Why I fear for America

I have never quite understood the argument of Mark Steyn and others, that birth-rates, demographics and immigration will destroy European civilisation and turn the continent into an Islamist state, therefore those of us that can had better prepare to emigrate to the USA. 

It seems that America has its own issues with immigration.   David Orland is very concerned for his country's future:

As a recent Heritage Foundation report observed, instead of 19 million immigrants, under the new law the US will receive 103 million, or the equivalent of one third of its present population. The Foundation’s report was confirmed by a separate impact analysis ordered by US Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

The amnesty question has so far sidelined the legal immigration debate. Worse, it has led critics of amnesty to seize upon legal immigration as a point of contrast, thereby implying that there’s nothing wrong with the latter’s present levels and sources. My personal view is that immigration to the US is already too high, that the country has embarked on a great experiment in multicultural nation-building without debate and with little or no thought given to the experiment’s long- and middle-term consequences – for population growth, for the environment, for public services, for wages, and for national identity.

Indeed, the great transformation is already afoot. A recent census bureau report showed that immigration plus differential birth rates are contributing to a population boom (70% of the growth in the nation’s birthrate is attributable to Hispanic women). Even before the Senate announced plans to regularize the status of the 10 to 20 million illegals in the country and more than double the number of legal immigrants, the US population was projected to grow [PDF file] from 293 million to over 419 million by 2050. All of that growth is the direct and indirect consequence of present immigration policy.

So just think what quintupling – or quadrupling or just doubling -- the annual number of legal immigrants will mean. Nations are not made in a day but they can – as the Senate is on the brink of showing us – be unmade in one.

It's not just 'right-wingers' who are concerned.  Mary Dejevsky,  the Independent columnist, draws similar conclusions:

In the Southwest United States, there is already a sense of a new Hispanic age. Something similar holds for the south of Florida. The everyday language is increasingly Spanish. And so -- to the discomfort of non-Hispanic Americans -- are the mores.

One of my earliest acquaintances with the new Hispanic face of the United States came in southern Florida, in districts where English was barely understood. In a supermarket, I watched as customers paid barely disguised back-handers to the staff behind the delicatessen counter to secure the best cuts of roast chicken at the price of the worst. The last time I had seen anything similarly flagrant was in the bad old Soviet Union.

This anecdote demonstrates the gradual shift in prevailing attitudes that takes place when large numbers of immigrants arrive in a country too quickly to be assimilated.  The dominant American culture, founded on northern European Protestantism and the Enlightenment is gradually giving way to the values and assumptions of Latin America.  Dejevsky continues:

But for the first time, the question is posed, as it never seriously was with previous migrations, of who will be absorbed by whom. Hispanics already constitute a majority in some districts. Nationally, they are well on the way to overtaking blacks as the largest minority, if they have not already done so. By 2060 -- this is a conservative estimate -- Hispanics will account for almost 30 percent of the population, and a majority in much of the Southwest. If there is a melting pot, chili peppers are replacing Thanksgiving turkey as the dominant flavor.

In the past, America has been able to absorb vast numbers of immigrants.  In the nineteenth century,  the huge empty continent could soak up any number of people.  There was land for everyone.  By the time the country had been fully settled,  American companies that had grown fat on a huge home market had started to conquer the world.  Economic growth replaced land as the promise of plenty for would-be migrants.  People kept coming, lured by the American dream of riches and opportunity that would be unknown in the rest of the world.  It was easy to get people to buy into the American dream when there was a clear material reward for doing so.

But what happens when America is no longer Top Nation?  The current increase in immigration is taking place at just the point in America's history when it faces the prospect of being overtaken economically by China.  Apart from a brief period during the Depression, when the rest of the world was in trouble too,  America has experienced almost constant growth since the country was founded.  The entire history of the USA is one of increasing its power relative to other countries.  It has no template for managing the sort of relative decline experienced by the European powers during the 20th century.  One of David Orland's readers, a South African expat, is pessimistic:

I recently visited the US [...], and even though it seems
a nice place, it feels like South Africa 30 or 40 years ago, a basically
European country prior to immense social and political changes. I think these immigration issues will weaken the US in the long run and probably cost it its world leadership.

According to China Confidential,  the country that will most likely displace America as Top Nation is planning a Fall-of-Rome style documentary on this very theme:

Production notes for the CCTV series, which is tentatively scheduled to air in 2007, are said to provide a revealing glimpse of how certain government officials see the US--namely, as a dying hegemon. The Chinese view is that a number of factors, including "structural" economic problems and imperial overstretch, are combining to end US global supremacy.

For example, the producers plan to devote at least one episode to the US immigration crisis and attempt to draw historical parallels between a commonly perceived cause of the fall of ancient Rome--unchecked immigration and invasions--and the flood of illegal immigrants pouring into the United States from Mexico and Latin America.

So as America starts to feel the twin pressures of high levels of immigration and unprecedented relative decline,  can the country hold together?  After the 7/7 bombings, Trevor Phillips commented on research by American sociologist John Logan:

When minority groups form over 20% of a city’s population, it becomes harder to reduce their isolation.  It will take all the ingenuity and skill of the leaderships of these new majority minority cities to arrest the trend towards separate and competing ethnic fiefdoms within their city walls.

Amongst America’s hyphenated identities, the part of their identity that marks them out as different seems to have become as important, even more important, than the part that binds them together. Americans have all fetched up at the same restaurant; but every group has its own separate table, with its own menu, its own waiters and its own way of paying the bill.

Is America,  with its multiple identities,  capable of withstanding the tensions caused by its decline.  It is easier to hold a multi-cultural society together when there is a promise of material reward greater than anywhere else in the world.  It becomes more difficult to maintain that cohesion when the USA is no longer the only show in town. 

By contrast,  the older and, for the moment, less ethnically diverse societies of Europe, have stronger and more deep rooted cultures.  For example, in Britain, we still have some of the sense of being one people that we had during the war.  There is still the perception of a predominant culture - even though many people feel that it is under attack.  British people are attached to their thousand-year history,  their monarchy and their ancient buildings.  Most have the sense that they could, if they wanted, trace a continuous ancestry back to the Domesday book. 

They are probably right. 91 percent of people in the UK still describe themselves as 'White British'.  One of the less publicised findings of Eddie Izzard's 'Mongrel Nation' series was that "Genetic research shows that the Y-chromosomes of the majority of British males are as ethnically Germanic as you can get."  In other words, we are still a remarkably homogeneous nation!

British people are also used to not being Top Nation and have come to terms with relative decline.  They are more accustomed to periods of economic hardship than the Americans.  The decline of the west and the rise of Asia will hit European countries hard but their cultures have deeper roots and they are therefore more likely to hold together under the pressure.  My guess is that the established cultures of Europe will prove more resilient in the long-term. 

America, by contrast, has never experienced decline before.  Just when the country needs a strong and cohesive culture to hold it together,  mass immigration threatens to undermine it.  Just when it has unprecedented mass immigration,  the glue that has held it together in the past,  economic superiority,  is starting to come unstuck. 

I hope that America does hold together but I fear that it may not if it dilutes its dominant culture too much.  That is why I am not rushing to take Steyn's advice and flee to the USA, even as a refugee from an Islamicised Europe.  Leaving NewArabia to go to New Bolivia hardly seems worth the bother.

Comments

[do]

Dejevsky: "Nationally, they are well on the way to overtaking blacks as the largest minority, if they have not already done so."

In fact, Hispanics officially overtook blacks as the nation's largest minority over three years ago:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/21/national/main537369.shtml

Dejevsky: "By 2060 -- this is a conservative estimate -- Hispanics will account for almost 30 percent of the population, and a majority in much of the Southwest."

A conservative estimate, indeed. Latest Census Bureau projections have Hispanics hitting the 30% mark sometime between around 2040. And that's not taking into account the huge bump in the Hispanic population that will result should the Congress pass Bush's immigration package: immediate legalization of 12-20 million illegal aliens (the vast majority of whom are Hispanic) and a 200 to 400% increase in annual legal immigration (the largest share of which comes from Mexico and central America).

So there is indeed good reason to worry about national identity, a point forcefully (and notoriously) made by Samuel Huntington two years ago:

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/001952.html
(unfortunately, the original Foreign Affairs piece is no longer available on line...)

Anyhow, thanks for the post. Need I mention that I approve of your analysis?

Best,

DO

[Alison]

Really interesting post Steve. Thanks.

Need to go through it all again so much interesting stuff here.

But my first impression on a visit to the US a few years back was shock at the cultural influence of immigration and relative third world like poverty i saw in some areas there.

Steyn has made a cottage industry out of his obvious europhobia. Which borders on outright hatred at times.

[Steve]

Alison, I can't say too many nasty things about him - he's just gone and given this post a plug on his web site!

[do]

As if all that weren't bad enough, it now seems illegals will be getting retroactive social security benefits for the period of their illegal employment. That is, if the US Senate gets its way:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005222.htm

do you have the link to the Steyn post, by the way?

[Michael Bains]

Challenging days, as usual.

[James G]

Great post, Steve, but there are some salient differences between what's happening in America and what's happening here in Europe.

I think one thing you may be overlooking, which I am becoming more and more aware of (and shocked by) as I read Bat Ye'or's Eurabia book:

Europe's framework of treaties and laws with other countries, namely within what is known as the Euro-Arab Dialogue (a group of European and Arab parliamentarians, including the UK's, acting on behalf of their respective governments and the EU), makes it impossible for a European host country to insist on assimilation or even learn the native language for people from Muslim countries. (Didja ever notice how it appears more difficult for English-speaking Antipodeans to stay in this country than for almost anyone from a Muslim country?) Since a declaration that was made by the EAD on 11 December 1978, it has literally made wholesale immigration from Muslim countries and the Islamification of European society force of law, by treaty.

I don't believe, exept for this immigrant amnesty, that there is any parallel in American law.

Also, what are the chances of me paying jizya to the New Bolivian government for me not becoming a Catholic? I suspect, if either scenario were to play out, there will be significant differences between a New Bolivia and a New Arabia. I'd rather be a Protestant or a Secularist in the states than to be one here in, say, fifty years time.

If you haven't noticed, even non-Muslim British women are beginning to wear headscarves to avoid harassment in some places...Wonder how far out we are from having de jure Sharia law instead of just de facto as it stands now, in some places?

[James G]

On another note, they had Robert Reich (one of Clinton's former labour secretaries) on Newsnight last night, and he said something that was quite refreshing to hear from any politician, but even more so, as he is about as far left as you can get in American mainstream politics:

He kept highlighting the effect of immigration on low-paid indigenous populations...

[Steve]

James, I thought this might bring you out to play!

You are right that there is no cause for complacency here but at the moment, most European countries are still much less 'multi-cultural' than the USA - a situation which, if it is maintained (and that's a big 'if') will give us strength in future.

The European issue is an interesting one. I have had a half-formed post in my head about this for some weeks now. The gap between what the European Commission is doing and what the people of Europe are worried about (i.e. Islamisation) shows just how out-of-touch the Commission is.

More on this later, I hope.

[Wolfie]

It may seem odd that a Republican American government is doing little to control immigration but I think that the strategy is clear. With a large trade deficit and foreign debt the only way out is twofold; firstly a devaluation of the dollar (a strategy we are just starting to see emerge) and secondly an influx of cheap non-unionised labour (to force down wage claims in the lower 30 percentile). For the average American this is a tragedy unfolding but for the uber-rich its a route to more obscene wealth. Its economic warfare and the low-waged of America are the cannon fodder.

[Guessedworker]

Fine post, Steve.

The fundamentals in the American situation are fully shared with Europe, and it isn't overly useful to build a case for separation based on economic challenges or the difference in governance.

For the record, the fundamentals are:-

1. The pursuit of individualism,

2. The racio-cultural Marxisation of politics, which is sapping our capacity to organise in our own defence,

3. The anti-white genetic interests of new and established minorities.

The principle difference that does exist between America and Europe lies in the fact that America is a large continent in which people can self-segregate if they wish, and construct a society amenable to them. Europe is the homeland of European Man, and he has nowhere else to go and nothing to do but to acquiesce or stand and fight.

[Steve]

Guessedworker, I was arguing that both countries are in a similar dilemma - and against the idea that Europe is buggered and everything is OK in the US.

Of your three points, what do you think individualism adds to the problem?

[do]

Some interesting comments...

Relative homogeneity of European countries to the US: yes, this is an advantage. For it to persist, however, two things need to happen: i) Europe's borders need to be shut; ii) Native-born Europeans need to start reproducing at replacement level.

In fact, the massive numbers involved in the American case tend to obscure the fact that both the US and Europe are experiencing replacement migration for it's also the case in the US that white population is having very few children. Native born demography is at least as important as immigrant inflow.

Peter Brimelow has recently had some very interesting things to say regarding the economics of the Bush policy, describing it as an "economic raid" on the part of the most wealthy on the poor. See here:

http://www.vdare.com/pb/060502_vanderbilt.htm

It's true that European countries face an additional impediment to reforming immigration: the European Union. Until Europe gets tough on policing its external frontiers and regularizes the policies of member states, national government's can only tinker at the edges of the situation.

[James G]

do,
If previous articles by Steyn are to be believed though, the birthrates in the US are hardly uniform, and those states that may have a more traditional conservative/christian base are reproducing at adequate levels for replacement. It's really on the coasts and in the Northern Rust Belt where the numbers are brought down.

With regards to Bush's intentions ("an economic raid") I would say that it may not be as Machiavellian as that; it's a bit more straightforward...One can argue that Jeb Bush is kept in power as governor of Florida because of a general amnesty that was given for Cubans under Pappy Bush...Somthing like 60,000 were sworn in in a stadium in Miami; the Republican Party had registration tables waiting outside.

If a president of a certain political party granted me amnesty, I think I would probably end up voting with them more often than not...

[Alison]

Europe also has more of a tendancy to support hard working families through the provision of SOME welfare (which i support to a DEGREE, not broadly). Italy are paying their middle classes to have children and offer excellent childcare through Nido. Scandinavia greatly supports families to afford the kind of work family balance hard working families need. That is not the case in the US. Eventually families will be stretched to the limit.

The UK doesnt do enough in this respect and has its welfare wrongly distributed. If I had half as much support as I needed at the moment I could start a family. I cant be at work 9 hours a day and look after children yet 2 incomes are required for us to survive - how do we work that. And stand a chance of getting on the property ladder.

Im surprised at the level of panning from right wing US blogs on the Hirsi Ali issue regards Europe and immigration. Rita Verdonk fell pray to Hirsi Ali's ill timed selfpublicity drive. She had already gone some way to getting a grip on the immigration issues there. Yet Verdonk is being slammed. Would Verdonk have allowed herself to be interviewed with the focus on her immigration policies in the run up to election? So you have to wonder why Hirsi Ali did so.

6 of one half a dozen of another where criticizing Europe is concerned.

[Alison]

That should say by such a left wing broadcaster...

[do]

An interesting point, Allison. Steve Sailer has shown for the US that what he calls "affordable family formation" is a key to both reproductive behavior (no surpises there) and political orientation. See here:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050508_family.htm

I've recently heard something similar said for Europe (minus the politics): that those nations in which the birth rate is dropping most precipitously are those in which i) the traditional extended family has disappeared (no free child care) and ii) the state has not stepped in to fill the gap (paid leave, public child care, tax incentives).

James: Steyn is right about the differential geographic distribution of the white birth rate in the US. In the long run, however, that matters little compared to national averages. At the national level, whites are reproducing far below every other racial group (blacks and Asians hover around replacement level, Hispanics far surpass it). Throw mass immigration into this mix and what you get is a nosedive in the white share of the population.

James: Your observation about the electoral stakes of the Bush amnesty gesture ignores the fact that i) Hispanic voter participation rates are far below the national average and ii) that the Hispanice population, while set to grow by leaps and bounds, is at present only around 13% of the national total.

There's been a lot of talk about how American politics now depends on Hispanics. So far, that is false, sometimes strikingly so, as in the case of California. See this excellent recent article on the topic:

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_05_08/cover.html

[do]

As for Steyn, he's of course less worried about immigration per se than he is about Muslim immigration, a concern he shares with that part of the US neo-conservative movement that joined hands with the restrictionists in the aftermath of 9/11.

Only when this is understood do his calls to flee Europe start making sense.

[James G]

do,
Good points.

Alison,
(off-topic)
As far as two incomes and getting on the housing ladder goes, I'm almost inclined to believe that it was the fact that families began to have two incomes that contributed to the rise in house prices rather than people having to have two fulltime breadwinners to afford a house. Sort of a chicken and egg thing. If there were government policies that supported families (Married Couples Tax Allowance anyone?) a lot of behaviour would change.

I don't think free child care is a real answer to this problem. I think making life more affordable for families in general is the answer (and encouraging families to come together and stay together). I suspect many people work instead of staying home with the kids because it is easier to do. Child-rearing is one of the most difficult jobs in the world, and the more children are raised by strangers rather than their families, the more the social seams begin to unravel. It becomes a negative feedback loop.

[Alison]

do,

so the US arent in any way worried about the link between Al Q terror factions operating freely in Latin America - a haven for Islamic extremists as it was for the IRA, and which the US government admitted in 2002 was a "breeding ground for international terror equaled perhaps only by Afghanistan,". The ease with which terrorists adapt and disappear into Latin American countries is shocking and the arms trade there quite incredible. Then you have vast waves of illegal Latino immigration into the US through losse borders - who can tell who is coming through, isnt this a major concern to the US on the issue of terrorism? Added to which the unscrupulous nature of some regimes, notably Chavez to whip up anti American sentiment which im sure is admired by those elements already in the US - eg recent LA demos where they made their feelings known about the US and it wasnt all that friendly. Im sure, though i cant find the reference, that one terror suspect the US are holding is Mexican. As the IRA once said to Margaret Thatcher 'we only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky all the time'.

[do]

Alison: "you have vast waves of illegal Latino immigration into the US through losse borders - who can tell who is coming through, isnt this a major concern to the US on the issue of terrorism?"

Apparently not.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000306.htm

James: The economics of family formation is a complex issue and I'm open to persuasion. My most reactionnary instincts telling me that mass female workforce participation has had the effect of driving down real wages, with the result, among things, that two jobs are needed for what one job used to purchase. By under-selling native-born labor, illegal immigration is of course just exacerbating the past thirty years of real wage loss for those who were already least well off.

But then the rest of us do get cheap gardeners.

[Alison]

Interesting stuff, Do, thanks.

[Richard]

Clearly, we here in America are going to be seeing an extraordinary influx of Hispanics in coming decades- more so than we already have. Clearly, that will change our national culture to some degree, perhaps to a significant degree.

Having said that, I'm not prepared at this point to concede that the final product will be something disagreeable. There are important commonalities between white Americans and Hispanics, namely that we tend to value religion, family and hard work. In my view, once the heated immigration reform rhetoric starts to die down, you will see more mutual realization that we are stuck with each other for better are worse and more pragmatic efforts at assimilation.

Moreover, the sense I get from the vast majority of Hispanics I see around my town is one of humility and gratitude for being allowed to live and work here. That is in stark contrast to the rioting I saw among the Arabs in the French suburbs.

In fact, while Arabs tend to hold Western culture in contempt, many Hispanics seem to look up to it. I watch Spanish-language tv at times and their programs seem modeled after ours and they seem to make it a point to select European-looking actors and reporters. I'm not sure why that is, but it seems vaguely encouraging as far as eventual assimilation is concerned.

[Expat]

Many Latinos I met in LA hold the US in contempt. Of the areas ive seen where there are large influxes in the US it ressembles the third world. I think its very sad and that the US seems ambivalant to this huge influx and imbalance to society even sadder. In 50 years the US will no longer be the same.

[Richard]

I live in a relatively affluent area which hasn't been touched by illegal immigration too much. So you may be correct regarding the areas where the illegals have settled in large numbers. In fact, you probably are right.

But the fact is that America is a large country and the world's largest economy. And a 3-4% economic growth rate during the recent years of runaway illegal immigration doesn't suggest that will change any time soon.

There's an obscene amount of wealth in this country, largely in the hands of the 170 million or so Americans of European descent. That wealth and those Americans won't be going away in coming decades. They will simply do as they have always done and engage in white flight- they will congregate together in response to the demographic changes which take place. And those without money won't be able to follow them.

You will likely see large barrios and even entire states which are pretty much left to the Hispanics by white flight. Those areas will look very much like the third world. But anyone desiring to live in the "old" America need only be one of the educated professional class which benefits from the cheap labor the runaway immigration provides.

I don't think the existence of large numbers of poor citizens precludes continued economic growth. If it did, you wouldn't see China have such astronomical growth in spite of the continued presence of several hundred million utterly poor citizens.

[do]

Richard: I don't think you appreciate the degree to which Hispanic immigration has in the last few years spread to the "heartland". I also don't think you've taken my point about birth rate differentials (see above). In fifty years, you say, the whites will still be there. In fact, given present trends, that's far from obvious.