A Historian's View On Illegal Immigration

Fire of Liberty

Richard Brookhiser( a darn good historian on the Founding Fathers) has a good piece in the New York Observer which puts the whole issue of illegal immigration in greater context. I think the following paragraphs sums everything up:

Still, there is a danger to unchecked immigration (and illegal immigration is by definition unchecked). America's immigrant experience has been a success; one of the reasons is the rhythm at which it has unfolded. Like a beast of prey, we gorge, we slumber, we gorge again. In the past, our periods of digestion were supplied by external events, chiefly European wars that interrupted trans-Atlantic travel. As time passed, we took a hand in the process, engineering pauses by means of restrictive laws. Racism and nativism played a role in these efforts, which makes us feel guilty now. Tell that to the rest of the world today, which maintains similar policies (Mexico does not allow unrestricted immigration). The net result of our systole and diastole was to give an opportunity for the newcomer who hoped to become an American, or hoped only to make a buck or to flee the cops, actually to become one.

Assimilation is a mighty engine, doing its work whether we pause for it or not. You see it pounding away in Queens, or in any story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. "“Over the rooftops an airplane thundered past, flashing a string of lights and roaring ferociously. Young men yelled, young women giggled. Above the cinemas, blazing lights shone on posters of monsters, harlots, cutthroats…So this was America." Fight that, you Mexicans. But when immigrant communities are continually refreshed with new faces, and when many of those faces have begun their lives here by breaking the law, the process of assimilation does slow down.

It's always refreshing to read a piece by Brookhiser. By the way, check out his new book What Would the Founders Do?. Here a review from the Washington Times.