Ten Theses on Immigration

by Ross Douthat

Jan 13, 2016

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/ten-theses-on-immigration/?comments#permid=17216856:17216924

This article shows that anti-immigrant, and in many ways racist views are not restricted to the nut-cases in the GOP, like Trump and Cruz.

The argument by Mr. Douthat starts with the completely false premise that the "nation states" existing today constitute a racially, religiously and culturally homogeneous grouping of peoples going back to the beginning of history. Virtually every nation state in existence today is made up of very diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, many of which exhibiting themselves in intra-nation-state ethnic, religious, cultural, and thus political conflicts. The US itself is a prime example of such a nation state of very recent origin with a very diverse mixture of ethnic, religious and and cultural groups - and for the most part these diverse groups get along quite well - but for the purposeful, politically motivated fear-, distrust- and hate-mongering by "conservatives", many of whom claim to be devout Christians, of the catholic or evangelical variety.

In European nation-states this intermixing of ethnicity, religion and culture is, for the most part, further in the past, but such "mixing", integration and assimilation has been going on for 1000's of years.

If Spain is a homogeneous "nation-state", as Mr Douthat implicitly postulates, forming a bulwark for stability and national identity, then how do we understand the Catalan separatist movement?

Similarly, if Great Britain is a cohesive nation-state, with a cohesive ethnic, religious and cultural identity, what does the Scottish separatist movement tell us about the homogeneous nations-states so immutable and important to Mr Douthat.

Germany's history as a nations-state is in some ways even more recent than that of the US. Italy is a relatively recent addition to nation-states as well, and its history is testament to a huge melting of different ethnicities, religions and cultures.

It is certainly true that a large, uncontrolled influx of "foreigners" can cause huge strains on existing nations, and Germany specifically, and Europe more generally, is testament to that. The large influx into Germany of first Italian, then Greek, and most recently Turkish "guest workers", who ended up staying, have been integrated quite well - the Italians and Greeks have assimilated very well, to the point that German cities today would not be complete without their popular Italian and Greek restaurants; Turkish assimilation is still incomplete, but making progress, to the point where a number of prominent German MP's are of Turkish decent.

In Germany the primary opposition to "foreigners" is from the nationalistic, right-wing fanatics of PEGIDA and the constantly morphing and rightward drifting AfD. In the US this role is played by the Tea Party wing-nuts, for whom Mr. Douthat has now chosen to be a spokesperson and propagandist.