Alien notion - immigration policy - Column

National Review, Feb 6, 1995 by Richard Neuhaus

`A SERIOUS dispute between conservatives has opened up" over immigration policy, John O'Sullivan writes "America's Identity Crisis," NR, November 2 1). Maybe, but I think not. What could open up is a serious, and potentially unpleasant, dispute over the arguments with which Mr. O'Sullivan overloads his appeal for cutting back on immigration. He asserts that Americans are undergoing an "identity crisis" that can only be resolved by their finally coming to recognize that they are a nation pretty much like other nations "in the European sense." Mr. O'Sullivan rightly insists that there is a distinctively American character. But he wants to expunge from that national character the belief that America is a distinctively open society in a way that is related to our being a "nation of immigrants." The serious dispute that John O'Sullivan perceives or wants to provoke is first about American identity, and secondarily about immigration.

On immigration, the spectrum of policy possibilities would seem to run from sealed borders and no immigration at all to unpatrolled borders and a welcome to as much of the world's population as wants to come. Aside from some extreme environmentalists and negative-population-growth zealots, nobody favors keeping everybody out, and very few favor letting everybody in. The perfectly legitimate debate, then, is about how many immigrants should be admitted and the criteria for admission. It is a debate that Americans have had from time to time, and if it's time to have it again, there needn't be any alarm about a national "identity crisis" or destructive division among conservatives. Unless the debate is conducted on the basis proposed by Mr. O'Sullivan.

There is overwhelming public support for three general propositions about immigration: the government should be in control of admissions, which means cutting illegal immigration as close as possible to zero; policy should be aimed at preventing immigrants from becoming dependent on welfare; and, against the ideologies of "multiculturalism," immigrants should be encouraged to assimilate. There are disagreements about the specifics of implementation, but those generalizations command very broad support. There may also be strong support for basing admission more on job skills and less on whether a would-be immigrant is a relative of somebody already here. In addition, many Americans might be open to following Canada in requiring that relatives post a bond for immigrants whom they sponsor, to ensure that they stay off welfare. Finally, if the policy is set forth in a coherent manner, Americans will, I believe, continue to support the idea that we should provide safe haven for refugees from political persecution.

All these matters can be more or less calmly debated without escalating into a national "identity crisis." If we're simply talking immigration policy, it is hard to understand the intensity of Mr. O'Sullivan's rhetoric. Unless changes are made, he says, we will be "overwhelmed" by people from other cultures; "the survival of America" is at stake; and so forth. But what changes in immigration policy does John O'Sullivan propose? He is rather vague.

At one point he says we should "reduce the level of legal immigration"; at another he says there should be occasional "pauses or reductions" in immigration to allow time to assimilate prior waves of immigrants. Fair enough. Since few people suggest that there should be many more immigrants, never mind more illegal immigrants, there would seem to be no reason why we could not have a relatively amicable debate about whether immigration should be maintained at present levels or reduced by a significant amount. Twenty-five per cent? Fifty per cent? And for how long? Before we get to such a debate over legal immigration, however, many Americans might think we should first get control of the illegal influx. In any event, one would hope that the pages of NR will be a forum for a full range of arguments on what ought to be done and why.

Redefining Our Character

THE dispute that could become very divisive is not over immigration policy as such but over the "why" offered by Mr. O'Sullivan for the direction that he favors. He proposes a redefinition of the American character that I expect most Americans find neither plausible nor appealing. Further, he blames immigration for some of our major domestic problems, such as multiculturalism and the welfare dependency of the urban underclass, in a manner that distracts attention from wrongheaded policies that are not the fault of immigration or immigrants. In addition, and although it is certainly not his intention, his argument has a high potential for reviving nativist sentiment and reinforcing what is referred to by the rather awkward term "declinism."

Nativism--the exaggerated fear of and scapegoating of immigrants--has a long and ugly history in American life and has in the past politically poisoned some brands of conservatism. Declinism--the belief that the era of "American exceptionalism" is past, that novus ordo seclorum is a snare and a delusion, that "morning in America" was a long time ago and will not come again--has usually been located on the Left, but political pathologies have a way of slipping their ideological leashes.