores were stifled by the rigid class structure and hardship of their former homelands (“The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune,” he wrote) and were thus naturally suited to the revolutionary equalitarian spirit of American democracy. As Kennedy describes it:

What Alexis de Tocqueville saw in America was a society of immigrants, each of whom had begun life anew, on an equal footing. This was the secret of America: a nation of people with the fresh memory of old traditions who dared to explore new frontiers, people eager to build lives for themselves in a spacious society that did not restrict their freedom of choice or action.

Nation of Immigrants, p. 2.

The romantic view of immigrant virtue persists to this day. It is worth understanding the consequences of defining ourselves this way as a nation. The “nation of immigrants” creed espoused by our political leaders and many Americans would have been regarded, in a saner time, as a source of weakness and conflict.

François-René de Chateaubriand

About forty years prior to Tocqueville, another French aristocrat named François-René de Chateaubriand  came to the United States after fleeing the French Revolution. His journey transformed into a grand tour of the fledgling nation with the young Frenchman, then only in his mid-twenties, briefly meeting George Washington. 

 Having witnessed the violent beginnings of the Revolution in his home country, where people were turning on one another and tearing society to pieces, he understood the importance of social cohesion and trust, and the fragility of the social order. In 1813, writing what would become his autobiography, he reflected on what he observed firsthand of Americans. He concluded that Americans were a transient people that had not yet forged a real sense of their own national identity. His dismal conclusion was that they would never gain the capacity for a permanent society: 

What's more, it is difficult to create a Homeland from States which have no community rooted in religion or material interests, which have arisen from different sources at different times, and which survive on different soils and under different suns. What connection is there between a Frenchman from Louisiana, a Spaniard from the Floridas, a German from New York, and an Englishman from New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, or Georgia - all of whom are reputed to be Americans? One is a frivolous duelist; one a proud and lazy Catholic; one a Lutheran farmer who owns no slaves; one a Puritan merchant. How many centuries will it take to render these elements homogeneous! . . . In sum, the United States give the impression of being a colony, not a mother country: they have no past, and their mores are not a result of their laws . . . Anything resembling a permanent society appears to be impracticable among them . . . The American seems to have inherited from Columbus the mission to discover new worlds rather than create them.

 Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, p. 339, Transl. by  Alex Andriesse. New York Review Books, 2018.

  It would be easy to dismiss this observation as the snobbish comments of a French aristocrat. After all, the United States is and has been a permanent society. It's still here! America is the most powerful nation in the world.   

 Except Chateaubriand was remarkably prescient about the cultural dynamics of the American people. He wrote elsewhere in his Memoirs that the cultural heterogeneity between the different regions of the U.S. and their diverging economic interests would lead to civil war. A half century later he was proven correct.

 His indictment is not a prediction that the American government would fall and the nation would vanish from the Earth. Rather, his argument was that even in the 18th century, America was at risk of becoming a nation that exists for the world, rather than a nation that exists for a people. If one considers the current predicament of the United States, he put his finger on one of the most intractable problems we face. 

 To put it into the terms of current politics, he was warning that a "nation of immigrants" cannot last. Multiculturalism is a flaw, not a strength. His observation catches your attention because it is truer today than when he was writing hundreds of years ago. What connection, he asks, is there between a Catholic from Louisiana, a German from New York, and an Englishman from New England? More than there is between a Somali Muslim who now calls Michigan home, an American Indian from Guatemala who cannot even speak Spanish now living in Texas, and a Hindu from India here on a long-expired visa to fill an internet technology job, who's now a "New Yorker". 

  America is at the disposal of the world, and more of a colony today than at the turn of the 18th century. It is a collection of strangers more than a home for anybody in particular. A nation of immigrants is the antithesis of a permanent society.

 Chateaubriand's critique is that a "homeland", a country which commands the natural love and loyalty of its people, must have a common culture, at least to the extent its inhabitants share more with their fellow countrymen in the way of manners, language, religion, habits, and economic interests than they do with people who are foreigners. Yet today we are constantly told America is and ought only to be defined by its heterogeneity, by being open to and composed of people from elsewhere. 

 Chateaubriand foresaw the internal contradictions of what has become America's unofficial national creed: "a nation of immigrants". Under such a view, everyone has a right to come to freedom's shore because America belongs to the world, not to its people.

 If America belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. If a Chinese rice farmer, an Afghani tribesman, and a Congolese soldier are all a plane ride, boat trip, and a piece of paper away from being an American, then there is no such thing as an "American".   

 More than a decade ago the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published a comprehensive national study on diversity's effect on social trust and, by extension, democracy. Putnam became famous in the early nineties for his study of Italian society titled "Making Democracy Work," in which he argued that the social connections of a community, a concept he coined "social capital", is key to maintaining democratic institutions. In a sense he is echoing Tocqueville's observations in the 19th Century concerning the American capacity for voluntary associations. A high trust society is essential for functioning self-government. 

 Putnam's 2007 paper continued to look at the concept of social capital, but this time examining in particular the effects of diversity. He found, in short, that "immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital." Diversity is not a strength. This is in essence Chateaubriand's critique, backed up by data (though Chateaubriand would not have been an advocate of democracy). 

 Diversity undermines the social connections and trust that makes self-government possible. Interestingly, according to Putnam diversity (and by extension immigration) breaks down trust not just between groups, between immigrant and native born, but also within groups. His results showed that "in-group trust, too, is lower in more diverse settings. . . In other words, in more diverse settings, Americans distrust not merely people who do not look like them, but even people who do." He concludes that "Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation." Putnam's findings cannot be explained away by the race card: 

 Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century, Scandinavian Political Studies, p. 150-151.

 While this conclusion may seem counter-intuitive, one sees it all around. Consider why a society that once celebrated Christmas, or once proudly displayed a creche in a town square, now timidly offers the generic and sterile "happy holidays". Diversity is the antithesis of authentic culture, and thus of the collective life of a community. 

 While the media pushes a narrative that there is a rise in "white supremacism" and nativism, there is a real epidemic of loneliness plaguing the country. If one were to take the challenge of diversity seriously and not simply opportunistically, this is precisely what one would expect: atomization and the loss of community. 

 A recent study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology confirms a similar phenomenon of social disintegration. It found that when white liberals read about the concept of "white privilege," and are then exposed to the plight of a poor white person or a poor black person, being exposed to the concept of "white privilege" does not increase their sympathy for the black person or any minority group, but only decreases their sympathy for poor whites. Perhaps this helps explain California's conspicuous solicitude for illegal immigrants, while the streets of their major cities are choked with the homeless, broken, drug-addicted and forgotten men and women of America's most progressive state. 

 While Putnam may be correct that diversity in and of itself does not create ethnic or racial conflict, it does not follow that Americans will not oppose mass immigration for what it is, a source of social disintegration. Many unjustly maligned Americans can and do understand the problem of open borders and unchecked immigration, not because of an irrational ethnic hostility, but because they see its consequences.  

 The Siren's Song of Assimilation

 Putnam's solution, not based upon the data but upon his own political and moral convictions, is that in the long term, diversity can be a positive once the nation forges a new identity, a new concept of "we". 

 He cites America's success in welcoming previous generations of immigrants in the early 20th Century as proof that eventually assimilation and intermarriage will dissolve the lines of separation and create a new and broader concept of American identity. Heterogeneity is a strength because over the long term heterogeneous societies becomes homogeneous. As Kennedy put it, “the very problems of adjustment and assimilation presented a challenge to the American idea - a challenge which subjected that idea to stern testing and eventually brought out the best qualities in American society.” Nation of Immigrants, p. 35.

 To state the obvious, why should Americans accept a new "we" at all? What is the justification for forcing a nation of people to accept a different and broader identity, to be remade from without by different cultures? 

 Poverty is not a recent historical phenomenon. Yet far too many of today's recent immigrants, in contrast to previous generations who sought a better life, have illegally crossed the border or overstayed a visa. Under such circumstances, we are unwittingly selecting newcomers with particular traits: we are selecting for those who violate the social order and trust of our society, who lack the traits of self-control and delayed gratification that are marks of success in an advanced first-world society. It is hard to imagine their "assimilation" making us stronger as a nation. 

 There is something radical and anti-democratic in telling the American people that our society will be allowed to flourish again, hopefully, once it is remade into a fundamentally different people and culture. 

 Even if one accepts the premise that we must forge a new American identity through assimilation, history does not bode well for such an outcome this time around. The late 19th century and early 20th century wave of immigration to the United States consisted of Europeans culturally and ethnically closer to the native population, especially in comparison to the waves of third world immigration arriving today. Additionally, that period of immigration was followed by nearly a half-century pause in immigration until 1965, coupled with an actual spike in emigration, as many newcomers returned to their countries of origins.

 As long as the "nation of immigrants" remains a creed of politically correct belief, or to put it more cynically, as long as most immigrants remain a loyal client class of leftist politicians, there is no prospect on the horizon of even temporarily slowing the flow of migrants to America in order to assimilate them. 

 If the spigot of immigration is always on, then the long term social disintegration will only get worse. Immigration will remain a centrifugal force in a society. 

 Assimilating into What? 

 Additionally, there is no appetite among America's ruling class for creating a "we", especially not when immigrants are a protected class whose political loyalty is largely monolithic.  

 Political liberals (and most conservatives) believe everyone in the world has a right to become an American, as long as they "assimilate". Just show up, by plane, bus, boat, or on foot, and become a part of the American dream. Yet once here, no immigrant or immigrant's son or daughter desires to be simply an American ever again. Doing so, in the current legal and political landscape would be against their immediate interests. Contra Kennedy and Tocqueville, no immigrant today simply wants an “equal footing.” Embracing an American identity, despite how critical this assimilation is to a high trust democratic society over the long term, gives an individual no immediate political or social advantage.  

 Today more than ever, and certainly more than when Putnam performed his study in the year 2000, immigrants are taught by the media and political leaders that it is their identity as immigrants, as latinos, Africans, Indians, et cetera, as hyphenated non-white Americans, that grants them protected status legally, and privileged status politically and socially. 

 As far as the immigrants themselves, one cannot entirely blame them for acting rationally in their own interests, but one can blame our political leadership. There is very little in our national discourse that invites or expects any newcomer to the United States to assimilate into its culture, much less to find anything of value in its history, institutions, and traditions. Recently, former vice-president Biden launched his presidential bid after supposedly being inspired to run in order to combat the worrying rise of white nationalism. Fellow old white guy and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders adopted a similar theme, and pledged to "go to war against white nationalism". Robert "Beto" O'Rourke has called the president a white supremacist, a refrain heard from almost every major Democratic presidential candidate as well as members of the Democratic party leadership. 

 Thus, immigrants learn that their political representation is directly antagonistic to perceived "white" social and political power. They are united not by any shared American identity, but by this shared political project of white scapegoating. 

 Yet, we are told, remaining a "nation of immigrants" is our strength. 

 Chateaubriand predicted that America was in danger of becoming a colony of the world instead of an actual nation, a reality that is now coming to pass before our eyes. If the creed of a "nation of immigrants" requires us to sacrifice the social bonds of community that make life meaningful and self-government possible, it cannot be an American creed. America can either choose to be a permanent society, an actual nation, or forever a colony, forever a "nation of immigrants." It cannot be both.