The inmates seem to take over the asylum every time this topic comes up in the Times, and we seem to be missing the forest for the trees here.
Given the spike in border apprehensions (generally used as the benchmark for illegal entry) this year, Trump's policy is clearly ineffective in eliminating illegal immigration. This is a peak well above any point in the the prior administration.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/01/whats-happening-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-in-5-charts/
We also seem to have collectively forgotten the moral evil of the family separation policy, which (beyond being repugnant) was also ineffective.
It's tiresome to hear the phrase "open borders" parroted ceaselessly, when it's totally disingenuous (no candidate is proposing such a thing). ICE does not equal CBP.
1
Interesting that you, Mr. Brooks, never mention the environmental problems associated with a large increase in population, driven by immigration, which has been the situation in our country since the 1970’s, when we had achieved a zero growth replacement birth rate. Our population has increased from around 140 million in the 50’s to over 320 million today. This has resulted in a great loss of habitat, a great strain on resources, (see water in the West) congestion, and a general paving over of our natural world. And yet no “progressive” who professes to be an environmentalist will ever discuss this. Certainly the Times, which is obsessed with an open borders policy will never publish any op Ed’s, or articles, which discuss immigration as having negative environmental implications.
26
For me, the sad thing about David Brooks' odes to diversity is that they never include LGBT Americans.
2
You have a covenant with your family. You’ll sacrifice for them and them for you. Though outsiders are really just as worthy, you can’t treat them as well.
You have a covenant with your countrymen. You’ll sacrifice for them and them for you. Though outsiders are really just as worthy, you can’t treat them as well - really, you can’t.
9
I’m shocked by the comments on this article. Not so much by the feelings and concerns they represent, but by their odd consistency. Most are emotional, uninformed, and poorly written. It’s almost as if they’re part of an organized letter-writing campaign, not the views of the thoughtful readers I’ve come to expect. What’s going on? Can these comments possibly represent the actual opinions of Times readers?
2
Democrats have to go for strong borders, albeit a humane solution. There are several win-win alternatives.
6
Our population is declining. For the U.S.A. to grow we need to encourage, not discourage immigration. If we're smart, we'll welcome with open arms, those who want to participate in our economic system.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/12/21/us-population-growth-hits-80-year-low-capping-off-a-year-of-demographic-stagnation/
2
Brooks writes: "By contrast, highly educated white progressives tell them: If you want to restrict immigration you’re probably a racist. As Eric Kaufmann notes in his book “Whiteshift,” 91.3 percent of white Hillary Clinton voters with graduate degrees said it’s racist to want less immigration for ethnic and cultural reasons."
I don't accept your premise, David, and I'm with that 91.3% (how precise!). What about wanting limited immigration for a lot of other good reasons, many of which I've enumerated in many in my comments to articles such as this, articles which are bent on convincing our citizens to allow anyone with feet, the financial means or plenty of guile to walk, boat or fly across our borders and get lost in a country of 328 million people.
I wish we could keep the accusations of racism out of the mix that determines why and how many of those who aspire to this American life we need to admit to our country. I look forward to the day when ALL national boundaries have become meaningless and people can freely travel and live where they will in the world.
4
Sounds a lot like what Richard Rohr and other open minded faith based leaders are urging. I fully support holding conversations with those we know who share different views but are open to listening so we all learn about each other's concerns and how we can achieve a win-win solution as an alternate to today's dualistic positions.
Go have a cup of coffee with someone you know and seek to understand* before trying to be understood.
God bless!
*https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-5.html
What a crock. Mr. Brooks is simply reflecting the misunderstanding (or more likely intentionally misrepresenting) the view of a lot republicans and many Trump voters. We are not anti-immigrant, we are not xenophobic, we are not acting primarily out of fear. Unlike Mr. Brooks, the mainstream media and the country's democrats, we understand that there is a difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. Just like we understand there is a difference between those who obtain groceries from a store legally (by paying with their own money or government provided EBT cards) and those who obtain them illegally. I'm not against people buying groceries and I'm not fearful of them, whether they look like me, worship like me or speak my language. I don't like thieves. It's wrong and the losses cause my groceries to be more expenses. The vast majority of republican voters and politicians are perfectly comfortable with the million+ legal immigrants we allow in each year. We are perfectly willing to debate the level of legal immigration that we should allow to keep our country as strong as possible. We are benevolent people and a benevolent country. BUT... we are a country of laws. If you want to immigrate here, follow those laws. If you disagree with that view then explain to me why even have those laws. Otherwise quit conflating legal and illegal immigrants and quit calling me a xenophobic racist simply because I believe we should all follow our laws.
19
Mr. Brooks point of view is not only cogent, but necessary. Years ago, during Foreign Service orientation, we were taught that by embracing American values andq diversity, we could enjoy the adventure of representing our country in sometimes strange and challenging cultures. The process was not always easy, but invariably resulted in increased understanding and personal growth!
Isn’t every American as involved in representing our country by a practical compassion and understanding of immigrants? Accepting those whose personal safety is dependent upon finding asylum may not alway be easy. But compassion never was without its challenges. It is a core value of most faith communities and our cohesiveness as a country.
The fear engendered by populism will only delay the practical steps needed to embrace inevitable globalization while minimizing the downsides. We can use the resulting social change to our advantage by revitalizing dying rural towns. (The former GDR is an example.) Fair labor laws and unionization can also limit the economic exploitation of new migrants, to the advantage of present job holders. Also, It seems that everyone is foregetting the inevitability of assimilation. New generations will see it in a more positive light.
2
If Trump wins again it will be the end of the republican party, which would be a good thing.
Trump will always win on immigration because it taps into the fears of weak minded people. So it works quite well on the typical American.
If the GOP wanted sensible immigration policy we would have it. They actually like things as they are because illegal aliens make very good cheap labor. If you have a process that reduces illegal immigration the GOP businesses will have increased labor costs.
2
Every country needs a new generation of workers to replenish itself and to pay for social benefits of previous generations. If the country cannot produce its own replacement population then it needs immigrants to fill the need. I read stories of farms looking for workers that no native born people want. Do we shut down these farms?
In today's charged climate people will not grasp the need until the day the spigot is tightened or closed when the SS checks become smaller and then stops and when Medicare starts charging an onerous amount to get healthcare.
The additional problem which started in 1994 under Bill Clinton was NAFTA. How can Americans compete with workers in Mexico who were paid a seventh or a tenth of prevailing manufacturing wages? This led to the well paid manufacturing jobs moving South and Bill Clinton's and subsequent administrations sat on their hands and did nothing to retrain workers or find other newer generation companies to bring high paying jobs. This displacement also adds to social tensions.
We brought this on ourselves but blaming immigrants is easier than finding solutions to complex problems.
3
Trump is also the waterway for the top of the 1%....they seek to get as much as they can from the populace and lower wages as much as they can get away with and keep everyone in a consumerist fever. this happened many times in history....get everyone believing it is some "other" usually worse off than you making things bad while the big guys (kings, "great leaders" and corporations) have their hands in our pockets.
1
In England chicken tikka masala is the most popular dish, but nobody wants to live next door to the cook.
4
"Waves of migration are transforming societies across the globe." This is an exaggeration. The migration is almost exclusively into relatively developed western countries and Australia. How many Norwegians are emigrating to, and "transforming," Iraq? How many English to Pakistan? How many anybody to Japan? Brooks should make it clear that immigration complications are pretty much limited to countries that make up a relatively small part of the human family.
17
I agree with this premise but the problem is how do you do both? especially when people seem to be so polarized against the other in this country; It is a sad situation indeed!
1
Immigration is woefully misunderstood by the vast majority of people in this country. My parents, who immigrated here during the Bush Sr. era, had to fight tooth and nail to get a green card. For that struggle alone, they look down on the undocumented as lazy lawbreakers with no respect. Like many undocumented, my parents had arrived in the US without a penny on them and little English, so, they argue, why can't THESE people do the same? The answer is simple. In our home country, they had debt-free higher education, and were armed with the knowledge and degrees that let them slowly pursue higher paying, high-skill jobs in America. Many undocumented immigrants come from places that give them no such support, never mind the fact that many of them are from war zones caused by decades of failed US foreign policy. As far as naturalized citizens go, I know first-hand that the key to convincing those with a more conservative view of immigration to support a progressive immigration agenda is to first remind them that the struggle others go through is unique and does not undermine your own struggles.
4
Most Americans welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. They recognize that the US cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al., and that they and other US taxpayers cannot possibly support the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here.
US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too.
The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse.
No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.
93
@Mon Ray It is a relief to hear that there is at least one sane opinion on this thread. Thank you
14
@Mon Ray, all those people who "welcome" LEGAL immigrants sure don't seem to be too upset by the Trump administration severely reducing the number of LEGAL immigrants allowed to enter the county.
2
@Mon Ray
I don't see David discussing legal vs. illegal immigration here. He has addressed this is previous essays and even made suggestions for practical legal immigration policies.
Even allowing for this, it is unrealistic to think that there will ever be ZERO illegal immigrants. I don’t know one person who even wants or encourages illegals to come. Can we stop pretending this problem is 100% solvable? If there were no illegals coming across the border and suddenly a family of 4 wandered across, you can be sure they’d be headlining Fox News and anti-immigration fever would spike. It is in the electoral interest of clowns like Trump to continue stoke the illegal immigration fire.
1
I think you're wrong Mr. Brooks. If Trump didn't treat immigration the way he does and the GOP didn't play the race/religion/terrorist card the way they do, a lot of this would not be going on at all. Don't forget that we had slavery in America for over 200 years. (Some would argue we still have it and in some respects they are correct.) The attitudes accompanying it have remained embedded in our culture. We see it in how low level employees are treated. It's evident every time we set up a new social welfare program in how we exclude people too early and bring help too late. It's clear in how we prefer to give out corporate welfare and welfare to the richest but force the neediest or mildly needy to beg and abase themselves for it.
Americans are afraid of differences. We fear our neighbors. We no longer welcome the other because we've been told that the stranger we might entertain is evil, is out to get us, is so "otherly" that s/he isn't deserving of human kindness. The way Trump and the GOP are dealing with immigration is an extension of this. Illegal immigration is one thing and it hasn't been dealt with properly for decades. But Trump is hurting legal immigrants, people who ought to be able to come here for asylum or to study here. It's pretty bold of him to do that when you consider who he's married over the years, who his resorts have hired.
It's not immigration: it's fear.
11/7/2019 7:58pm first submit
141
@hen3ry Fear and with it ignorance are the seeds needed for the growth of hate toward the other. This applies to both Trump and too many of his followers. They feed on each other, fodder for their mutual sustenance. Trump has honed his deviant knowledge of human nature to exploit those who reflect his very characteristics. He is Bigot; he is Racist. He is Misogynist. To maintain his own power in an attempt to satisfy an insatiable ego, he has brainwashed those who want to be brainwashed. They need "someone" to give them an excuse to discriminate against the Central American, those from the Middle East, et al. It is such a shame, especially when many of them, as many of us, are recent descendants of the immigrant. A democracy dependent on only White Christians will not survive.
12
Slavery still exists in America?
The wealthy not wanting to support the poor is not only a legacy of American slavery. You could find examples of the wealthy being tight-fisted in societies across the world.
9
You are totally wrong. Americans are more tolerant and accepting of different types and races of people than ever before. The South has made the greatest change of all because they may have had the greatest travel to acceptance.
Trump is not against immigration. He, like most Americans, is against illegal immigration. What most Americans fear is crime and inability to find work to support themselves and their families. Trump has never opposed legal immigrants, other than those from war-torn areas of the world until there is satisfaction that they do not pose a threat to this country.
32
From the outset of his campaign, the most powerful Trump card is racism and bigotry. We must not accept David Brooks attempt to justify or whitewash this racism and bigotry with the hope that that would defeat Trump. This temptation a morally wrong. It is based on the unethical view that the ends justify the means.
If the Democrats believe that Trump is a racist bigot appealing to his base of racist bigots, shouldn't they spend a big part of their campaign funds on anti-racist bigotry programs and advertising? Maybe three-fifths of their advertising budget. That they haven't done so yet shows they are hypocrites who don't deserve anyone's vote.
Accommodating racists and bigots such as Obama making himself the Deporter-in-Chief is evil even if it had successfully mollified the racist bigots. Remember the time Obama invited a white cop who arrested Prof. Henry Gates in his own home? Accommodating racism is evil, the unethical ends justify the means notion; it's disgusting.
The Democratic candidates need to forthrightly state the large numbers, trillions, that is needed to fund reparations and restitution for slavery, and how they will fund it -- not accommodate the racist bigots by quietly telling them slavery needs more study, a racist evasion.
The best and only ethical way is to overcome racism and bigotry with anti-racist programs and advertising, not whitewashing it, nor indulging the racists and bigots.
2
Brook's allusions to those who oppose mass immigration flooding of nations with foreigners as cowardly, not adventurous, stupid, intolerant, not confident enough of their own identities etc attempts to distract from, but in no way changes the base reality that the global 1% are orchestrating the present open borders dividing and conquering of nations into desperate competing tribal, racial, gender, ethnic groups in order to extract maximum wealth and power from the world's 99% of common citizens. As importantly, nations when turned into 'patchwork quilts' of ethnic, racial and religious groups, who are each given special patronage rights to violate or obey what ever laws and norms they choose, (as opposed to being required to 'melting pot' assimilate into one common identity) are so politically and socially divided that the majority can not form a democratic consensus large enough to resist their common subjugation by powerful authoritarian elites. Again, there is nothing natural or inevitable about mass migrations of billions across borders, its not allowed by China, Japan, Israel ... . But rather this is the plan of a large fraction of the global 1% designed to get them the respect and power they think they deserve by turning humanity into a new age Medievalist society where the 1% get to rule over the 99% of the rest of us peasants like kings, queens and assorted corporate CEO Barons and Dukes.
6
From the outset of his campaign, the most powerful Trump card is racism and bigotry. We must not accept David Brooks attempt to justify or whitewash this racism and bigotry with the hope that that would defeat Trump. This temptation is morally wrong, based on the unethical view that the ends justify the means.
If the Democrats believe that Trump is a racist bigot appealing to his base of racist bigots, shouldn't they spend a big part of their campaign funds on anti-racist bigotry programs and advertising? Maybe three-fifths of their advertising budget? That they haven't done so yet shows they are hypocrites who don't deserve anyone's vote.
Accommodating racists and bigots, such as Obama making himself the Deporter-in-Chief is evil, even if it had successfully mollified the racist bigots. Remember the time Obama invited the white cop who arrested Prof. Henry Gates in his own home? Accommodating racism is the unethical ends-justify-the-means notion -- it's unacceptable.
The Democratic candidates need to forthrightly state the large numbers, trillions, that is needed to fund reparations and restitution for slavery, and how they will fund it -- not accommodate the racist bigots by telling them slavery needs more study, a racist evasion.
The best and only ethical way is to overcome racism and bigotry with anti-racist programs and advertising, not whitewashing it, nor indulging the racists and bigots.
2
In California, the $20 plus billion spent on its cheap undocumented labor is a trifle compared to a $3 trillion economy, the largest in the country. Of course this money is spent on keeping this work force healthy for their 18 hour work days and educating their kids who as American citizens are future tax-payers so its a good investment.
This is the first time in all the years of my reading the New York Times and watching PBS that I fully agree with Mr. Brooks. And I thank him from the bottom of my heart for truly being a mensch!
Variety is the spice of life - now let's dig in and enjoy it while we live!
With a population of 330 million, we do not need any more people. When I was born we had half that population and life was just fine. I submit that immigration does not benefit Joe Average citizen. It does, however, benefit our more affluent citizens by reduced labor costs i.e. depressed wages.
The purpose of our immigration laws should be for the benefit of U.S. citizens.
21
"Waves of migration are transforming societies across the globe."
Yeah, not really "across the globe." More like a few places are being transformed - in your words - while the rest, the majority, are continuing on as normal, and doing the transform_ing rather than being transform_ed.
Multiculturalism is basically a uni-cultural phenomenon.
Which is part of the problem with its perception. There's a pretty clear connection between the geopolitical areas that are supposed to happily progressively embrace diversity and multiculturalism, and the rest of the world that doesn't... and it isn't wealth, thanks to our East Asia examples, and it isn't a history of distant colonialism thanks to examples like Sweden. It's something... else, that connects these places that should be super stoked about their progressive demographic transformation. I won't say what. I won't need to say what. This thought process alone is part of the problem, but what can you say in response to it? Only: "Don't think about it! That's racist!" But people aren't frogs, and they notice when the water is starting to boil, even when you do it slowly, and even if you smack them if they speak out loud about it. Sooner or later, something will break. It never shouldn't come to this.
And the income inequality, as mentioned in the article, is just making everything that much worse to handle all around. When people are happy and equal, they're more generous and accepting. And when they're not...? Well.
9
@JB
Oh, just Western Europe and America are being transformed, that's all.
Hard to read past that, to be honest.
2
Poor, Brooks, wandering the world, going to seminars, and looking for reasons why his country is so messed up, with him never accepting blame for his Republican Party and its disreputable leaders. It doesn't require an Ivy League degree to trace the party's demise back to Richard Nixon, who introduced dirty tricks and a win-at-all-costs strategy to election politics. Trump and Company have merely exploited a negative, Democracy-killing, divide and conquer strategy that has been in Brooks' GOP for decades.
Much simpler solution to Americans who object to immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants.
Ask how Trump plans to fill the hole that would be left in Social Security if the roughly $13 billion per year undocumented workers contribute are removed from the country? Those workers will never see a penny of those benefits but they are essential to propping up the SS program.
Why don't Conservatives ever want to talk about this?
27
@lzolatrov Social Security is basically a Ponzi Scheme, made worse by immigration. At some point we will be forced to adjust to "steady state" where contributions by the average person equal benefits paid to the average person.
11
@lzolatrov
The idea that poor people, making relatively little money, paying a small portion to taxes, who's kids, legal or otherwise use huge amounts of public resources are somehow not only paying their way, but are going to fund the retirement of anyone, much less themselves is utterly rediculous. How do these people retire? They aren't going home. They won't have saved much money, remember they don't make much. They will be a burden on citizen taxpayers, as they are now, not the other way around. The idea that importing poor who don't make much money, who have in general bigger families who need a lot of public resources, is somehow going to save your economy and pay for anybody's retirement could only come from the truly delusional. These people aren't going to pay for anyone's retirement, theirs or anybody else's. They and their family members will need far more in taxpayer money than they ever paid in.
32
I tire of the “but they contribute and pay taxes” narrative. I’ve worked in many restaurants in New York over the years and the undocumented workers were always paid cash under the table. You’re telling me that they then went and paid taxes and social security with that cash money?
It’s a lie. Undocumented people are paid cash. They are not paid through any legitimate payroll company where the proper deductions can be made. Stop repeating the lie that they pay taxes.
28
I do not understand how David’s approach will help the Democrats win the 6 or 7 States where immigration is a hot button. “Economically challenged” voters respond to Trump’s immigration dog whistle and little will change except over time.
Health care, education, jobs created by infrastructure - promises made, promises broken by Trump.
That is the message that will resonate. Together with, “Had Enough!”
@James luce "Economically challenged" voters have suffered depressed wages in large part caused by an increase in the labor supply. These voters have been harmed by immigration.
10
Brooks would be well-advised to review some social science, with emphasis on cultural sources of authoritarian temperament and its resistance to persuasion. His statements about outreach and diversity hold for a certain segment of any population, at least to the point they feel directly threatened and thus anxious; they do not hold for the committed tribalist who sees all issues, not just immigration, in 'us versus them' framework and thus rejects negotiation and compromise. As it rejects round tables in third-party efforts ('Better Angels') to seek bipartisan communication. If, as a culture, we want to encourage stability and tolerance, a good first step would be to establish social insurance that ensures all citizens that their fellow citizens, even across the partisan divide, have agreed to 'have their back' and support the kind of cost-effective programs Krugman summarizes today. Our overall cultural approach to a sense of national community remains the oppression of the poor and the enrichment of the wealthy.
I just came home from the hospital for four days of treatment for a deep brain tumor. My nurses were all recent immigrants from Africa, Mexico, and India. I know because Asked. Theircare was uniformly wonderful and professional. Thank God they are here. This is a realty that America needs to awaken too. Immigrant health professionals will provide the care our aging country needs. I have seen this in the care of a disabled sister and an aging, now deceased mother. We should celebrate these immigrants decision to come here and help us.
1
@John r. Bruggeman Let more U.S. citizens into med school instead of immigrants.
8
And then there's common sense. Trump's secret weapon. While some ponder the concept of "fear", many Americans just want some sensible restrictions on what is now a system that has no actual barriers to entry.
18
The United States is still a nation state in a world of competing nation states. We don't have open borders, nor should we throw open the doors to illegal immigration. Calling people who want lower rates of immigration racist is just wrong, and mean to boot. Trump is right that breaking the law to get here/stay here should have consequences in a nation ruled by laws. It still means something to be an American, a certain set of core values bequeathed by the generations that went before us and fought to preserve those core values for us. Immigration is a good thing within limits that allow multi-generational assimilation and the personal, familial and community wide identification and inculcation with those values. In a world where everything is changing all the time, rate of change matters. We must manage the rate of change in our society to give all of us the time we need to adjust and grow into the coming future.
11
A Nova Scotia town of 600 people that I lived in a few years back sponsored a muslim family from Africa. A mother and several children, were provided with a house, clothing, food, and and a great deal of support to help with their integration into the community. The children were enrolled in school and learned English. By all accounts, at least from the perspective of the community it was a success story.
This summer they moved to a city where they could live among other African muslim families. They took big step down in terms of lifestyle but I suppose that the cultural isolation they felt among 600 white christians was too much and they needed to be among their own people.
Culture shock is a two way street.
10
I don't think the differences are as stark as Mr. Brooks imagines.
Most Americans - I daresay nearly all - agree that we do need some measure of border control. Most Americans agree that immigration is basically a net positive for the country.
The problem is in the details. ICE has shown itself to be a fundamentally cruel agency. Proposing the termination of that agency is not the same as saying that borders should be completely open.
Rather, it's a statement that border control should be humane and compassionate, that children should not be incarcerated in cells and families should not be separated, and people should not die while in the custody of federal law enforcement personnel.
Nor should immigration controls and border security demonize Latinos, as it currently does. Our immigration policy must shift away from the absurd and bigoted idea that only western European cultures should be the source of new Americans.
We must also recognize that welcoming people to this land, especially refugees, is not only a core piece of our national identity, but vital for our economy, our common culture, and our political vitality.
At the same time, it is equally imperative that our immigration policies emphasize and encourage assimilation into those aspects of our society that our most important - our language (though bilingualism must always be treasured), our civic traditions and values, our professed belief in education and entrepreneurship, and our commitment to community.
3
@CastleMan I disagree. I believe that most Americans agree that immigration is basically a net negative for the country. Only the rich benefit from immigration.
13
China is not diverse and trades with everyone. India is not diverse and protects its dairy markets as most Indian farmers only own two cows and supply milk to the local market. That will probably change in the future and there will be starvation because of all the pollution in India. Animals can't drink polluted water and neither can humans.
5
But how is Trump to be beaten? You never answered the question, Brooks.
The answer is NOT to abolish ICE or to open the borders. The answer is to enforce the immigration laws, strictly, fairly, and completely. Which is why the Dems will lose in 2020.
17
@GeorgePTyrebyter But it does not require taking children away from their family and locking them up. Many..most...Democrats agree that immigration must be controlled, but disagree with using inhumane methods.
@GeorgePTyrebyter
Trump won't be beaten because democrats don't support any restrictions on immigration.
4
I am an immigrant, person of color, successful and would vote for at tree stump rather than any Republican. However, I know enough about my fellow immigrants of color who voted for Trump that Democrats must make a stark contrast between legal immigrants and undocumented migrants. If they don't, they will lose increasing numbers of legal immigrants who spent years and thousands of dollars in the process to become Americans as they will see the giveaways to undocumented migrants as a stab in the back to those who stood in line and came here the 'right and lawful way'.
16
population densities of the continents:
North America - 60.7 people per square mile
South America - 61.3 people per square mile
Europe - 187.7 people per square mile
Asia - 257.8 people per square mile
Africa - 103.7 people per square mile
2
@Jack S You want our population to become 1 billion?
5
This message won't get through to the people it needs to get through to.
I am a life-long liberal, having voted Democrat, exclusively, for 50 years. My "liberal" career began when I was 2, living in Veteran's Village when my father was going to school, and being the only child who was allowed to play with a black child. My father about his father: "he fought too."
I then became a Conscientious Objector in Vietnam, prepared to go to prison for my beliefs.
What I find is that when I express an opinion in the NYT that doesn't toe the extreme left party line I get crucified for not being "sensitive," "smart" (I have a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt), "caring," or the worst, uninformed the way the people are who criticize me.
Trump will win because of this elitist, self-congratulatory attitude among many on the far left.
And, ironically, most of them are not the truly vulnerable people who I, as a Democrat, always saw myself as defending.
19
Very thoughtful piece Mr. Brooks. I agree with you that many people who are not embedded in a secure base can find the encounters in immigration unsettling. But how do you help people feel secure enough without, at the same time, encouraging closed off societies? Certainly, if we could change the income-inequality situation, and provide universal healthcare, that would give some people a certain sense of security, but how do you promote local culture, a particular faith, and local values, without alienating immigrant culture, immigrant faith, and immigrant values. Would it not be better to look for common aspects of both cultures, faiths and values, and encourage them?
1
"... to create thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base. That includes economic and health care security,..." Glad this was listed first because it's clearly the most important and salient (altho Brooks then goes right on to ignore it). This is what the Dem platform has been about for decades.
"... but it also involves cultural and spiritual security. It involves offering people opportunities to embed in their local culture, to practice their particular faith, to live by local values that may seem alien to you and me..." Yes, especially when they claim that their "faith and values" compel them to persecute or shun those who don't agree with them.
"Only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference." Ummm - they've enjoyed that for over 200 years and they still aren't confident?
"This is the paradox of pluralism: In order to get people to integrate with others you have to help them weave close communities with their own kind. Cosmopolitans never get this." So apparently 200+ years wasn't giving them enough time. We don't get that we need to give them - what - another 200 years before they're sufficiently confident to tolerate someone who doesn't look or sound like them???
Immigration is not an all or none phenomenon. It's about numbers. How many can the job creating economy embrace without creating a surplus of new workers to the detriment of
American workers. How many can the land accept without its being despoiled and so crowded that there is not enough for all.
It's important to stop viewing immigration as a matter of race and start focusing on human population as the greatest threat and burden to the earth and the prime driver of climate change.
We can't solve the problem for the whole world but we can manage the problem in our own country.
13
Someone recommended The Atlantic/Peter Beinart/immigration... so I googled
very worthwhile, thought provoking
a quote
"Exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference—the hallmarks of liberal democracy—are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness."
Beinart suggests whoever is the Democratic nominee, commit those words to memory.
1
The core issue isn't diversity or pluralism. Whether you champion diversity or champion 'stick to your own kind' the issue is how you treat people- individually and institutionally- whether they are like you or not, and whether you like them or not.
In an effort to ensure community-wide access to our non-profit's disaster preparedness and response services, we formed a multicultural committee composed of community leaders from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Respective community members facilitated access to their places of worship and community centers as designated shelters in the event of a disaster, participated in related volunteer courses, and helped us ensure anyone and everyone would feel welcome if they needed our services. And yet, when the committee met once a month, members from the respective communities invaribly sat together - at tables forming a square with reps from each continent facing one another.
'The pluralist doesn’t see society as a competition for scarce resources'
Therein is where this analysis breaks down. Not that pluralists such as Brooks himself don't believe exactly that, but because the statement itself is totally false.
it is estimated that the planet could at most support 1 billion people without exploiting adn destroying the accumulated richness and diversity of life that creates this wondrous world that is under assault. Today the planet is hurtling past 7 billion, and the people who should be speaking up like 'Brooks' are struck mute.
I attended an environmental meeting the other day about climate change. Charts were thrown up discussing the expected climate impact. MA will be like Virginia by the end of the century.
But no one mentioned that if tomorrow a clean hydrogen engine were created there would be no end to the destructive path the earth is on. In fact it would accelerate, because it would just be another pretext to clear the forests, strip the oceans bare and extend the hellish lives of factory farms and their imprisoned animals; and to turn species after species into trophies to be mounted and hung on walls.
But we are told the problem is ideological not physical - it's as if everyone's mind were replaced by the 'body snatchers' of science fiction lore.
i don't want a country of 450 million people, to wake up every day and learn of a new empty lot being carved up.
15
David Brooks rather meandering suggestion that we all sing kumbaya misses the mark. The human amygdala makes us wary of "other", and that's perfectly natural--and we've always been that way. It's something that civilization has conditioned us to overcome, so that we may embrace the differences among us.
One way, and perhaps the best way, to encourage people to move past their primitive fear of "other" is education. The more we know and understand about other cultures, the better prepared we are to accept them.
Mr. Brooks says that "the pluralist doesn’t see society as a competition for scarce resources, but as a joint voyage of discovery in search of life’s biggest answers", but that is an intellectualization of something very simple. No doubt it is a desideratum and it's fair to say that most Americans have moved in that direction.
Trump's ugly racism and fear of "other' has incouraged the minority to surge forward in their practice of bigotry and racism. To defeat him, we need to put forward calm, unbigoted, and knowledgeable candidates with confidence--to appeal to the majority of Americans.
2
David's insightful piece has applicability with respect to African American integration. I became a pluralist because of my love of jazz music. It became my motivation to venture out into the black community that in short order enabled me to become comfortable when I was the only white guy in the jazz club. If the enlightenment had occurred 40 years earlier, my cultural life would have been so much richer.
Now,seven years after a move to a community with a high percentage of first and second generation immigrant Asian people I relish the opportunity to engage people of a different cultural experience.
I'm convinced that racial and cultural diversity has made the USA the greatest country and will make it even greater
5
"A person who is firmly rooted can go out and enjoy the adventure of pluralism. This is the second phase of thick pluralism. The person with the pluralist mind-set acknowledges that God’s truth is radically dispersed. It is not contained in one tradition and community. The good life is only understood through a holistic journey across traditions."
.....this should be the basis of true Christianity.
2
This has worked well in the US for one reason, the US Constitution. Every official and citizen pledges loyalty to the Constitution. That gives us a unifying set of functional rules and a Republic free men and women are willing to die for. Within that unity we can allow pluralism without generating too much dysfunction.
2
@Federalist,
Hardly anyone is concerned with the Constitution any more; it's all about "my little group getting mine" and I am beginning to rethink this idea that diversity is our strength; it sure would be nice to have a little less discord in the country and a little less DEBT.
6
There is exceptionally good research on the impact of immigration, and it generally shows that immigration is positive in every area where immigrants are allowed to enter and participate. See, for example, this summary of research by Ian Goldin who led a major study for Citibank on the impact of immigration in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otVTAJeuoE0&t=2931s. Several important points: (1) the U.S. like every developed country needs more immigrants not fewer, because as in every developed country, there has been a decline in the birthrate of the native born; (2) we need both skilled and unskilled immigrants to fill the jobs that are being created and to provide the services that the population in general demands; (3) the economic benefits to both the native born and immigrants are positive, with perhaps some short term costs (primarily to the most recent immigrants) but long term gains overall; (4) in places where immigrants are allowed to participate, they tend to bring prosperity and innovation (think the coasts, large cities, and even rural areas that need workers to maintain economic viability); and (5) most people want to live in the types of places that have cultural diversity because it brings many opportunities both cultural and social (why so many like moving to urban areas). Being at home in your own culture is necessary to engage positively with other cultures, but tolerance is something that can be learned and practiced.
@Nancy DiTomaso 1. Decline in the birthrate is not necessarily bad. Life was fine in the U.S. when our population was half of today's population. But it declining population is a concern, then let in just enough immigrants to keep our population constant. 2. more skilled and unskilled immigrants depress wages for U.S. citizens. There are plenty of able bodied adults in the U.S. who are not employed yet do not show up in the "unemployment" statistics. 3. It is the rich that benefit from low wages. Hire citizens to pick strawberries and we will just have to pay more for strawberries.4. We have plenty of smart citizen innovators in the U.S. 5. Most people prefer their own culture. Diversity is like spice, a little goes a long way.
6
Hating Trump is NOT a path to deposing him. Hilary had that market cornered and it didn't work out, did it? America is the most compassionate country in the world, but there are limits, something the liberals can't seem to acknowledge. Sure we put a man on the moon, but that was 50 years ago and the welfare state has gotten much bigger since then, along with the spending to support it. Are there people around the world who would love to come here, of course, so we must be smart in selecting those who fit in and can contribute right away. Just like many other countries do. Why should the taxpayers pay for a Central American woman with a few kids whose husband is violent to her? She entered into the relationship and she can get out of it, without the help of the US. Heartbreaking problems around the globe happen all the time, in far greater numbers than America can fix, our primary focus need to be on problems here and let the rest of the world reform itself.
16
What Americans don’t realize (because reporters like Brooks don’t tell them) is that immigration and births to immigrants are the primary U.S. population driver. The Census Bureau anticipates that if the current immigration level remains unchaged, the US population will swell by 25% during the next 3-plus decades.
Ask Americans if they would like the accompanying traffic, school and hospitals overcrowding, etc
Better question: is that the America you want to leave for your children.
Big majority vote no on both questions
24
He’s right we are a nation of immigrants and have been since long before this nation state was founded. I don’t think building walls is the answer, we do need to embrace the diversity, it’s inevitable anyhow. If you dig deep enough our roots are all the same, we have been migrating all over this planet for tens of thousand years; it’s ludicrous to think it will some how stop now, it won’t, it’s too deeply in-beded in our nature.
1
Or we can just enforce the law and ensure that those who immigrate come here legally Mr. Brooks. Lost in all of this debate is the fact that a significant portion of socialists favor lawlessness at the border.
16
Immigrants have historically lived together - China town, little Italy, Dearborn MI. But government used to understand the American culture - one of rule of law, and representing the citizens. As immigration from non-christian countries (let's admit that most historical immigration came from christian countries) increased, so did demands for citizens to accommodate the newcomer versus the opposite.
Hispanics are usually from a christian majority country, so one would think they'd assimilate well and be accepted. Actually, legal immigrants that I know from Brazil, Peru, Argentina are delightful, speak English, and support rule of law. They came here because they liked American culture.
I believe the current wave of illegal immigration (on-going for decades, but overwhelming over the last 10 years) has angered many Americans. Not because of wage stagnation as much as the cost to tax payers and the fact that they have broken the law. Yes, asylum seekers have a right to apply, but over 90% are economic immigrants. Something the elitist far left refuses to acknowledge.
Then I look to Dearborn and MN where Muslims now demand that school dances must be segregated and I'm shocked. Shocked they receive support from local government or ARE the local government. These are norms of our society and many, myself included, find these changes to my communities unacceptable. You come to America because you want to be American? Great! You come and want me to change? No!
20
@Ma
Democrats have promoted immigration lawlessness because they are appealing to the Hispanic voter -- at least the Hispanics lobbying the Democratic Party.
In fact, Hispanics don't support immigration lawlessness. Why would they?
4
Just another partisan column by Brooks, a member of the Professional Republican Commentariat. Democrats are bad for not being perfect in all ways in every situation, but no mention is made of Republican reactionaries and their multitude of sins. Brooks doesn’t even mention his Republican Party when talking about Trump. It’s almost as if the right thinks they can con voters into rejecting Democrats by pretending there is no right-wing party in America working to destroy the middle and working class.
The main reasons the Republican base fears immigrants isn‘t because of progressives, it is because they haven’t got the intellectual flexibility to deal with people who are different, even those of different races and religions who were born here, and they believe what they hear on 24/7/365 right-wing propaganda outlets such as Fox. So-called populist movements have throughout history identified an “other” to use as a scapegoat for their population’s unhappiness, and the Republican Party is currently using immigrants for that nefarious purpose. And the right white Republican base already feel at home in their culture, and only their culture, and have proven that it doesn’t make them more accepting of difference.
As for their declining economic security, social status and religious affiliations, that is largely down to decades of homegrown Republican corporate and political campaigns and hypocritical behaviors of religious leaders, not immigrants.
Brook’s describes a problem in clear and simple terms that everyone can understand. The solution, not so much.
I understand the need for discussion, but as a son of trump land, I don't think you will ever conence me they will change. So, tell me why I should economically support them?
2
Such intellectual blather about conservatism and progressivism is useless. The truth is simple: Trump was the loudest anti-Obama candidate. He was racism and xenophobia inside a 230-pound package: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. To Trump’s and his handlers’ credit, they knew that as the racists’ and the anti-immigrants’ candidate, he had a chance to beat Hillary in the bastions of xenophobia and racism, thanks to the thumb-on-the-scale Electoral College, which gives those bastions immense power over the popular-vote-winning candidate.
With the invaluable help of Fox News, Trump’s never-ending tsunami of anti-Obama rhetoric brought to the polls, in 2016, in unprecedented numbers, racists and anti-immigrant xenophobes: they got Trump his win, but NOT because of Trump’s visceral (never intellectual) opposition to the Affordable Care Act, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Iran Nuclear Accord, the acceptability of LGBTQ people in the military, or a host of other Obama-administration “wins.”
The racists and xenophobes got Trump his win because they correctly saw in him a candidate whose barely veiled hatred of the first African-American President reflected their own such hatred - a hatred which extends to anyone with brown skin. Our current situation hasn’t changed from 2016 any more than it has changed all that much since 1863. Hatred of African-Americans, Hispanics, and immigrants of every stripe wins elections in this country, when TV networks package it, prettily.
2
I love David Brooks.
I love the way he lectures us misguided liberal elites, usually whilst quoting some more or less obscure philosophy or advocating for some long lost, never were, faith based moral platitudes that old white men used to hold down the rest.
Whatever the problem or issue it is always the fault of liberal elites. Decline of morality, break down of society, loss of religious adherence........ all the fault of over-educated liberal elites. It's never the fault of years of ever more radical right wing policies aimed at transferring wealth to the rich, pushing evangelical homophobic hate policies, kow-towing to the gun lobby, consistently trying to destroy every entitlement and safety net system, blocking any attempt at essential healthcare reform, loading the supreme court with evangelical extremists and cheating in every elections by disenfranchising people of color and gerrymandering at every opportunity.
David, there is a really simple answer on how to beat Trump on immigration and everything else.
Tell people to VOTE DEMOCRAT. But you can't, because you would rather have Trump than a democrat in office.
1
Legal immigration from anywhere is ok, illegal, no, and the numbers should be regulated to what we can handle.
14
David Brooks is inspired by the Faith Angle Forum.
The Faith Angle Forum (FAF) is a program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank that promotes religion in society: “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.”
“Applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy” essentially means taking down the wall between church and state.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the EPPC “was the first neocon institute to break ground in the frontal attack on the secular humanists. For nearly three decades, EPPC has functioned as the cutting edge of the neoconservative-driven culture war against progressive theology and secularism, and the associated effort to ensure right-wing control of the Republican Party. It explicitly sought to unify the Christian right with the neoconservative religious right.”
The EPPC is supported by many conservative foundations including the Koch brothers. This is the source Brooks finds inspiration in. For anyone who thinks David Brooks is the voice of moderation, he keeps some pretty scary company.
Make no mistake: what Brooks means by “pluralism” according to “God’s truth” is Christianity. And once again, he provides us with fluffy abstractions and magic as solutions to vexing concrete problems – and all in service to a dangerous conservative agenda that created the mess we are in.
2
The Donald is not president because of immigration. He is not. He is president because a number of voters, no matter race, color, economic situation, voted against his rival, Hillary Clinton. She was a very flawed candidate who at the same time, had overwhelming qualifications for the job.
But she didn't connect to Wisconsin, she didn't connect to Michigan, ok she came to Philadelphia, but not to my county, which she barely won. Our surrounding suburbs just hammered republicans like a nail this week. That she was not able to tap that sentiment during 2016 was her undoing. I still remember how giddy the DNC was that she "might take Arizona, it's so close, she's moving resources there!" Whoops...yeah big whoops.
Building a wall is a racist proposal. Imagine the ridiculous idea that a wall will keep out people wanting to escape oppressive situations. It won't. We crossed an ocean! It will cost Billions, but it won't keep anyone out. This foolhardy republican idea of building a wall is racist. So anyone excited for that, or trying to make an argument for it, is a racist, or not to be trusted with money (Donald).
It's not the immigration stupid, it remains the economy. The Billionaire mindset will "save us" (stay out of it Michael), the "trickle down" mindset will "save us", have not, and, will not work.
If the system is broken (I don't see it but lets go with that), then radical change is necessary. We've tried the con man.
Bernie.
Cut to the chase Brooks.
Your sententious verbiage masks what is truly at stake here.
Hordes--and I use that word deliberately--of non-white people now aspire to the same standard of living as enjoyed by whites in North America and Europe.
Western standards of living were contingent upon the labor of masses of impoverished non-whites in foreign lands, even as these nations' natural resources were being plundered for Western consumption.
Now, it is possible for non-whites to imagine and enjoy a similar standard of living as whites.
Historically, the dominant group scapegoats non-white Others whenever it feels threatened, economically or culturally.
Economic viability and cultural achievement encourage civil behavior.
Brooks, you need to say it like it is rather than taking refuge in the murkily conservative rhetoric of "thick pluralistic society."
2
@Ludwig I like my pluralistic society thick, I cannot lie.
Brooks like all the other "elite" just doesn't get it. An open boarders immigration policy, if you can call no policy a policy, is only one of long list of things that turn the average person against the "new" Democrats.
11
You completely avoid the primary issue on voters’ minds.
The US has always been a melting pot. It was designed that way.
The question isn’t is immigration good for America, it is should we have control over who we allow to immigrate?
America already takes in half the world’s legal immigrants each year, so it is clear Americans don’t dislike immigration.
The Democrats position is against any type of control over who comes here.
That is the salient point which Democrats must avoid at all costs because it is clear the citizens disagree with them.
As for Sweden, the days of the left getting away with insisting that Sweden is too Swedish and unless they hurry up and import a bunch of Middle Easterners to brown things up they will accuse them of being racist are just about over
9
When USA workers watch both parties help industry leave. When workers watch both parties tolerate illegal immigration for cheap labor. What do you expect?
You will never see Republicans work to offer affordable healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
You will never see Democrats offer a number of immigrants per year that we can handle, much less throw illegal entrants out.
On top of that, AI and automation, (including automated agricultural harvesting) is eliminating jobs.
So sure, let's welcome people that we need, but you're not paranoid if you know nobody has got your back
6
Yes, let's cook up 'jambalaya' rather than blending together a soup in a 'melting pot'.
I don’t get the hype against multiculturalism. Most of us likely grew up in multicultural environments. Unless maybe isolation in a suburb with no community other than school & immediate family kept you from interacting with others. The immigrants most vilified by Trump are Mexicans & other brown/Native American people from South of the Rio Grande. But these cultures are most like the USA & share the same values & religious beliefs; mostly a blend of Native American & Spanish with a little African. Californians are not afraid of “them” because they were there before the USA was. Neither should Texas, New Mexico, Arizona nor Louisiana and Florida be afraid. They all grew up with a mix. Spanish explorers had claimed and assimilated into the areas long before the British. I don’t get this false narrative of difference. I don’t get the false narrative requiring pushback. The town where I was raised in the Southwest had Spanish, Mexican, Native American, Polish, Italian, Lebanese, Syrian, African, Lithuanian, Czech, and Scotch-Irish, German, and, presumably, some folks who claimed to have had descendants who came over on the Mayflower. Except for some kids who threw stones at the Italians and the horrible incidents of teenagers harassing Black people, for which they were prosecuted, most of the adults seemed to know right from wrong and worked together. Everyone seemed to get along. What happened? It is amazing what violent and exclusionary rhetoric can do to a country.
5
Gee, Davers? I thought old/white/guys hijacking Old Testament grudges w/ New Testament solutions had already militarized our misogynist particularity to the extent that selfish rapture is the light at the end of plurality's tunnel. Curiosity's surviving catch lest anxiety can't long for adaptability's vital embrace.
Time to counter retro-regress with pending progress longing our stay.
In selling bothsiderism to quasi-intellectual VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, David Brooks played a key role in legitimizing cynical Republican politicians who knowingly tickled the basest instincts racists, theocrats, and separatists. Now he scratches his head wondering how Donald Trump is still in office?
What a bunch of garbage.
As a gay man, I have to walk through a world where I am FREQUENTLY the only "me" in the room. And so does everybody. And the illusion of uniformity is the problem. I do not need other people to engage me with curiosity; nor do I worry if they have some anxiety. I am happy to talk to them.
It is the isolation and insulation of Trump's America from REALITY ITSELF that is the problem. These people need to walk outside their caves and look around. The world we live in is not so hostile to their existence as they imagine; but how would they know? I can tell you that I encounter good and bad people every day, but the only consistently menacing identity I encounter is older white people who feel entitled to inflict their beliefs on the world around them. Everyone else seems to get it. I interact with plenty of people from every conceivable minority group, and while I cannot imagine they all agree with me on everything, none of them seem to presume that they do or ought to have the power to control my life.
If you want to write a column to bridge this gap, you should address it to Trump's America. Those who (not coincidentally) live in these tiny communities you imagine are our salvation. Tell them that they need to get out more. Tell them to find the courage to interact with a diverse world that does not reflect and glorify their entire identity back at them. We are already there. We already live in such a world, and we are fine. They can follow our lead.
You didn’t have to go to France to get enlightened. Canada is within drive able distance. It is a mosaic of sorts, they never wanted to be a melting pot they wanted to keep their cultures identities intact and weave them together in a tapestry rather than blend the threads to an unrecognizable grey.
When you say people like us or people like them you forget that we all share most of our DNA, we are all 99.9% same. We all have salty tears we all have red blood flowing in our veins and we all have heart beats. The only thing that looks superficially different is our skin color which is an adaptation to UV rays and our religions which are purely man made. Most of the time we waste our lives sweating over, you should not eat pork, you shan’t offer with left hand, you should only circumambulate clockwise, you should always wear head gear when you enter place of worship, you should always rub nose together when you greet etc etc. All sorts of do’s and don’t s that are exhausting.
One of the central challenges of our age is how to create a mass multicultural democracy where people feel at home?
That appears an impossible task, a contradiction that can be resolved only by slight of hand, by a form of trickery whereby everybody's cultures are played down, increasingly crushed and confined to privacy of home and further, confined as dreams, delusions of own mind, while the actuality of society is a vast technocratic, materialistic, bureaucratic state in which perhaps people's bodies are gratified (indeed, to point of obesity) while the mind goes strangely unsatisfied.
Native Americans are confined to reservations; blacks erupt in angry rap music from ghettos; Western Civilization in form of humanities is attacked as racist, misogynistic, not likely to lead to employment; new immigrants are expected to practice their cultural traditions in as non-violent manner as possible, which means a declining progression, circle,
of first confined to own group, then own home (family), then remaining and private traces in few minds...
It's not so much a mass multicultural democracy we are creating as the world becomes more globalized but a vast process of something of computerized erasure of past tradition artistic and religious, indeed cultural, of everybody and an uploading of safe knowledge everyone can agree upon, which is mutually beneficial, which however so far satisfies gross appetite much more than hopes and dreams of the human mind...A new animality.
1
To see Mr. Brooks ideas in action without going to France, I suggest attending an English-as-a-Second Language class. All of his suggestions are in practice every day.
Message to leadership of most American institutions:
To most Americans, "diversity" means "not you". You are telling the majority of the population that they are less important than the others you favor, and that you are morally superior because you adopt that attitude. You won't win friends or votes that way---an appalling loser was elected by opposing that attitude.
Diversity is something to be accepted as it comes naturally, not promoted as a matter of policy.
4
David Brooks apparently got his archangel wings at the Faith Angle Forum. It’s religion to the rescue!
The Faith Angle Forum (FAF) is a program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank that promotes religion in society: “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.”
“Applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy” essentially means taking down the wall between church and state.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the EPPC “was the first neocon institute to break ground in the frontal attack on the secular humanists. For nearly three decades, EPPC has functioned as the cutting edge of the neoconservative-driven culture war against progressive theology and secularism, and the associated effort to ensure right-wing control of the Republican Party. It explicitly sought to unify the Christian right with the neoconservative religious right.”
The EPPC is supported by many conservative foundations including the Koch brothers. This is a source Brooks finds inspiration in. For anyone who thinks David Brooks is the voice of moderation, he keeps some pretty scary company.
Make no mistake: what Brooks means by “pluralism” according to “God’s truth” is Christianity. And once again, he provides us with fluffy abstractions and magic as solutions to concrete problems – and all in service to a dangerous conservative agenda that created the mess we are in.
This saying of my father's maybe somewhat simplistic, but in reading David Brook's column today, I'm reminded:
"Every time you learn something new you live a day longer".
Who wants to be attached to their comfortable "blankie" and live in stagnation?
This comment might not get published. But I have an obligation to point out the fact that David Brooks is in denial.
The pundits at the New York Times are correct that global warming is an existential threat to humans on planet earth.
But liberals and the token conservatives like Brooks are also in denial when they suggest in opinion pieces like this that continued high level of immigration are OK.
This is equivalent to denying that the primary reason for global warming is population growth. And like many things which should be obvious, many otherwise intelligent people fail to see the connection between population growth and global warming. Why is that?
We were warned in 1969 by the Population Bomb by Paul Ehrllich and by a book, Limits to Growth by other authors which appeared in 1972. WE DID NOTHING FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS! And population of planet earth has doubled in that time.
There is a limit to the number of people the planet can support. As population explosion adds to greenhouse gases, the temperature of the earth is going up. The end result will be large strips of land around the equator will become uninhabitable.
People will die of kidney failure. This may be accompanied by resource wars, some of them nuclear.
The population of Africa is slated to DOUBLE AGAIN by 2050. It is a crime against humanity to let that happen.
We need a new morality. No longer is it acceptable to have more than two children per family in an overpopulated world.
1
Earlier this year, Mr. Brooks wrote about his decision to write a book in 2015: "American culture seemed to be in decent shape and my focus was how individuals can deepen their inner lives."
This column exhibits more of Mr. Brooks consistent & exasperating inability to get fundamental.
Mr. Brooks, if your culture's relationships with the sky & ocean are deadly, your culture is not in decent shape.
Seriously, you write here & teach at Yale & I have to explain this to you?
Reference Points
1970: "The oceans are in danger of dying." Jacques Cousteau
2019: They're dying.
Mr. Brooks writes:
"The pluralist doesn’t see society as a competition for scarce resources, but as a joint voyage of discovery in search of life’s biggest answers." I submit that that is: Pulpit Fluff.
But okay, here's a big answer: Society is built on the Geo Eco Bio networks & these networks are being gutted at an accelerating rate, such that the margins of selection — generally tight, impersonal & brutally enforced — are severely contracting.
The world renowned scientist understands human nature: “Under pressure, any group of us can be as brutal as any of those we deplore: genocide by tribal animals is as natural as breathing…” James Lovelock
Our era is far more than "a vast social experiment."
More fundamentally, it's this:
“If there is a message in this book it is that we are not yet sufficiently intelligent to control or regulate ourselves or the Earth.” James Lovelock — A Rough Ride to the Future
4
“How the heck is this guy still doing so well out there, after all that has happened?” Seriously, a David, what all has actually happened? All the Russian stuff and Ukraine stuff if baloney, if you don’t know that you are steps behind the American people. What has happened is performance across a vast array of matters from immigration to regulatory reform, tax reduction and job growth.......such explains also, I think.
2
David, You spend too much time in rarefied air.
The next time you are in San Francisco, you really do need to have Friday lunch with me and the guys.
We sit around and talk about a lot of things, many of them the things you write about.
Out take is that the center-left as some would call it go to far to embrace a Multi-Cultural America. That the lack of societal pressure to conform to "The Melting Pot" is not a good thing. We think it just breeds silos of communities in America and that is not a good thing.
The consensus is that Multi-Ethnic is a great thing in America. Multi-Cultural is not.
Of course the Friday lunch is attended by mostly 1st or 2nd generation Americans who are a Jew, a Greek, a Russian, Chinese and a Mexican-Irishman who is a 3ed Generation San Franciscan.
Get out of your rarefied air David. Go have lunch with the real people for a change.
3
"In order to get people to integrate with others you have to help them weave close communities with their own kind."
This is a very categorical statement unsupported by any evidence in the piece. Is it self-evidently true Mr. Brooks?
3
Excellent insights!
Brooks: For people to feel secure about integrating, they also need to be able to weave with their own kind.
Also Brooks: The desire for safe spaces emanates from "emotional fragility." (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/opinion/making-modern-toughness.html)
Very cerebral and, of course, well thought out. Now, how do you ‘tell this story’ on a 5th grade level (not used in any derogatory sense) so most of us can understand and internalize this?
David Brooks, catching up to what the whole world knows, and has known, forever, one piece at a time, as the old Johnny Cash song goes.
It’s not racist to want to keep out uneducated people who don’t speak English, have no marketable skills and don’t mesh well with current American ideals.
Trump is 100% correct about liberal elites, as unfettered immigration only gets them cheaper labor and has little other effect on their lives as they live/work in bubbles.
6
Multiculturalism has failed the term flogging a dead horse comes to mind,just ask the Europeans
who have been trying longer to achieve it and are admitting defeat.
1
Beat him at his own game. Do his followers know that he has beern married to two immigrants who came here on H1B visas and that his current wife brought her communist parents here on "chain migration"?
Do they know that he hires H2B visa workers at his properties mainly from the Balkans to displace American workers.
Do they know that he has been accused of still hiring illegal employees and has a history of being fined for hiring illegal aliens to work on his jobsites?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-organization-undocumented-workers
If Trump actually wanted to reduce the number of illegal aliens, he would use employer sanctions to do it. Howver, most of those employers are Republicans.
And the solution is ...?
"How to Beat Trump on Immigration"
Seize his passport, and deport him.
2
Consider this: Numerous polls conducted worldwide have revealed a super-majority of Muslims believe gay people should be in jail and a significant minority of them believe gay people should be killed. The numbers for Sweden shocked me. I've always seen Scandinavia as a refuge if things went south here in the States. It's bad enough trying to deal with evangelicals, but one cannot reason with someone who wants you killed for supernatural reasons.
What you congenially call "faith" I call a threat.
4
Anyone can be an American.
0h, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; ...
Kipling was correct in 1889.........and is still correct.
2
Simply brilliant
Your thinking is scary. The real world is different from what you think.
2
You really don't get it. I know a long time union plumber, whose company bid a large housing project job and was selected for the work. Then, after the job was under way the entire crew was fired because the Contractor hired a crew of untrained, illegals who would work for less money. Are these workers "racist" because they had been betrayed by their nation allowing these illegals to stay and work? You are going to fix this how?
4
Have to appreciate how David Brooks will look under every rock, under every man-cover, for a way to criticize President Trump. As if the NY Times needs one more columnist who's anti-President.
With all of the crazy, weird ideas out there, being pushed by various elements of the Democratic Party - worthy topics for commentary by a person who claims to be a "conservative" - Mr. Brooks instead opts to add to the pile of vitriol on the pages of the NY Times aimed at President Trump.
3
David Brooks,
Can you please start directing your columns toward your beloved Republican party and tell them what to do? You keep voting for them, so they are clearly doing exactly what you want.
Stop telling Democrats how to clean up the messes that the people you admire and empower create. Start directing your columns to Republicans and telling them what to do instead of worshipping and voting for them and then demanding Democrats fix all the harm your vote and support caused.
Clean up your own messes instead of acting like an entitled and spoiled rich kid who expects Democrats to be your personal maid and clean up your messes so you don't have to lift a finger.
This is a column only an entitled and spoiled child would write.
I am not understanding when or WHY the USA became so obsessed with multi-culturalism.
As I understand it, culture is basicly a system of affecting a difference or an appearance of superiority to other systems or appearances of the same thing!
"We hop around the fire on our left feet....unlike those ignorant savages over there that hop around the fire on their right foot"....we are culturally superior.
The one-time beauty of America......we had NO culture. We found the whole "cultural enrichment" business to be un-pragmatic waste of time, energy,and resources. True enough, if your food tasted good and your music was toe tapping....we Americans quickly adopted that...but all that other baggage? No thanks. And please learn to speak english, it helps out a lot in the communication process.
.....
Immigration. All the Harvard educated white people pretending to be "culturally enriched' while they run our government DEMAND immigration for "diverse" reasons.......until the culturally enriched people start filling slots at their Alma Mater.....then it becomes a different matter all together.
The Problem is Overpopulation. Cultures are CLASHING and slaughtering one another in the crowded regions of the world.....the USA remains one of the Least populated places.....and because we insisted on eliminating Culture.....we have an abundance......the people trapped inside of "culture"....do not.
And this essay paradoxically even if it is preaching against elitism, by virtue of its preachiness will no doubt be castigated as elitist in itself.
I would propose to you that bigotry is genetic as low intelligence is and that there is a direct correlation between those traits. Like a baby bird imprints on the first thing they see at birth, unless such individuals are exposed to diversity at birth they will become lifelong bigots and nothing will change that. And unfortunately that is the case in so much of America today.
2
How would you explain Somalia? Five tribes; each tribe hates the other tribe; the tribes have been fighting each other for 1000 years and no end to the fighting in sight.
Would Somalia be an example of "genetic" bigotry?
2
When I read the New York Times, I always have the feeling that I am learning about so many things, that I have the need to be grateful. This is another lesson you give to invite us to be better persons.
We came to the United States as immigrants since about 20 years ago. More than 7300 days now. We traveled to 21 states. Throughout those years and places we enjoyed the warm generosity and teachings of 99.9% of the Americans we had the privilege to meet. We have extreme gratitude to America. The foundations to continue being an extraordinary nation are already available.
Seems to me there are no easy answers. As a liberal who once lived and loved Toronto for all its multiculturalism, I do understand resentment to an open border. I know that's not what Dems are for, but this is where illegal immigration comes in. Growing up near Seattle, who's gone through so many boom times, it's heartbreaking to see a quick influx of people and all the changes - that I view as negative. This goes for not just immigrants but from other states as well. Bottom line in my view is we've exceeded carrying capacity and our natural resources (water, land, air . . .) need to be a top priority.
4
In an overpopulated nation and world with shrinking resources and continually growing numbers of humans, we need to look at root sources of the problem: overpopulation, lack of women's power to control their bodies and childbearing, climate change causing geographic and political disruption. We are increasingly One world, interdependent, and need to address these problems with both our hearts and minds.
1
multiculturalism needs the atheist/agnostic RELIGION in order to be successful as well as an economic system dedicated to socialism if agnostic but communism if Atheist.
As soon as an ELITE come to be under agnostic/atheist religion questions arise about their behavior since they were not anointed by God or had the blessing of the holy priest what gives the right to be ELITE?
Dedicated to humnaity and the welfare of all their flocks of people could mean something but without a higherr power what would make the people rising up to ELITEDOM keep a moral code that would stand firm in caring for the FLOCKS of people they have risen above?
And who would be able to keep the people beneath them moral? Sure some of the Elite would remain moral for the only reason to climb that ladder to the top and selifish centered game and as they would rise temptations get greater never mind the people of the Flock ignorant to how ELITISM works seeing no more reason to remain agonstic moral but pleasure is their guide but as the trama come drug addiction is their lot in their cut short lives
The Elite have treated theur follow countrymen the way England treated their their captives in China and India.
This is the unforgivable sin because their is no way to reverse the damage except through an over throw of these CORRUPTED ELITE
This is an interesting column, but seems to have things backwards. Generally, tribal societies are usually the most parochial and "anti-other" - most afraid of the other, least open to other cultures. Multicultural societies, where people have a chance to learn about each other and rub shoulders on a regular basis, are usually the most tolerant and open to others.Tribal societies, which is what many small communities are - are generally not open to pluralism. That's why small rural communities are often the most intolerant of the other, and why big cities often embrace new immigrants and refugees. Today there is probably some middle ground -- a reasonable number of immigrants, but also carefully defined legal restrictions and border securities. We almost had a deal about immigration way back, and I hope under a new administration next year we can find our way back to a reasonable immigration law -- but that will only happen if tribal communities are willing to open their hearts and minds to some form of compromise and cooperation. I'm not holding my breath...
Multiculturalism only works when one group - one race and/or one religion - is dominate, and then only precariously. Can Brooks or any of his fans point to any case, in the last 10,000 years or so of human existance, where two or more races or two religions of approximately equal numbers existed in harmony?
Multiculturalism, on the utopian scale that Brooks dreams of, is a receipt for chaos.
5
After this week's border massacre of children, you really are that callous. We need a wall, and a cartel crackdown. Further, it's hard to believe how cavalier you are about the fate of trafficked children as byproducts of a system you aid and abet with promises of sanctuary and benefits. Witness Dem A-Listers Jeffrey Epstein and Ed Buck. If civilized people behave that way, how do you think uncivilized people behave? With over a decade controlling wartime borders overseas rife with smuggling and human trafficking, I can only hope you never have to witness the horrors that even today I can't unsee.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7045351/amp/Rapid-DNA-testing-reveals-migrants-faked-family-relationship-kids.html
3
Has it ever occurred to David Brooks that not wanting immigrants to immigrate for social and cultural reasons might actually be... racism?
1
Sounds like you are describing Toronto.
1
Democrats have literally lost their minds on this issue.
EVERYONE - left, right and middle - should be opposed to ILLEGAL immigration. Aboloshing ICE and decriminalising illegal immigration is lunacy.
8
Republicans have blocked every attempt at comprehensive immigration reform for 30 years. Even Ronald Reagan is an apostate in the GOP for his "amnesty" back in 1986, the last significant immigration legislation enacted.
The 2013 Gang of 8 bill passed the Senate overwhelmingly (68-32), but House Speaker John Boehner invoked the House Republican rule named after the pedophile wrestling coach to prevent the House from even considering the measure.
It's time for Senate Republicans to come to the table and pass H.R. 6, one of more than 400 bills that the House has delivered to the Senate so far this year, but that Mitch McConnell is blocking.
1
The big Leftist misstep in this election, is their choice for open borders.
You might not like it, but saying ‘decriminalize illegal crossing’ is saying we will let any one in and not ask for a passport. Face it, that’s an open border.
Let’s dream of what happens when Warren wins.
The border opens on day one.
People all over get hip to this fact, and we have HUGE influx of freeloaders showing up and crossing anyway they can, and is now illegal for the Border Patrol to stop them, so they simply walk in. They head over to Social Services and get free medicare, and a salary for refusing to work.
Liberals get happy butterflies in their tummy, sing cumbaya about America being a shinning beacon of Liberalism and all that garbage.
Then the bills start to pile up. Locals realize that a doctor appointment now is months away as they have to wait in line behind the illegals. Medicare, social security, food stamps all run out of cash as there simply is not enough to go around.
And Warren then resorts to raising taxes on the middle class.
This is what we are heading with Warren, to a lesser extent with Bernie.
Is that what we really want?
8
How to beat Trump on immigration? Vote democrat 2020!
1
What mush. Americans welcome immigrants, just not 1 million illegal immigration with no job skills that are destitute. Democrats cannot admit that there is a crisis at our border, so it is game over of Democrats in 2020 on immigration. Full stop.
5
Two truths need to be emphasized when talking about immigration.
1) Limiting immigration is idiotic if your goal is to maximize economic output, for the simple reason that humans are very good at producing much more than they consume.
2) The US has always had an open border policy--it's called birth. A thousand white boys will be born today, and some fraction of them will grow up to be Nazis. No one objects to them entering our society, no matter how ill prepared their parents are to raise them or how destructive their behavior might become.
It is insane that our gov't. prevents immigrants from doing nothing more than have a chance at realizing the American Dream.
'By contrast, highly educated white progressives tell them: If you want to restrict immigration you’re probably a racist. '
The stupidity of this statement is staggering. If so, then the 'highly educated' should be removed from the sentence above and replaced with something a lot less flattering, or 'progressive' becomes or should become a tainted word.
1
“ By contrast, highly educated white progressives tell them: If you want to restrict immigration you’re probably a racist.“
And that of course is the problem. I would like to have a rational discussion about immigration that identifies solutions that stop the flow of people entering my country, for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with the color of the people at the southern border. Unfortunately, to do so puts me in league with the racist in the White House (is there really any doubt?) and his followers. After all, unlike my circle of correspondents, Trump’s animus toward immigrants, legal and illegal, is rooted in his (and Stephen Miller’s) racism.
Not to go too far afield, but it’s the same with abortion. I am philosophically in favor of limits that might seem fairly conservative. But to get on that train, I would have to be in league with pseudochristian nutbags who think a blastocoel is a baby, and yet who couldn’t give a damn about actual, born babies . I find myself having to oppose the efforts of those, lest I be perceived as someone who believes women are nothing more than sexual robots and incubators. it’s like they are trying to outdo the Taliban. No thanks.
Americans do not dislike immigrants. They dislike lawbreakers and line-jumpers.
4
"Trump, like global populists everywhere, understands that we’re in the middle of a vast social experiment. "
Really David?
This isn't that hard. Of course there are steep challenges and very real concerns but the fundamental problem with Trump and his supporters is that they can scarcely view immigrants as people. They come from nations of rapists and criminals and shithole countries. There is the plea for understanding of where they are coming from but it's rooted in simple hate and fear. Further, there is a sense of entitlement that "these people" are not assuming their rightful place - out of sight and mind for people that would rather not be bothered - like it used to be.
Immigration has turned Sweden into a country with eight times the number of hate crimes per capita against Jews that we have in America, with our epidemic of antisemitism. Google the stats. Thanks but no thanks.
5
So-called progressives are the least tolerant. It's their way or the highway, and you're a racist if you don't go along with things like open borders.
6
Bingo.
It's "illegal immigration" Mr. Brooks.
If you cannot bring yourself to use thee proper term then perhaps your opinion on the subject is equally vacuous.
5
So incredible. Mr. Brooks cannot escape his invisible class and racial position. For years racial outsiders have crept into the society's major institutions, e.g. universities, only to discover that in order to survive, they needed a home base, e.g. ethnic student clubs, dorms, courses. And of course they were accused of Balkanizing our institutions. This is essentially what Mr. Brooks is now advocating for white Americans. There is an enormous difference, however. Whites seek to hold onto their pre-eminence now, whereas ethnic and racial minorities who managed to find a seat at the table, albeit it often of lesser stature, were fighting to be recognized on their own terms and to survive.
What a relief, Brooks proves retroactively that the emperor has clothes after all. He proves Trump's famous escalator speech reflected not an appeal to racism, but a brilliant parsing of the confusing culture clash worsened by economic anxiety.
But did he really have to go to France for that? I thought conservatives abhorred European thought.
So yes, let's bolster our monoculture until we feel secure enough to release brown children from cages. When a Cletus Safari to the most remote boondocks cafe reveals zero insecurity or dissatisfaction in rural white America, perhaps we can finally emulate Christ and love our brother as ourselves.
1
If we can achieve open borders between Mexico and the U.S., as with Canada, that will be ideal. But that's impractical.
The next best and achievable plan, which would give immense relief to 11 million undocumented immigrants, is to make them legal, with necessary weeding out of those with criminal record.
The killer clause here is "Pathway to Citizenship," which Democrats insist and some Republicans agree to. If that clause is eliminated, it could be passed. Make them legal immigrants with all the rights of a green card-holder, except that they can't become citizens. But Dreamers & veterans could be exceptions.
This is a decent compromise, which almost all undocumented immigrants would welcome & be satisfied.
2
@A.G. . Estimates of illegal immigrants in the USA range from 11 to 25 million. The first thing we need to do is count everyone who is in the country illegally. We need a one-year registration period at local DMVs for these folks. Those who register can benefit from any future immigration plan. Those who don't, can't and will face immediate deportation. Give registrants cards that keep them safe here for three years, no questions asked. Only with an accurate number can we form a policy. Otherwise we're doing the equivalent of planning a dinner party without knowing what's in the fridge.
1
@Snowball
"Give registrants cards that keep them safe here for three years, no questions asked." This is a good idea.
I don't think, but I have no evidence to prove though, the number will be close to 25. There maybe more than 11 million, by 1 or 2 million. Besides, more people have been leaving the U.S. than coming in, according to news reports.
In any case the anguish of the undocumented immigrants should be relieved. For that "Path-to-Citizenship" is unnecessary. This is where I fault the Democrats who talk as if there's no other solution.
1
While it is probably fair to describe immigration as an "experiment" in many European countries, the U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Immigration is not an experiment here; it's our norm. Bret Stephens recommended us to the 100 year old novel "My Antonia" as a document of our long experience of immigration. I enjoyed reading the book and found it strikingly relevant so long after its publication.
I suppose, as Livonian's excellent comment elsewhere illustrates, our recent problems have been caused by a rather uneven distribution of immigrants within the nation. But immigrants are what we all are, except for the relatively modest numbers of the indigenous peoples.
Good try, Mr. Brooks. But I read in vain, waiting for mention of the word, "jobs." How odd: the era of wage-stagnation parallels the era of mass immigration. Might there just possibly be a connection?
Among the clouds and cotton-candy of Mr. Brooks's column, you will not find any glint of economic reality.This, not a feel-good conference at the end of a first-class airplane ticket, is the reality that governs the lives of American citizens. They wonder why it has devolved on this country alone to sop up the wreckage of the world's numerous failed states. Good question.
5
And maybe at the same time as the demise of unions.
You have confused race and culture. Perhaps on purpose. Race refers to the immutable genetics of observable biologic traits, and to be racist is to assume aptitude, or lack of it, based on those traits. Culture is a pattern of observable choices that surround the practice of daily life that is endorsed by a group that lends to identify individuals as part of the group. By confusing the two we take away the ability to have opinions about poor cultural choices, or positive ones. I don’t care about the external genetics of whom my daughters marry. But I do have opinions regarding the culture my son-in-law embraces. Once we realize culture is a choice it frees everybody, but then also applies responsibility to choices which appear to be immutable because we confuse race and culture.
3
@Porter McRoberts I agree. In reading the piece I was struck by how his framing is off. When he talks about people of different backgrounds necessarily having different values I cringed. How would we know anything about someone's values based on race. I'm white. So is Ann Coulter. I share very few of the same values. When we predetermine that way someone looks or speaks means they don't share our values we will fear them for no reason.
1
If this country cares so much about workers and making sure “our people” do well - how about raising the minimum wage? It’s been $7.25/hr for TEN YEARS!
Worried about immigration? How about worrying about fair wages then right here among US citizens?
6
“There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese “- Fieval Mousekewitz
An American Tail - 1986
same song / same story - 34 years ago or 134 years ago .
good movie - worth watching & your kids will enjoy - while learning some historical context on immigration .
You people are missing the point. There's simply TOO MANY HUMANS. It doesn't make any difference what "race" or "culture" they are. The planet is dying due to lack of self-control. The least we can do is try and reduce the population of the US and maintain a standard of living - already gone in places like CA, for instance. The time will come when y'all wake up and realize that people are subject to natural laws like any other animal, but by then it will be too late.
6
Too many people (aided by vaccines, antibiotics, modern medicines but without enough birth control/family planning support) + a 'climate crisis' mixed with wars and weapons = masses of desperate people leaving their homelands in order to survive. You can debate philosophically all you want, but the formula above is the base of the 'immigration problem.' Better get used to it 'cause it's not going away.
1
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, et al are all worried about immigration? From Canada?
This is all a red herring.
The real issue is "I am white and I have to compete on a level playing field and I DO NOT LIKE IT, because I can't compete."
US "conservatism" which is in fact "regression" is about going back in time when White was Might. Sorry that shipped has sailed.
2
@Estelle
We here in the Rust Belt have many Latin American immigrants, many of them undocumented. They come here in vehicles traveling on roads. You'd be surprised how easy that is. We also have many immigrants from southern Asia and the Middle East. And oh yes, a few from Canada.
2
Americans are actually quite good at multiculturalism. But we are being fed a lie about illegal immigration, by Mr. Trump and his ilk, which unfortunately Mr. Brooks repeats in this article. In fact, we are not experiencing "high" levels of immigration compared to recent decades. And Trump has cut the number of legal immigrants even further. We do, however, seem to be experiencing high levels of persons attempting to enter the country legally as refugees. But we refuse to take responsibility for any of the causes, which are: 1. Our failed "war on drugs," which has turned countries to our south into drug corridors. 2. Our failure to control production and sale of military grade weapons for private use, which stream illegally across our southern border for use by those drug gangs. 3. Climate change, which has made subsistence agriculture in Central America much more difficult to sustain, and which of course, as a nation, we officially deny exists.
Mr. Brooks, I think a peek at history, specifically the history of the immigration to the US in the middle 19th century to the early 20th century might put what is going on in context.
The settled majority has always and everywhere been unwelcoming to others - the others used to be Italians, Slavs, Poles, Irish, Chinese, and above all Jews. (The history of the treatment of Africans is a different story).
It lead to the Chinese exclusion acts, the Johnson-Reed act, the establishment of the Border Patrol, and so on.
There were, obviously, counter-trends, but only in more settle times.
Has anything but the "others" changed?
1
David, you need to live out in a rural area for about a year to understand the complexity or perhaps simplicity of this issue. I grew up in a rural farming community, it is made up mostly of anglos and families whose ancestors immigrated from Mexico generations ago to work on the farms. It is static. There are no Muslims or Jews for probably 60 miles in any direction. There is no immigration into this community because there are no jobs. Yet there is fear of the hordes of people coming across the border, the imposition of Sharia Law, the Cartels smuggling drugs, etc. Why? Mostly Fox News. That and it is embedded in the culture, passed down from generation to generation. The only way to break the cycle is to leave it behind. One solution would be to incentivize young adults to live and work in another part of the country or even in a foreign country where they can truly interact with another culture. They're never going to do that in their home towns.
2
.
"Only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference." Good stuff.
First know thyself, then you can better "know" and understand others.
Avoid over-emphasizing the intellectual aspect of ourselves and others; instead look for virtue, creativity, a capacity for joy and a willingness to form relationships (temporary or longer).
And above all: forgivness ... because you're gonna mess this up.
1
It's easy to go to an elite 'cultural encounter' in Europe and preach about the joys of open borders. The reality is that most people don't live in gated communities with armed guards and robust safety and security.
Here in California the 'cultural encounters' are on the streets in Los Angeles, Escondido, La Habra, and Lynwood.
Open borders and unlimited immigration sells better when you're removed from actual "encounters". It's a tougher sell out on the streets where the consequences are real.
6
This is such a well reasoned and thoughtful article. It angers me that all the scapegoating of immigrants has made it impossible to have reasoned and thoughtful conversations about this issue with a huge swath of this country that has bought into the destructive MAGA narrative.
1
Brooks has been in preacher mode for many years now, so I am not surprised when he writes lines such as, "The person with the pluralist mind-set acknowledges that God’s truth is radically dispersed. It is not contained in one tradition and community."
I would agree with the sentiment, except for the fact that it implicitly rules out a large and growing community of people: atheists, secularists, "nones" and others who do not subscribe to the belief that there is any such thing as "God's truth." Yet Brooks, the eloquent crusader, can't seem to stop himself from tossing out these constant barbs, subtle or otherwise, to sting anyone who does not share his theistic beliefs.
The column is not a bad one, other than that. I like the idea of a "thick pluralism," and I am one of those white Hillary Clinton voters who does *not* think it's racist to have an affinity for one's culture and who does not believe that a desire to better manage immigration makes me a "racist."
This is a beautifully written piece by David Brooks that speaks truth into our situation. Unfortunately I can't post it on my Facebook or Twitter because the NYT placed a title on the opinion piece that makes it one-sided. I want my Trump supporting friends and family to read it, but the title the NYT puts on it will cause them to dismiss it immediately. Who wants to read something that is about defeating their side? It's too bad that the title is not in the spirit of the piece itself.
1
Lots of folks worry and believe that immigrants are taking away our jobs--this is just not so.Three examples. A major restaurant owner in New England tells me that he can't open some of his restaurants for lunch 'cause he can't find enough help. A farmer in New England tells me that he imports people from Haiti, and sends them back, A milk producer tells me that he imports Mexican, he too sends them back, pays for up and back transportation , because he to cannot find workers in his region. While our unemployment is down several sources have indicated that seven million jobs are open.
Unfortunately, Mr. Brooks, those persons who should read your essay the most, will read it the least.
"The lesson is that to create thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base."
The sole truth from Brooks and something unattainable when the Republicans easily take our wealth and our freedom.
The problem of antiimmigration bias in the US is the problem of generational forgetting, of what that bias leads to. What is happening today is no different than what had happened in the US in earlier centuries, just the target is different. People like to be told that they are inherently better because they are X, and sociopaths in politics always try to take advantage of this tendency. Donald Trump is the king of people who believe they are better because they are White (and Christian). Just look at the lineup in every one of his rallies. A line of white people, shamelessly staring at the camera, enjoying their festival of hate.
As a practical matter though, laws have to be enforced. Contemporary American left is veering dangerously towards the territory of confusing social justice with lawlessness. A society can only change so fast, anyone who forgets it opens the door to Trumps of the world.
As a truly practical matter, the US needs a gastarbeiter program. The nominal unemployment stands at 3.5%, even though labor force participation stands at multidecadal low. It only gets worse from there. Whole industries will fold in the US if they are deprived of labor that is willing to work for less than the native born. A good program will provide basic labor protection to this workforce, let them spend holidays at home, rather than with coyotes, and will force their employers to fund health insurance for their workers.
Enough said.
Yeah, no academic is going to convince me that letting in mass quantities of uneducated and unvetted people is a good idea. We do have the capacity to think for ourselves and this defies basic common sense.
5
@Michael
Define "mass quantities".
There's no "open door" policy being considered. But there is a wasteful wall being built.
It's also about Supreme Court Justices.
It's also about guns.
It's also about racism, sexism, homophobia, selfishness.
It's so much more than just immigration.
Skate around the issue as much as you like but immigration equates to defining deviance down in the minds of many of Trump’s supporters. They have a point, too. How many elites like Brooks experience life where the rubber meets the road in places where native working class people have witnessed the decline in wages and quality of life that correlates with an influx of mainly Hispanic illegal immigrants? Worked in any kitchens or on any construction sites lately? Take away your nannies and gardeners and then we’ll talk. I’ll believe my lying eyes until then.
4
"to create thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base"
And that's why Republicans point to immigrants as the source of the insecurities while Republican policies undermine the security of hard-working people.
To suggest this is defeating "Trump" on immigration shows your utter disconnect from real Americans. Trump won 85% of counties in the last election, and immigration was one of his signature policy issues responsible. Yours is a very idealistic, naive view of the world - and I wish I could look at the world through child-like eyes as well - it must be super fun David.
When there are dozens of languages being spoken in your school, it makes for an extremely inefficient and expensive delivery of information. If we're going to compete globally in education, we need English-speakers in schools. A huge advantage that we have over many other countries is that we have a dominant language, and it needs to stay that way. Unrestricted immigration will erode that advantage. In many ways it already has.
And the people who don't see immigration of millions of low wage seekers as a threat write opinion pieces for the NYT - where their job is not easily commandeered by an illegal immigrant.
And finally, the social welfare costs to this invasion are massive. Food stamps, free healthcare via emergency rooms, higher education costs, section 8 housing. It's criminal actually. And this is a policy issue that will propel Trump to another victory in 2020. He hasn't had many successes, in part because of liberal Obama era judges overruling any initiative he tries. And partly because the GOP loves cheap labor as much as liberals love votes. But he's trying and should be commended.
4
Brooks leaves out another key cause of insecurity. White Western culture and tradition is under vicious attack by the left, especially in academia, as scapegoats for disparities in education, crime, poverty, etc, and every other real and perceived social social ill, whether by colonialism, slavery, racism, the patriarchy, cultural appropriation, or whatever new "woke" theory. Most disparity in the world can no longer legitimately be blamed on Whitey. It's now just personal attack. It should come as no surprise many are stockpiling guns and ammo.
3
Not nearly distracting as it could be. Immigration is not a threat to the population centers in America: California, Texas, New York. New Jersey, and Florida. This issue is a small white state with undue electoral college influence. The majority of the population will not support the electoral college imbalance once an articulate populace enters the stage. Republicans make it difficult to vote, purge voter registration records, close voting sites or add last minute requirements that disenfranchises minorities, while they gerrymander every district to assure Republican victory despite the popular vote. Republicans rely on the electoral college to win presidential elections.
All Democrats have to do is air video tapes of “Trump being Trump”, and gerrymandering, and cruelty to immigrants and poor whites (who are the majority Social Service recipients) who’s healthcare, food stamps, WIC benefits are the target of the wealthy white Republican base. Poor whites are angry because they go to a resentment base instead of going after their exploiters. It’s easy to blame immigrants and non-whites and hard to fight fat cats who have the “white Christian” evangelical support.
When he's good, he's very, very good.
I am one of those white Clinton voters with a graduate degree that think it's racist to limit immigration for ethnic and cultural reasons as are most of my friends and family. I am also a citizen who believes that immigration should be legal and should be limited as are most of my friends and family. I know absolutely no person except internet bomb throwers who say anything different. That doesn't mean I think it's acceptable to mistreat people or take their children away. That doesn't mean I think undocumented immigrants are evil and dangerous. The real enforcement needs to be against employers who illegally hire undocumented immigrants. No one seems to want to go after the money that attracts people to make the dangerous decision to come here without documentation.
2
Ah, "spiritual security" again? What people really care about is a steady paycheck with a reasonably good chance at advancement........after that, they can figure out what church to attend.
Although I think there are a lot of racists in our country and I would include Donald Trump in that category, I don't think all the people who want to lilmit immigration and vote for Donald Trump are racists. There are many other reasons why individuals choose to support Trump....ecoonomic as well as social.
Likewise, not everyone who supports a single payer system is a socialist. A good example of this is Elizabeth Warren. I actually believe Elizabeth Warren when she says she's not a socialist. Her plans to break up monopolies through anti-turst enforcement are very similar to those of the Republican Teddy Roosevelt. I also believe people who are against immigration when they say they also say they are not racists.
The Republicans spent a lot of time calling Barack Obama a socialist when he was president and there was no real evidence based upon his record that he was a socialist. Nor did Obama embrace identity politics....which is one of the reasons why many white swing voters voted for him.
Because the use of the word socialist was overused without evidence, a lot of people in this country really are socialist today. And this is because Obama never really did anything that radical. Therefore, I think Democrats would be wise not to make the same mistake that Republicans made and overuse the word racist.
When iwe resort to name calling...using the racist label to loosely, this helps the cause of racists more than it hurts it.
Yeah... No... Too ivory tower. In the real world low-skilled and poorly educated people showing up in huge numbers is a drag on wages, housing, traffic, services, etc., etc. etc. Careful studies have shown no real pluses for the average person, more wealth for the rich, and little or no pluses at the bottom. Fail.
6
So whatever happened to the "melting pot"? It seemed to work for awhile.
3
Whatever one thinks of Brooks’ proposal for immigration, he is on the right track in reframing the discussion as one of cultural encounter and social and cultural pluralism. Thanks DB.
Your piece assumes that beating Trump on immigration is a worthy goal. It is not. That Trump falls short in so many arenas does not mean he is wrong on this one. It just may get him re-elected.
3
“When people meet in this way, they put their opinions, identities and way of life at risk. They might be changed by the encounter. The process is unsettling.”
For bigots.
DEm candidates need to go much more moderate on this issue in order to win.
The proper tactic in view of the sweeping changes in global migratory movements vis a vis climate chage and drought is that we all must backup and reconsider all issues pertinent.
We best say "let's hear all sides and consider all evidence" and work out a plan to cope.
Any kind of liberal openborder stance at this stage is suicidal politically. The issue is becoming explosive and degrading rapidly.
Why lose over an issue so complex and strategic when a measured even conservative stance is called for in the present.
This from a bleeding heart liberal old immigration lawyer.
Dems Take Heed....................be wary and backup without looking over your sholder: like right now.
1
I want to live in a pluralist society as you described.
I wish conservatives valued being rooted in place. Today’s conservatives seem only rooted in “what’s in it for me”. They are willing to sacrifice everything else for the unicorn called “prosperity “ without any definition other than accumulating wealth. Then they wonder why everything else falls apart.
1
"Cosmopolitans never get this"?
Cosmopolitan is defined as a person who is at home all over the world. and I would add with many cultures. A pluralist in in your words. Yes personal economic and cultural security are the key components to that confidence. But to say that "cosmopolitans" never get that is the exact opposite of the truth. maybe you actually meant Parochial.
pa·ro·chi·al
/pəˈrōkēəl/
adjective
having a limited or narrow outlook or scope.
"this worldview seems incredibly naive and parochial"
synonyms: narrow-minded, small-minded, provincial, insular, narrow, small-town, inward-looking, limited, restricted, localist, conservative, conventional, short-sighted, petty, close-minded, blinkered, myopic, introverted, illiberal, hidebound, intolerant; More
ahhh...Aristotle's principle of the mean, i.e., finding balance.
Ever since we climbed down from the trees, social cooperation has depended on trust, and trust depends on familiarity, and on knowing that you are LIKE ME, that we share a geography, life experience, cultural world-view, values and language. Early human societies were small-scale, face-to-fave, kin-based SOCIETIES OF INTIMATES, and were the most egalitarian societies we've ever been as a species. You blow that, as we started doing ca. 8,000 BC, and social cooperation becomes nigh impossible. You get kings, dictators, empires & mega-wars. So yes, Virginia, it's all CULTURE & LANGUAGE. TG
Duh, well of course. But before teaching, one must get the student to pay attention. How to do that?
As drug cartels become more emboldened and Americans see the threat to their security, you can be sure that the open border policy promoted by Democrats will rapidly become less popular.
3
David, you are missing the point.Many of us "deplorable"s are comfortable with the aliens coming here.We like tacos, sushi and learn so much from the new comers, especially that how much better this country is than where they come from.We don't want open borders.We want to decide who and when and how many..Do we want illegals to compete for affirmative action spots in collages, do we want them to get free health care, get on welfare ?We need to take care of our homeless our poor our veterans, educate our children.If someone comes here and turns out they are criminals back to where they came from.
7
Two suggestions that must be acknowledged before any progress is made:
Cultures clash. Evolutionary psychology. Those strangers showing up at your campfire hundreds of thousands of years ago were not there to sing Kumbaya.
Labor is a commodity. The more there is, the lower its value.
I'm 73, and FDR liberal. My left of center friends ignore these fundamentals, often until I point them out. "Oh."
Those white, educated, open the border types aren't threatened by immigration for the most part. And, gee, look at all the nannies and gardeners we get along with lower wages.
4
Left unsaid is the fact that our Central American ambassadors wrote a collective letter to the Trump Administration arguing against the return of people here on temporary status.
It would have a destabilizing effect on Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, where the "caravans" originate.
This has been our national policy.
But Donald rejected all that because he wants to show progress on deportation so he can win re-election. Once again, Trump subordinates national policy to his personal political advantage.
The best way to beat Trump on immigration is to impeach the... guy.
This piece is similar to his sermon a few backs back on how to tip properly.
We need, he says, to embrace both the moment of intersection with a new culture and the burrowing into our own community. Then we might reach some lofty level of folksy wokeness.
No thanks. I'll use my brain and experience the way I have done it for the past 72 years. I assume just about everybody else does the same. What's the point?
"God's truth is radically dispersed"? While you attempt to paint a possible ideal, multi-cultural, world here, you focus too much on the cultural issues as the problem. Cultural strain is certainly an important factor, but much more are the economic and political risks that must be taken for this "one world" dream; especially considering that in a democracy the numbers determine the laws and policy, changes of which then apply to all. Further, there are no "gods", and we have only this life. Most people, particularly in the US and other first world countries, have come to know that.
Brooks' heart is in the right place, but he underestimates the differing effects of immigration on the American populace, and worldwide patterns that make Americans understand that we're not looking anymore at our grandparents' immigration. Rich and upper middle class folks reap the benefits of vast immigration in the form of cheap services. It has little impact on their daily lives, their kids' private schooling, crime, etc. For the rest of us, the impact is massive. Just come visit my neighborhood public school which has eliminated art/music/school librarian in favor of massive ESL English for the kids of illegal immigrants. At the same time, people no longer come to new countries to weave into that country's social fabric. They come to change it. Case in point? Sweden, with a population of 10 million, had 8 times per capita the number of antisemitic hate crimes last year as the United States, with our burgeoning antisemitism problem. That Swedish figure doubled over the year before. What changed? Sweden has seen massive immigration in the past 10 years, and those immigrants are changing Swedish society...and not in a good way.
6
Immigration, climate change, over-population and the unfettered capitalist system whereby resources financial and otherwise inevitably siphon to a miniscule top tier: unless these problems are dealt with effectively, the species is doomed.
1
The moderate, unity-building, consensus-driven approach is too often maligned by narrow-thinking ideologues, many in the comments to this article. Moderation is not fuzzy-wuzzy muddle; it captures the best of conservatism and the best of progressivism.
We are only going to "move forward" (which progressives like) if we work together to achieve a shared consensus on what moving forward actually means for everyone. We are only going to preserve the good things we have (which conservatives like) if we jointly revere and maintain them.
The far-left progressive and the hard-right conservative ideologues are just the same: they each want to force their own little narrow vision on the other 90% of the people. I implore you all to work with the 80% in the center, the vast majority, consisting of hard-working, good-hearted, open-minded people who want to see a strong, pluralistic, growth-oriented, hopeful America where everyone can fully live out their identity, their calling, and their dreams. Obama and Biden saw this goal and worked toward it. Trump, Warren, and Sanders obviously do not.
1
"A key pluralist trait is curiosity, the opposite of anxiety." The clearest statement of all.
Curiosity leads to education and education leads to... more curiosity. Also, we venture away from our tribe once armed with education. We seek a wider world. And yet, it is not without risks. All people are not homogeneous. We must learn to identify good people from bad people to avoid bad outcomes. We can identify such people in our tribe, but we have to learn how to do it with others.
Personally, I still can't sort good from bad in other groups as easily as I can my own. But I'm working on it.
2
racism is the most overly used, reflexive and fully diluted term today. most people who use it don't know anything about what it really means. it's just a word now that means you don't like someone's views on, for example, immigration. it lacks the power it once had.
you can't tell me that a family of five coming from he middle of nowhere in nicaragua can claim, credibly, that they're asylum seekers for political reasons. come on. and to presume that is not racist. just skeptical.
5
This is a bizarre argument. I think Mr. Brooks needs to reevaluate the logical consistency of his political philosophy, because "cosmopolitans" are the ones who support healthcare security, increasing wages, and increasing government services. It's Mr. Brooks's own party that have set out to systematically destroy what he claims is needed by: 1) Eviscerating Obamacare; 2) Emasculating unions; 3) Cutting Medicare and Social Security; 4) Increasing the retirement age; 5) Failing to increase the minimum wage; 6) Forcing people to sign arbitration and no-compete contracts, even for fast-food workers; 6) I could go on and on and on, but I'm limited to a few thousand characters. Conclusion, though: You have got to be kidding!!!
2
The electoral map explains tolerance pretty well. The blue areas, within states and of states themselves, is usually densely populated areas, large cities and population centers, very close proximity to neighbors. The red areas are rural, lots of open space, scarce population a lot of distance between neighbors. When people of all races are forced to live with each other in close proximity, they all learn tolerance and acceptance of the other. When people can isolate themselves behind fences in their rural fortresses and the only place they commune with others in in church with people who look and act exactly like themselves tolerance of differences is not as necessary as fitting in with the herd. Blue America will tolerate Red America but red America has no way of understanding Blue America. Because of the electoral collage Red America is in charge, intolerance is in charge and the herd mentality is in charge.
4
Excellent! Bonded and bridging.
1
Why not admit that one small part of the President's message is correct: We need to stop illegal immigration because it contributes to unsustainable population growth in the US?
We were warned about population growth in 1969 in the book, the Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich. But his viewpoint was first entertained then held up for ridicule by the vast majority of Americans. In 1972, Randers et al published "the Limits to Growth," which described what would likely occur if population growth continued. Environmental degradation might be accompanied by "overshoot and collapse," as population temporarily exceeded the earth's carrying capacity.
The Chinese took this message to heart. After the famine of 1959-61 had killed 15-45 million Chinese, Deng Xiaoping introduced a one-child policy. It is this policy which Joe Biden characterized as "repugnant" during a visit to China as Vice President. Biden should NOT be the Democratic choice.
We have done NOTHING for 50 years. Each year the world usage of oil goes up inspire of efforts to shift to renewable energy. Without curtailing population growth, the other efforts will fail to stop global warming.
And that is the real problem. We need to stop the population from doubling once again in Africa by 2050 in accordance with projections.
David Brooks tries to comfort us with warm and fuzzy visions of a multicultural world. But we have waited too long.
Population growth will derail our democracy before the lights go out.
3
Wow, Brooks often seems to find a way to connect with this progressive liberal, me. The key take away here for me is that immigration goes down a lot easier when people are economically secure. And fixing the economy for the working class needs to be our goal. I really don't believe that simple fear of "the other" gets enough people off their coaches and to the voting booth, but economic insecurity does. And when people are insecure they can flail madly in all directions, striking at phantoms and the innocent alike.
1
...and if there are civic and ethical fibers woven across cultures, which there are, ethical-minded people will find each other at home and abroad.
1
I agree with Brook's views as far as they go, but he doesn't draw a key moral: The views expressed here imply that immigration must be controlled or it will be socially disruptive. Most people would be happy to be able to explore the differences and values brought to the U.S. by immigrants if they didn't fear that it would cause social upheaval. Both conservatives and progressives should welcome controlled immigration that allows for the exploration of the differences immigration brings without the disruption and destruction of uncontrolled immigration.
1
First, let's note that most people are open and welcoming to legal immigrants, but too many pundits and politicians are prone to lump illegals into the term "immigrants".
Second, while most people are fond of experiencing the food and culture of Italian, Greek, Asian or other neighborhoods, they do also want these places to be American first.
Welcome to this wonderful country, but please follow our laws and speak our common language. Then we can learn from your cultural experience.
4
Do two things: First liberalize LEGAL immigration so it is possible for people to come into the country without years long waits for resident visas. And second, secure the borders to the maximum extent possible. Could be a wall, could be higher tech surveillance, any thing that would work. And here is why: You can’t get the first without doing the second.
3
Thank you David for a wonderful column. An adage that occurred to me while reading it, "In order to love others you must first love yourself."
1
NY Times readers are liberal. Democratic leaders can read the sentiments written here and learn where some of their most ardent supporters are on the issue of immigration. They are in middle, not to the far left where the leadership seems to be. Realizing this is key to defeating Trump in 2020.
3
Satisfying the basic biological needs of our citizens would go a long way toward making them receptive to higher ideals. I buy the argument that religion could play a constructive role in the process by fostering such ideals. But there is so much bigotry and hate in religion as practiced in many regions, particularly the South, that the effort to replace it seems daunting. How many of those that agree with you, David, would be willing to engage the evangelists of hate with sufficient respect to start a real conversation? Your goals will not be achievable if we persist in zero sum politics where the winners bury the losers rather than seeking to engage them in finding real solutions.
My question is simple: what is the end point for the left? What do they really want, and who will be left to pay for it?
If we give everything to everybody for "free," and allow anyone to come into the country and continue to pay for their healthcare and welfare, how will we have anything left to pay for everything else?
Tax the rich, tax the rich..... well, eventually that will run out. And aren't "the rich" entitled to the fruits of their labor? Seems that it is perfectly fine to take from those who earned it, but nobody puts any responsibility on those who are not rich to work harder, make better choices, and support themselves?
I am tired of hearing about the idea that immigrants will do jobs Americans won't. I have news for you: if we cut off the welfare spigot, people will do those jobs. I cleaned bathrooms and trash rooms in college, because that was the job that fit in with my studies. Paid $5/hour in the late '80s. An hour a day doing that, 7 days a week, I was able to afford lunch and dinner. Still had debt, but that much less....
People won't work if you will just hand it to them instead. And people will keep flooding the country if we make it easy for them to do so.
10
@Ny Surgeon -
You are assuming a fair system with equal opportunities. As we all know by now such is not the case. Capitalism like anything else needs checks and balances. Some would say it is distinction without a difference with that and socialism. It shouldn't be the game of Monopoly where all the money eventually flows one way and everyone else goes bankrupt.
@IGUANA
I could not agree with you more. But the left does not. All we here is "forgive educational debt" (I did not force you to go to an expensive private school, nor did I have a say in what useless subject you chose to study, or how hard you studied), free this, free that, let everyone in.
My question remains, what is the end goal of the left? Free everything without accountability is not fairness by any stretch.
1
The United States of America, since even before its inception, was a place dedicated to pluralistic faiths, lifestyles, and opinions. From the Pilgrim Fathers to today's immigrants, fleeing oppression has always been a prime reason why people have wanted to come here. We are at our best as a country when we lead by example, and THIS example, our freedoms, have been our legacy to the rest of the world. We will always have small, insecure, narrow-minded people among us. But we are better than that, and unless we abandon those ideals, we always will be better than that.
@TRA
I agree with you: "We are at our best as a country when we lead by example, and this example, our freedoms, have been our legacy to the rest of the world."
But while we can set an example for people in other countries to follow, the people in other countries must work to change their own countries so that they and other citizens of their country can live in freedom and prosperity.
That isn't what is happening. As more and more American jobs move to Third World countries, and more and more people from Third World countries come into the USA, taking more and more resources including tax dollars, far too many working class Americans have been left out.
We are told that immigrants don't get welfare - but we see them at the grocery store checkout line using SNAP. We are told they don't get subsidized housing, but the poorest among us tell us many immigrants are their neighbors in housing projects. We are told they don't but those of us who work in an ER know they do get free medical care.
And only immigrants working for minimum wage get some construction jobs.
What we working class Americans see is that for us, the US is becoming more and more like a Third World country.
And that cannot continue to be tolerated!
Our politicians need to look at the issue of immigration with the view to the millions of working class American voters and understand: We do not want to live like the citizens of Third World countries.
We are voters - hear us roar!
5
On planet earth, we are all immigrants.
Regardless of the self importance that people attribute to themselves and their own culture, to their financial power or lack thereof, to their blessings of good fortune or not so good fortune, the bottom line is that in being born on plant earth no one is better than anyone else. Humble realization and acceptance of that fact should be the foundation for caring and loving attitudes towards any other person, any other culture.
2
Uncontrolled immigration undermines the concept of a nation-state. That's how we got where we are. And you can't have progressive policies without the social cohesion of a nation-state. That's why we are where we are.
16
Unfortunately, given the state of our development as a species, multiculturalism is a dream that cannot work under the present circumstances. Trying to force it will only lead to greater division or worse. When you see the completely fractured state of our politics notwithstanding the homogeneity of our society, it should give us all reason for pause until there is greater maturity of our species, assuming it lasts long enough to accomplish that.
3
@jpduffy3
A cursory look at Europe and its growing Muslim population bears you out. Most residents hardly think building in an intolerant, isolated, potentially radicalized segment of society is "enriching" in any sense of the word. There is a reason people from that part of the world want to flood west and virtually no one from the west wants to move there.
3
Brooks was correct in 2007 (edited d/t space limits):
"Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration. This dream has illuminated American life for the past several decades - the belief that the world is getting smaller and that different peoples are coming together over time.
Over the course of the 20th century, the civil rights movement promised to heal the nation’s oldest wound. Racism and discrimination would diminish.
The end of the cold war promised to heal the rift between democracy and dictatorship. More nations would be welcomed into the community of free peoples.
The trauma of Sept. 11 promised to heal the rifts between red and blue America. There were the integrating forces of globalization and technology. The growing movement of people would pave the way for multicultural societies.
The progress in civil rights has not produced racial integration. Fifty years after Brown, blacks and whites do not live side by side even when they share the same income levels. They do not go to the same schools. And when they do go to the same schools, they do not lead shared lives. As people noted last week, many educators are giving up on the dream of integration so they can focus on quality.
But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.
For a million years our ancestors lived in small bands. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them."
Human nature!
4
Given the growing interdependence of the Nations of this planet it only makes sense that all nations and cultures become more open to others’ values and traditions. We impact other nations with the way we pollute the air and the markets with useless products designed only for pleasure and inane entertainment. Yet we are unwilling to embrace pluralism and what other cultures have to offer which enriches us at a deeper level. It is a given that this planet will become more and more impacted by overpopulation, overproduction,overbearing philosophies of “me first”. Immigration concerns seem quaint given the snowball effect of overpopulation which breeds intolerance.
I don’t hear any of the present politicians on both sides of the spectrum address this issue in any meaningful way. Intolerance is the name of the game unfortunately in both camps, Democrat and Republican.
1
The core assumption Mr. Brooks makes, alas, is that "you can go back where you came from." Mr. Brooks claims that we need a secure base. But the place "where you came from" does not exist. It existed once upon a time, but it is gone forever.
My family moved around a lot in my younger days, and I grew up seven different communities in three different states. Many new and different social groups live in those places now. As an adult, I have lived in eight different communities in four different states, and all of them have changed greatly since I first moved to them. Once familiar landmarks have disappeared when I have later been able to make brief return visits. My spouse's family moved even greater distances: my wife was born half-way around the planet from where we live today.
It is not just in meeting immigrants that we have stressful cultural encounters; we can have equally stressful cultural encounters with neighbors who live down the street. Indeed, I find it much easier to relate to most immigrants than to folks who grew up in the locality where I now live—a locality whose history and culture remain baffling to me even after living at the same address for more than three decades.
You cannot expect to provide people with a secure base, because there is no such thing as a secure base. What you imagine to be a secure base no longer exists. The only constant is change. Grow up and deal with it. And stop pining for the status quo ante.
1
Brooks rightly says what Burke rightly said: To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.
Brooks is correct in reporting the facts that people whose health insurance, children's education, job security, wages are threatened a far more xenophobic than those who are secure in those areas. In addition exposure to people whose origin is different from yours is more likely to occur in metro areas not rural areas. And that is the paradox. The fewer chances of interaction leads to more fear of the other.
In Trump country on the taiga there are physicians who are foreign born and Hispanic workers on the mega dairy farms and packing plants. All three of those jobs are not going to be filled by the locals.
In addition the students with perfect SAT or Act scores are children of foreign physicians.
But it is only Democratic policies that plan on reducing the health, education uncertainty among the xenophobic. Jobs and wages are much harder nuts to crack.
1
As Sherrod Brown often says and won with "focus on improving the dignity of work". Raise the minimum wage, enable more collective bargaining, remove all dark money from politics. Raise taxes on the rich. Then workers will feel secure and embrace controlled reasonable immigration.
Great article! Thank you, David. People (adults as well as our children) first need to feel secure before they can explore and engage their curiosity about the world. Without this needed base of security from which to grow stronger, they become anxious and afraid. This is the larger picture moderates that want to be focusing on now. Not the division.
1
I don't know what "thick pluralism" is, but I do agree with the message of this column that building a pluralistic culture, groups have to "integrate with others". The trick is how do you facilitate such integration. Mr. Brooks offers a good starting point stating: "Walking into each room confident in your convictions but humbly aware that they are not the only convictions. Being slow to take offense when somebody says the wrong thing, quick to forget the transgressions of others and honest in acknowledging your group’s past wrongs." All parties need to follow this formula for the creation and maintenance of a cohesive, pluralist society. However, society (read that gov't) must also actively support and facilitate integration through both policies and programs. Trump fails on all of these factors while Bernie is on the right track when he supports allowing undocumented (AKA illegal) immigrants to stay in the US w/o fear of deportation if they have been here for 5 yrs, presumably w/o any legal transgressions of significance. A formal "guest worker" program and programs to teach English to adult non-English speakers would also help with the move of immigrants from a closed ethnic community to the broader multi-cultural society that has been and is America.
1
A few weekends ago, in Balboa Park, I did voter registration and answered any questions about Elizabeth Warren.
I would walk up to people passing our booth, ask if they were registered voters, and if they answered "yes", I asked "Who do you like for president so far?"
San Diego is both beautifully diverse AND a tourist town.
Almost always, when I approached a person whom I'd doubted was a U.S. voter, it turned out that they certainly were!
It's hard to express how wonderfully impossible it can be to "tell" citizens from non-citizens: we are all Americans, because of our belief in equality. We welcome everyone, or we impoverish our culture.
So close yet so far...Mr Brooks almost acknowledges that the damaging and pig headed spending cuts on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the financial crisis have played a major in our current sorry state of anti-immigrant affairs. Not only did balancing the books fly in the face of economic theory and evidence, but it has damaged our social fabric, created economic insecurity and fueled anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and America. The day that Republicans extol the virtues of public spending to provide a safety net, enhance equal opportunities, offer a springboard for innovation and entrepreneurship, not to mention nurture a strong social fabric that embraces the diversity and energy that legal immigration can bring...it will finally be "morning in America" once more. I am not holding my breath.
2
How to Beat Trump on Immigration?
First, recognize that illegal immigration should be stopped.
The rationale is simple. The world is entering a period during which global warming will begin to become more apparent. We are already seeing the first stages in the fires in California. It will become apparent to all but the willfully blind that global warming is caused by population growth, and that only way to prevent possible extinction of the human species is to take actions to curb population growth.
For example, consider Guatemala. The population of Guatemala has quadrupled since 1960. The result has been that family farms become smaller, and more have moved to slums in the cities. Gangs have taken over.
Our morality is twisted. We do not see excessive fertility as a crime against humanity. Yet it certainly is.
It is true that many in Guatemala reproduce out of ignorance. We need to change that by making family planning available not only in Guatemala, but in Africa were the population is projected to double again by 2050. And in India. And in the Middle East.
Of course, we should adopt the same principles in the US. We must come to see having more than two children as a crime against Mother Earth.
That is a major change in attitude. But the other approaches are ineffectual without controlling population growth.
We can make the rational choice. We can work to achieve zero population growth through family planning.
the immigration will not be needed.
5
Only with hindsight and the creation of stagnant
economic problems will those who oppose immigration get the chance to say “gee i was mistaken ,how do we fix it? “
Unfortunately by that point solutions have either passed them by or are too expensive to
Implement
Education holds the key to changing this dynamic .But ya gotta spend the $ not cut the taxes
The GOP will never agrees
1
I've always believed immigration reform is something that could be done in a few days is we had adults debating in good faith. First we had Mitch McConnell determined to see the Obama presidency fail, now we have a demagogue leveraging immigration as a divisive issue.
For undocumented people living, working and spending money in this country, just wholesale shipping them all back is nuts. We need "amnesty"--that horrible dreaded word, where they still pay a penalty and are not better off than if they had gone the legal route, and we need better border security--not simply a symbolic wall that stands as a monument to Trump's greatness--so the problem doesn't repeat in a few years. And we need a sense of proportion about how serious a problem immigration is compared to, say, climate change. It ain't rocket science.
1
@DL
You realize immigration is tied to population growth and population is tied to climate change? These issues are not isolated from each other as much as the left would like us to think so. Amnesty sounds great. The problem is amnesty is never followed by a reasonable immigration overhaul. It is followed by more illegal immigration and less enforcement and... another amnesty or calls for another, all of which spur more people to come illegally. Once anyone comes here, they rarely, if ever, have to leave, no matter what they're circumstances. That's not done anywhere else on earth and shouldn't be done that way here.
6
Do we need amnesty?
Isn't the hope - indeed the expectation - of amnesty what brings so many illegal immigrants to the USA?
Isn't amnesty a reward for bad behavior - the bad behavior of breaking the laws of the USA by entering illegally?
What happens when you reward bad behavior?
The answer is easy: You get more of it.
5
YES! A brilliant insight encountered in a forum away from home with people who are living the reality we human beings need to embody if the human race has a future. Thank you, David Brooks.
2
David Brooks, while I agree with you keep two things in mind: this kind of thinking is associated with people who, in Maslow's hierarchy of need are at the self-actualization level. There ain't a whole lot of them.
Very sound social/psychological studies show that only people and organizations that are under extreme stress are capable of making significant enduring change in their own and their organizational life.
1
We need a better immigration policy.
1) First we, as a nation, need to establish and clearly state, to ourselves and the world, what we expect our immigration policy to accomplish. What are our needs, both practical and ethical? What do we want our policy to reflect about ourselves as a people?
2) Once we have clearly identified who we want to allow in and why these are the people we want, we need to provide resources adequate to the task of screening applicants respectfully, fairly, effectively, humanely and efficiently.
3) We need to recognize, as an obligation, our responsibility to create a separate policy for dealing with migrants fleeing war, natural disaster, violence and persecution.
People fleeing for their lives deserve special consideration, at least for temporary sanctuary.
Part of this policy includes addressing what we can do, in partnership with other nations, to address the conditions in those nations from which people are fleeing.
4) Policies must be verifiably fact based.
We are, including Native Americans, all immigrants. Many of the problems we ascribe to conditions created by immigration have other roots.
What are American values and what kind of immigration policies do those values require us to establish and implement?
1
@David
Problem with your item number 3: "We need to recognize, as an obligation, our responsibility to create a separate policy for dealing with migrants fleeing war, natural disaster, violence and persecution."
Isn't that a recipe for open borders?
3
Although the tolerance thresholds vary, the conflict dynamic of immigration is fairly simple. Pushback is a function of the immigration rate and the deviation of those immigrants from the norm.
4
I wonder how much population growth also plays into this. The US population has doubled in 50 years. We live longer and have a medical system that keeps more of us alive as a result. The world population is HUGE and we are competing for resources/jobs on that level alone.
Being in Europe is wonderfully eye opening when you immerse yourself in all the cultures. It opens my eyes.
2
@Barb
You live in Montana in a beautiful nature area. The reason this is possible is because it is not over run with people. Being in Europe must have opened your eyes as to what happens to the environment, even with well meaning, educated, democratic populations are involved. As populations of humans go up, the environment suffers. This is the reality of life on this planet.
1
While it is true that it's good to attract highly skilled immigrants, we still need to be concern about those in underdeveloped countries, especially those occurring near the Equator.
As climate change advances people in equatorial countries will be forced to migrate away from the Equator. What do we do with these desperate masses? The solution isn't to ignore them.
Mass migration because of climate change is real. How do we prepare for it?
1
We must separate Immigration from migration. They are not the same. The US has had an immigration for many decades. It was taught in grade school, at the one I attended. Immigrants came to this country legally and pursuant to the applicable law. They still do unless prohibited by DT Decree. Migration is another ball of wax. Migration, uncontrolled is unsettling to many. We, and most countries, have no way to counter it or deal with it except to close our borders. A near impossible task. A thoughtful and calm debate on the problem is necessary.
3
"Only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference."
How very, very true that is! Unfortunately, it's also true that cosmopolites rarely get that. Both of which point to the very urgent need for more of us to be educated in what defines both our own cultures and sub-cultures and those of others as well. Bringing back serious history studies in the schools would be a good start, I'd say.
1
Much of the immigration issue has been clouded my the fake news from the Trump administration. The real story is that the governor of Utah as well as several others have sent letters to Trump asking for more not less immigrants. The cities of Philadelphia,Detroit,and San Jose have reduced decline by adding thousands of immigrants. Many cities with increased immigrant population have seen small business startups skyrocket. Home ownership has increased in these cities. As people retire in these cities,immigrants fill these positions in many fields. HBO has a documentary about some 80 year olds returning to the Bronx ,New York where they grew up to find a multi racial and cultural society full of immigrants. The truth is that a sensible immigration policy is needed but that the current administration’s policy is a simplistic and racist —immigrants go home.
2
You make the economic argument well. I think David’s main point regarding the cultural security aspect needs a lot more work, and it really involves more things than just education. In many ways, I believe social media is a weakening force in this respect.
2
Thanks David, good article.
I do have concerns regarding religion, but that also includes home grown zealots.
I love Western heritage in terms of the Enlightenment and such, but I don't mind mixing it up. Many of the loudest supporters of Western culture do turn me off, though. I see nothing of the learning through the ages in them. I suspect that their knowledge of Western culture is limited to WWII German tanks.
"Social exploration" is much easier when immigrants aren't flooding your field of construction work or hospitality, overwhelming your schools, your emergency rooms, and otherwise messing up your life.
Since 1990, the US has added the population equivalent of more than two NY States in immigrants, and the Census Bureau projects almost four more NYS' worth over the next 50 years.
These kinds of numbers are also going to greatly exacerbate US global warming emissions. The average immigrant's GH emissions rise fourfold after arrival in the US.
15
@Foster Furcolo Thank you. It's all unicorns skipping up rainbows so long as you are not on the negative side of the 'net' equation.
1
The unstated policy ( and it's sometimes actually stated) by the democrats and the left is that the goal of immigration is to get rid of the white majority here, as thought that in itself is a good thing, with the implication that people of white Europeans backgrounds are simply "bad" people. Some have taken offense at this. You could never say these sort of things about any other group. This is already the most diverse country on earth with the most generous immigration policies anywhere. The US is now the 2nd or 3rd largest Hispanic country on earth for example. A country is not necessarily a better place because everybody speaks a different language and have completely different cultures and religions.
And then there is the reality of a world with 100s of millions of people who live in over populated, polluted, resource depleted, unstable countries who all want to come west. We simply cannot take in the numbers we have in the past. Environmentally the US is already vastly over populated and climate change is made much worse by moving anyone west or increasing the population of this country by any means- immigration (no matter where they are from) or births. You cannot claim to be an environmentalist and be for mass immigration. In the 21st century helping people solve there problems at home, including reducing population here and everywhere should be the goal, not just moving the unhappy millions here. The left has to come to grips with this fact.
12
If you’ll forgive a foreigner (Canadian) for making an observation on US immigration policy and practice, it looks from the outside that you don’t really have one that everyone buys into.
There doesn’t seem to be a national consensus on whether you want to accept immigrants, what type (educated, uneducated, rich, poor, English-speaking, willing to learn English, or not, etc. etc.), just refugees, no refugees? Until you work one out among yourselves that you can all at least live with, if not embrace, you’ll continue the current rancour. It seems to me that the old Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty no longer applies. No reason why it should forever. But then, what replaces those sentiments?
Another perspective on what David is trying to say, I think.
I will admit that I believe that if the only way I can recognize a fellow American is by looking at his or her passport, then I have no national affinity with that person. If we do not share a language, value system, social mores, clothing, cuisine, etc., then by what measure is that person at all related to me? And yes, I do believe we should have a national identity as all countries have. I think it's great that there are many different cultures in the world and the U.S. manages to take people from all of those cultures and melds them into a new one. What is possibly wrong with that? Multiculturalism is a failure waiting to happen in my opinion.
15
@Lulu A. And without that commonality, its hard to ask fellow citizens to sacrifice for the general welfare and the good of those less fortunate.
Social cohesion is necessary for social welfare programs.
8
Sorry but I'm going to have to disagree with the basic argument of this article. Greater social and economic security doesn't make citizens more open to immigration - just look at places like Denmark, where anti-immigrant sentiment is strong, precisely because of the country's homogeneity and social programs, as immigrants don't closely hew to Danish cultural codes.
The reality is, immigration is always the product of inequality, political instability and desperation. Unfortunately it does not usually alleviate those problems.
7
As always, DB's columns are thought-provoking but he might have noticed the headlines in France and from France as he traveled back to the U.S. Macron has finally got the message that, whatever the benefits of multiculturalism and the needs of migrants, unchecked migration threatens the stability of the receiving/target nation-state.
The lessons I take from the immigration debates in the U.S. and Europe and the historical record of the past few years in Europe, are:
1. Mass migration, whatever the cause, is a threat to stability of surrounding nation-states, who have a valid interest in economic and cultural stability, irrepective of the demonstrable needs of the migrants;
2. Educated white elite Clinton supporters would naturally ascribe rascism to the concerns of others over illegal, too-rapid-for-integration, immigration. They are both wrong and foolish.
3. But for the neglect of the GOP and the conspiracy of the DEMs to sustain or increase illegal immigration, we would have had a valuable Congressional debate on what type of immigrants we should be encouraging and welcoming.
4. Most, if not all, of the worlds' "better off," no doubt have sympathy for migrants and would like to help them;
5. To protect their legitimate interests, nation-states must care for and alleviate the terrible circumstances of migrants by funding food, clothing and housing for the potential migrants in their home countries, through the UN or some other international organization.
7
Thoughtful comment. I particularly think your third point is the key to the entire issue. Why is at least one Democratic Presidential candidate not initiating a national discussion of this. Bush the younger, to his credit, tried to do this but was shouted down by his own party. Past time someone else picked it up.
@SonomaEastSide
As a Clinton supporter who actively campaigned for Clinton - Bill Clinton - I agree 100% with your point # 2:
"2. Educated white elite Clinton supporters would naturally ascribe racism to the concerns of others over illegal, too-rapid-for-integration, immigration. They are both wrong and foolish.'"
They were both wrong and foolish.........and it cost them the election in 2016.
It will also cost them the election in 2020.
There's an old saying about going to the prom: Dance with the one who brought you.
Black vote for GOP candidate in 2008: 4%
Black vote for GOP candidate in 2012: 6%
Black vote for GOP candidate in 2016: 8%
Looks like a trend, doesn't it? That's what happens when Democrats forget that working class Black and White Americans brought them to the dance!
1
Some years ago, my wife and I relocated from Atlanta to New York City. It was a cultural experience. We learned how to deal with the "in your face" life style of New Yorkers, how to handle aggressive drivers, and how to enjoy a somewhat different cuisine. We were also able to spread a bit of Southern hospitality around as well.
After ten years we're back in the Southeast. Our friends from the North are moving down here too. They're learning how to relax a bit, soften their combative verbal style, and enjoy our Southern cooking. Some of them have even given in to a more courteous driving style.
It's all good. What a country.
3
When countries invade other countries, destabilizing them, should the population just sit there and be bombed and shot at and looted, or as my family did a generation ago fleeing different wars and atrocities, leave home to find safer ground. America has invaded and destabilized countries near and far. We have sent our guns to Mexico and Central America and wonder why there is violence that requires moving. To the Middle East and Africa, and South East Asia, just as European nations have done before, we have invaded and destabilized and since people prefer living peacefully, will reluctantly leave home, because they want to survive. Price the US will have to pay for their actions.
2
David, I have been a big fan of yours, but you are absolutely wrong with your thesis in this particular column. You went to France, and were surrounded by like minded people at the Faith Angle Forum. While their goals are admirable, they are not shared by the majority of Europeans. You could benefit from Michael Barbaro's series concerning the wave of right wing populism in England, France, Italy, Poland and Hungary. You came away from your meeting with a high minded concept of the way people 'ought to be' in an ideal world. Admitting waves of immigrants who become a burden on the social welfare system, who do not want to assimilate, and who compete for jobs, is a FACT that Democrats to not want to address. If the Democrats can express the dual concept that limited immigration is desirable, but that admission parameters and limited numbers must be strict, they have a chance. The implication of racism, by expressing the facts that realistic problems are caused by mass immigration, is a guarantee to push most Americans further to the right. As the son of a dark skinned Italian immigrant, I am for pluralism. However, the legitimate concerns of those who are struggling in this economy, should not be dismissed as racism. If those legitimate concerns are addressed by the Democrats, the Dems. have a chance to win the White House.
17
The American constitution was based on the social values, basically English, or at least northern european of the time. President Trump going outside those values has taken him into the impeachment territory. Those values are not shared in the majority and definitely not by those people who come illegally. Other commenters can provide examples. So I want immigrants working to broadly conform to American middle class values.
2
These are nice thoughts but tribalism is inherent in almost all societies. It is easier for a leader to sell fear and anxiety about people outside of their tribe than to inspire self confidence in our inter tribal communications.
2
Great article! Thank you, David. People (adults as well as our children) need to feel secure enough to explore and and engage their curiosity about the world. Without this needed base of security from which to grow, they become and anxious and afraid. This is what moderates want be focusing on. What will bring the country together. Not the division.
2
Brooks says that a person who is "rooted" is open to other cultures. He's a little off on this. People who are secure are open. Those who are not are fearful of loss of livelihood and social status.
This is just one reason that reliable universal s healthcare is not only medically important, but socially, too.
David,
You and most Americans miss the forest for the trees, the bottom line is why do people immigrate? Why do people leave their homes, family, friends, custom, and language? The answer is consistent, they can't survive. Survival encompasses many different reasons, climate change, government instability, wars, ostracization, corruption among others.
That said, our failure is that Congress has refused to write any meaningful, realistic legislation in regard to immigration in decades, including too many other issues.
We are also being played by our Government to fear the other, the oldest game in the book. We ignore the damage of climate change. We undersupport problem nations. To quote Pogo, the enemy is us.
3
The problem with this kind of abstract optimism is its simple approach to extraordinarily complex social, economic, political, and cultural problems.
Open borders and deleting ICE on one hand, and Trump-izing America on the other are equally simplistic -- neither will bring any kind of resolution to the transition the US, or other countries, are facing. The world is undergoing historic change -- again.
Conflict, violence, and upheaval -- all part of the deal, unfortunately. Ideally, the next president and his/her leadership team will guide the rest of us through a change process with the least cruelty and turbulence humanly possible.
But in the meantime, let's try treating each and every person with dignity and understanding. If we can do that day to day, we have a shot at bigger goals.
1
Multiculturalism is what scares Trump's MAGA-hatted faithful. They are a minority but a dangerous minority because we have an Electoral College that allows minority rule. Given a choice, I think most Americans would prefer to let a majority of voters rather than a few "battleground states" choose our president -- and they should be given a choice. I for one object to my vote not counting the same as that of an Iowa farmer.
4
@Christy If we're going to meddle with the constitution: I'll give you the electoral college if you'll give me birthright citizenship.
1
@Christy Then you need to change the Constitution, but it won't happen. Many states would never have signed the Constitution to become part of the USA without the electoral college.
Do you really think that "fly over country" wants to be dictated to by Left wing urbanites? Heck, even most of NY state resents NYC, same in Illinois with Chicago and many other examples.
Pure Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Our Constitution protects the rights of the minority, too.
David Brooks has a good income and a secure job. He is part of the east coast elite. Immigration does not affect his livelihood. His position is similar to that of Hillary Clinton in 2016 of supporting certain issues and losing the blue collar vote. Allowing mass migration to America underscores working class Americans. They have to compete with these people and it lowers wages. If the Democrats support David's view, we will have four more years of Trump.
11
@JAB A local nursing home here in the mountains west of Asheville was just featured in our local newspaper. The administrator, who I know personally, just hired 4 nurses from Cuba and 4 nurses from Puerto Rico at the starting pay of $11/hour for nurses' aides. These 8 are actually registered nurses in their home nations, and must complete more training to be RN's in North Carolina.
Long-term care facilities all across America are squeezed between inadequate Medicaid reimbursements and a shrinking labor pool.
And here in our county, we have seasonal work in tomato fields and apple orchards. So if you know any working class Americans looking for work, send them our way.
1
You do know that Puerto Ricans are American citizens, right?
1
@Kevin Brock
Actually we have lost and are losing any need for seasonal agricultural workers especially for tomatoes because Mexican government subsidised Mexican tomatoes sell for significantly less than a Florida grown tomato. If they want to work in a field they are probably better off in Mexico. The last two years alone have seen tomato farmers in south Florida leaving the tomatoes in the field to rot as they would lose more money harvesting them then they lost by planting them.
Of course, what this sets the stage for are politicians who instead of providing leadership (think Reagan) we get policians who exploit peoples fears for their own gain (think Trump).
What’s needed is political leadership. Instead we get Steve King.
3
Growing up in the midwest, I was a minority. I belonged to a farming Dutch Reformed family. My relations church were my society. We had a large Lutheran population and a smaller Roman Catholic population. We were able to exist as a minority because while we were recognized for who we were usually by our Dutch surnames. Because our group was very close knit and supportive of each other, we felt secure in who we were. We were taught to extend to the community the respect we had inside our community. While our beliefs we not the came as the Lutherans or Catholics we were not demonizing them and they did not demonize us. Mutual respect is required.
2
I think you give Trump too much credit as an intelligent person who has been planning this all along. Trump has no steady plan or insightful strategy. This is quite obvious and terribly dangerous. He just happened to fall into the eye of the perfect storm.
Perfect timing, perfect storm.
It's those of us "liberal elites" who are spending all our academic, well trained, wordy and laser sharp energy trying to figure out the icon of the storm instead of the storm itself. While it's much easier to explore the workings of a single man instead of the evolution of an entire system, let's not get distracted.
It's not Trump.
It's the whole system around him.
I visited the refugee camp in Matamoros Texas last weekend. All these camps have developed in response to Trump’s policy of forcing people fleeing violence to wait in Mexico for an asylum hearing. I volunteered with the amazing Team Brownsville, who bake casseroles, carry medicine, clothes, diapers, used clothes, across the bridge to the thousands of women, children & men in refugee camps. Imagine the conditions that make waiting for months in a parking lot in Matamoros the best alternative.
My mom lived in Pittsburg in the 30s. She used all the old ethnic insults for the mostly European kids she went to school with, her classmates & friends. That was the Great Depression. Can we not find it in our hearts to welcome people from other countries fleeing violence and brutality? That’s the heart of who we are, as Americans.
2
The real reason for limiting, not ending, immigration is that the need for mass immigration in this country is over. We don't need hug numbers of unskilled laborers, we have too many people as it is. What should be being debated is what is the optimum size for the United States then determine the optimum size of annual immigration.
And another thing missed: it is offensive that tens of millions of people feel the country has no right to enforce immigration laws, that anyone who wants to should be able to enter whenever they want to. That's a major reason for most American's anger over illegal immigrants.
21
An even better way to offset Trumps attitude is to negotiate with him a sound, scientifically crafted policy on immigration and to implement it. This policy would develop yearly immigrant quotas based upon how much the country can absorb considering all relevant factors such as availability of food, housing, medical care, work available etc. And then broadcast that policy to the world and stick to it, while adjusting as needed. Don't accept more or less. Nobody can reasonably argue with that, and everyone will sit down and shut up. This argument is getting old and people are making it too complex.
2
@Andio
You nailed my views. I am sick of the Democrats talking as though our country should be wide open to all. There are a lot of practical and philosophical reasons why we should as a nation decide who is allowed to cross our borders and enforce those decisions. The democrats position on immigration may lose the election.
14
I love how boomers still think reason and logic will work with a Trump supporter. It'd be cute if it wasn't so scary.
2
I've yet to encounter any coherent ethical argument for preventing freedom of movement of individuals and populations. I see no basis whatsoever for such rules beyond selfish defense of the un-earned circumstances of wealth, location, cultural membership we each of us were born into. Like slavery in the antebellum south, we mistake a crutch holding up our contrived "nation-state" for some sort of innate human right. We patriotically insist that the less-fortunately born should stay put.
There are plenty. One of the simplest is the social contract. If I am to bind a society together and require a person to pay the pension of one person, the education of a second, and the health care of a third, in addition, to risk my life defending all three, then I have a right to some shared values and culture, something coherent, that binds the contract together. Mass immigration threatens that coherent glue to the contract.
2
The problem with this essay, like others is that it is completely anthropomorphic. There is no mention or concern for Nature, God's other creatures, and whether humans should begin to respect Nature or just use it up entirely. Just about every article on immigration omits one key point: endless US population growth and its impact on the environment. California has gone from 15 to 40 million in 60 years, with no end to the growth in sight. It's now all from immigration. The US is growing by 30 million per decade, all because of immigration. The US population would be stable but for mass immigration. It could go a lot higher if the open borders crowd (which also purports to care about climate chaos) wins in 2020. The US will be headed to half a billion and then on to a billion with no end in sight. When does the US discuss population stabilization.
10
The GOP has for years pursued policies that have removed worker protections, transferred wealth to the rich, attempted to impose right wing Christian theocracy, cutting government services and safety nets. all the things Mr Brooks says in his column - and which have caused insecurity, dioubt and worry amongst the ordinary Americans.
Rather than worry about beating Trump on immigration, fix the problems created by generations of ever more right wing GOP ideology
2
There is still the problem of inequality of outcomes and the consequent hierarchization of society by ethnic group. So far solutions to this have had only very limited success.
Brooks is wrong here in his premise. People flee to the United States not for its ethnic grocery stores in certain neighborhoods, but for its rule of law. The US is a country where a person can feel reasonably safe in his or her person, property and individual freedoms. That’s the foundation of the Rule of Law.
But when the first act of a person is to enter the country illegally and violate that very rule of law whose protection they seek, a majority of Americans are offended. This is especially true when liberals chose to ignore that illegal act to suit their agenda. Repeat after me- a majority of American welcome immigration, but reject illegal immigration. It’s really just that simple.
22
STOP employing illegal immigrants!!We have met the enemy ITS US!!!
1
I love, positively love, the diversity and harmony of today's Southern California where whites are a minority. It feels like a different country, most definitely not Trumpistan.
But it is not a model for the rest of America. Los Angeles came by its diversity over a period of many decades and that diversity has been accompanied by wealth. Wealthy immigrants have offset the effects of less wealthy immigrants. So too has a booming economy.
In Minneapolis immigration and diversity looks different. Over a relatively short period of time Minneapolis has seen the growth of a substantial immigrant community that is not wealthy. The sudden change in the look and feel of the city and without the riches to make the change go down easier, have sparked resentment and resistance from many otherwise tolerant Minnesotans. This same effect can be seen in many other places as well.
Successfully integrating people into a society that becomes diverse while remaining harmonious society takes time and money. Immigration policies that restrict immigration and require a critical mass of immigrants to be well funded, can help insure both diversity and harmony.
Should we continue to accept impoverished huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Absolutely. But in numbers that enable them to be absorbed into communities harmoniously over time rather than disruptively at speed.
11
The issue is one of assimilation. Today's immigrants are actually refusing to assimilate. You see this in countries like Canada in particular. Sweden another really good example. When immigrants refuse to assimilate, that means they are not immigrating to become a part of that, or even a blended society. What they want is to replicate their failed states, only in places that did not fail. That is a recipe for chaos. Note the author did not actually offer ANY suggestions for how to reach that blended state. Just pointed a finger to the direction they say we need to go. I refute the conclusion. We need to focus on assimilation. If we have so many here right now they will not assimilate, that means we stop the flow until they do. Refuse to do that and you will see your nations deconstructed and fall into chaos. Don't believe me just watch what happens in Sweden and Canada in the next couple decades.
15
I did some research on why these people are coming to our country and found that we are partially at fault. Our policies in Central America have not been in favor of the people, but instead they have been about American business interests which has installed poor leaders. Until we realize this and stop it, we will have mass immigration from these poor countries.
2
Mr. Brooks’ solution to the immigration problem, complex as it is, sounds preachy. But at least it adds a dimension to almost every other solution, largely framed as more social engineering. Having basic immigration controls makes sense—but “engineering” its impact, how and where people go and what they might do and minimizing the impact of immigrants, is nonsense. Perhaps there’s too much social engineering going on in the country generally? Perhaps college educated liberals (I’m one) need to listen more carefully to anyone who claims there’s too much regulation (except for military weapons ownership, of course)?
"God’s truth is radically dispersed"
What is this God's truth, and how does it compare to evidence based thinking? When someone comes along and insists that evolution not be taught in schools or that history as best we have a handle on it should be suppressed in the name of God's truth it is time to resist.
Immigrants are not the problem. Poor uneducated immigrants often have middle-class educated children -- and the parents are often quite passive, not actively offending anyone. Only when these families are attacked or exploited and left to lived in squalor is there any problem.
We don't have to bend over backwards to comfort the bigots among us. They need to be educated or marginalized.
We need not apologize for being open and caring.
4
It's really quite easy.
Secure the border. Wall/ no wall , whatever the Border patrol
thinks will work best
Pathway to citizenship for DACA kids
Limited point system based (a la Canada) Legal immigration
Clear definitions on who gets to claim asylum. Not everyone. Humane treatment for those who unfortunately don't qualify
8
Mr. Brooks is out of touch with the majority of Americans on both sides of the political divide who are generally moderate, generous people. It is not racist or culturally insensitive to insist that would-be immigrants follow the law to enter our country.
19
I am an old man [79] who sees things through the experience of the failures of past times.
There used to be something called "foreign aid loan programs" which would, it was argued, keep foreigners working in their home countries.
For complex reasons, mostly corruption on both sides, the foreign aid programs did not work as planned and here we are.
Today's immigration seems to suffer from a profound kind of economic and cultural blindness, as though the US were so abstractly attractive as to be irresistible and as though nothing in source countries problems were driving their populations to the US.
I believe that, if their home countries were safe and provided jobs, most immigrants would prefer not to face the hardship of leaving their homes in their native countries and face an uncertain future in the US.
The solution to the immigration problem lies in supporting employment, peace and security in source countries.
Walls and brotherly love are "fake solutions".
6
I hope someone is spreading the pro-pluralism message in the out-migration states as well as in the in-migration ones. Is pluralism practiced in the places Sweden's "20-30% Muslim" population is coming from? Will it be practiced in Sweden when the population becomes 51% Muslim?
Mr. Brooks thinks we should view diversity as a "journey of curiosity" instead of as a competition for resources, but the evidence on the ground says he's wrong: it is in fact a competition, often a bitter one.
To say otherwise is science denial. Because just as climate change is real, so are the negative effects of mixing conflicting cultures in over-crowded environments. (See work by General Strain theorists, Robert Putnam, and others.) It is not a coincidence that people have been killed, are being killed, and will be killed in Bosnia, Lebanon, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, and so many other places.
Mass migration spreads the rancor. The only solution is population reduction.
10
As long as people anywhere find the place they are living inadequate they will migrate and it is only logical that they will try to find a place that is better to live. Millions of Colombians left their country due to unchecked violence over a number of decades. That has changed and there is less emigration now except for over a million Venezuelans who have settled in Colombia since it is a better situation than their land. Maybe if the US would work with its neighbors to help bring opportunity and reduce violence that would be more effective in reducing mass migration of central and South American countries then spending countless billions on an ineffective wall or increasing police and military forces or caging people including children. I think if we first think of people as people deserving decency and then consider that our values of freedom and democracy should spill out of our country and not just for those within its borders then maybe we can make better investments of our tax dollars.
2
Personally, I am getting a little tired of the notion that somehow Republicans today, Trump supporters, or his attempts at policy are actually conservative. There is nothing conservative about this. This is why I have turned my back on conservatism and the republican party. Trump and his ilk are concerned about losing their culture or values. they are concerned with power and exerting it on and subjugating others.
While I am sure the Faith Angle Forum has the purest of intentions, Trump and his supporters are not interested in living in any community other than the one they get to control. They are not worried about losing "self". They are worried about losing power. They believe this is a winner take all fight.
I'm done with sympathy or empathy with Trump and his kin'. They certainly don't care about that, either. They do not deserve it.
That conservatives and republicans were so willing to abdicate their values to back Trump, it just shows the lie that was both. They have no values except unfettered power.
Joe
2
Immiration: Progressives are stuck playing the game with Conservative Rules. Any reasonable and responsible acceptance that yes, there are people running for their lives due to crime, violence, and conditions of guaranteed failure leads to "YOU WANT OPEN BORDERS!" This from the same group that with drugs, sex, and abortions, the fix is "Just say no." The shallow "logic" found in the frontal lobe of some conservatives is quick to cry out as they play the victim card, but slow to engage in the kinds of rational problem solving found in most people. What can be done about the conditions that cause people to quit their homelands? What are all of the various solutions available? How are Nations of the World collectively helping or hindering these conditions and solutions? Our current administration has exasperated the immigration problem for political gain, once again revealing the GOP'S lust for making difficult problems worse as seen in healthcare, the environment, and fear of the other. Sorry Mr. Brooks, the communities and even some regions of this country remain closed and set in the ways they acquired in our Nations Colonial time period. The Civil War, the move from rural to urban areas, Civil Rights, Technology, and Cultural rights expansion all fail to help those who reject change and a modern world.
3
While the rest of Europe was in a dark time the Moors created a tolerant civilization in the Iberian Peninsula. The did this by finding things each group could share and how to grow together. We seem to focus primarily on what we are going to lose. Different people offer a wealth of different ways to approach life. We are all immigrants, we all brought something here. Amy Chua’s book on empire growth talks about how important immigration can be to the vibrancy and positive growth of a nation.
1
Groups have power.
Individuals feel most safe in a group they belong to.
To get in a group, a person speaks the language, learns the culture, behaves like the members of the group.
And then teach it to your kids.
It is a lifelong investment.
When others come into your group, that have the chance of changing it, people react rationally and fight against, looking to protect their investment in power and safety of the group they belong too.
If everything changes, and for example the language they speak is no longer the language of the group, that is catastrophic.
The important part to realize is that this is entirely rational and is deeply ingrained down to the cave man level of human drivers.
Once you realize this, then you understand what it means to people and can then plan how new groups get integrated into the main current group and talk about options rationally, without name calling, for the benefit of all.
7
I'm still in favor of dealing with immigration as a job placement service. If an immigrant can do and will do a job at a rate that an employer will pay with benefits then welcome. Flood the country with poor people scrambling for low bidder jobs who dump their healthcare on the county and dump their families on Social Service and I'm against it. Not to mention the financial skewing it does in the market place. Suddenly companies that pay a good wage and do the right thing can't compete. That's not right and ought not to be allowed.
13
Multiculturalism is kind of a contradiction. For the most part we do not grow up in a dazzling array of choices. We get handed a language or two. Our institutions, education, social climate and our religious traditions resonate with vast differences.
I’ve always felt that openness, respect and tolerance are more practical that multiculturalism. We can learn much about each other, but we cannot be each other. History has taught us that conflict arises out of one group wanting what another group has or fearing or opposing another group’s demands.
In order to live together well, one primary requirement is that we share core values and understand that differences are not necessarily threatening. The fact is the world is fragmented and fractious. Driven by a monetizing mentality, many societies place care for the environment and people behind profit.
Population is outpacing resources and the American experiment in democracy is still unfulfilled. We are taught that Athens was birthplace of democracy, but slaves and women had no political place. The Declaration of Independence began America, but at its formation, slaves and women had no political place. Today, we may all be created equal, but we know that the check is still in the mail. Women still earn less than men and the legacy of slavery weighs heavily on many Americans.
It takes calm settled minds to make a functioning society, sensible unselfish decency. I’m not sure we’re there yet.
1
We are at a point in the election cycle where the remedies offered in this article are too much/too late. If Congress had done its job five years ago we would now have a common sense immigration policy--instead, they allowed the situation to get out of control--aggravated by economic problems in South America---and we end up caging children. The democratic response must first lay out a common sense immigration policy---use the bipartisan legislation from five years ago. Second, support 21st century border security measures. Third, refrain from any talk of doing away with ICE, or amnesty, --with the right legislation all these ultra-liberal measures would be unnecessary. Fourth, no free anything for illegal immigrants. That does not mean inhuman treatment of illegals, it does mean allocating the proper resources for adjudicating their case and properly housing them until the process is complete. Fifth, stop trying to convince blue collar workers that immigration is a positive economic good---yes, I know there are tons of research supporting this position, but, leave the research in the library for now. Finally, stop talking about the issue---offer a plan, support tough border security, and pivot to talk about policies to restore the middle class in this country.
9
Thank you. Well said and basically where I am at on all the points you make. Arguments in favor of immigration as a necessity are, I believe, founded on the conviction that there must be a constant growth in the supply of cheap labor to sustain economic growth. The very idea that constant ,never ending growth is possible is fantasy. We live in a world of finite resources. Climate change is an example of our life sustaining systems pushing back against the notion that resources can be expended without restraint.
7
I agree with the ideas behind pluralism that Mr. Brooks expresses but the beginning of the article assumes that immigration is a zero-sum game. Democrats will not suffer on immigration if their policies involve the vetting of immigrants and following existing laws. It is well documented that the border patrol needs more resources to deal with legal and illegal immigrants. If the Dems can provide that, as well as following the law around asylum seekers, most voters will be onboard. The problem comes with the concept of open borders. That is a 2020 loser.
Second, I am not sure that immigration is costing Dems in swing states. I think abortion is costing the Dems and they are not using Obama's winning take on the issue to full advantage. I know many people that will always vote Republican because of the abortion issue. Trump could kill people himself and he will always win due to his support for the "pro-life" movement. The Dems might not get those voters but they can do better with the moderates on the issue.
2
a) Immigration laws, as they are, should be respected. If they are not considered good, they should be changed. This, I believe, is the job of the Congress. b) Multiculturalism is great, but people of different cultures should not be picked on for congregating with their own. As much as they love America, they still may miss their country of origin, regardless how bad things were over there. c) There is nothing wrong in educating children starting with their own language. Any way of education that reaches students is good. d) Total assimilation of immigrants? Maybe second, or more likely third generation. I think that assimilation to the point that immigrants are functioning and contributing members of society is enough. Americans themselves are totally assimilated immigrants. e) Our border with Mexico will always lead to the mixing of populations. How to regulate the influx of immigrants? Please go back to my point a).
How immigration is perceived depends very much on numbers. Germany, a country smaller than the US State Montana, admitted 1.5 Million refugees in 2015. Too much for the locals to handle. There is an optional fraction of foreign born that yet has to be determined.
Second, the US should investigate the Canadian point system. If you score 67 points or higher, you may qualify for the Federal Skilled Worker Program.
The US would be well advised to establish a similar system
5
I went to get new glasses and the young woman helping me told me that she was from Columbia. We chatted and connected in 10 minutes and she was such a delightful person that I asked her if all people from Columbia were so cheerful. There was a man who came to do some work on my house from Chile. He was a real talker and we connected in 10 minutes and I invited him to race with my sailing team, and he is now a member of the crew. I reject the idea that you must hunker down in your community before accepting someone from a different place.
"In order to get people to integrate with others you have to help them weave close communities with their own kind. Cosmopolitans never get this." First we must remember that in this country all our progenitors were those that had the optimism to come here and try to interact with the natives, like these examples I give. I could give many more. One has to dispense with the prejudice that others are fearful or that others are lesser beings. We need to break down the walls of a "gated community" mindset, not wallow in it. I am not a dreaded "Cosmopolitan", just another human who "struts and frets his hour on the stage".
Otherwise I agree with your commentary
The column carries many valuable terms sprinkled over it on multi-levels, which I found Plus and Minus.
Brooks points out two elements as majorly creating anxieties to locals’ minds when cultural encounters occur. One is language, the other, value. The former is about communicative unfamiliarity or impossibility, I understand. The latter is about what exactly, I was not able to grasp, but my guess is that should be the risk spoken of later in the column as threatening local values.
What is local value? As Brooks emphasizes tirelessly with consistency in many of his columns, local values are made of communities consisting of all what making communities. Simply, in my view, when new or different cultural factors enter a local community, which becomes a part of it. The process may be much more natural than that media or academics stir it unnecessarily as unsecured for local or national psyche. I see, at that point, a possible presence of political manipulations. My basic view of polls is, in general, swaying between the unreliable and the mere data to refer, thus, more mobile than any mobile device.
Brooks also appears to swing from multicultural democracy to moral ecosystems. As he said, however, the security must be formed by the fulfillment of basic needs for all people. That basic point is most assuring for me in this column as the off-set value.
Start with equal treatment. Equal accountability for laws. Equal responsibility for the general welfare.
No special considerations for religious or cultural practices that violate the individual civil rights and freedoms that built western society. And bigotry runs two ways.
By continually, systemically asking the native population to change to accommodate new comers; obscuring or outright hiding the negative; even exempting ‘immigrants’ from laws citizens are prosecuted for, global pluralists encourage and enable the resentment and push back we are seeing worldwide.
That’s not pluralism. It’s favoritism to the point of corruption and quite rightly needs to be called out.
9
Any evidence for any of this?
We expect immigrants to try to learn our language. The vast majority do try. Do nativists have any clue how difficult learning another language is? English is one of the most complex there is.
American culture is ubiquitous. Almost everyone participates to some degree. Part of our pluralism and freedom is to let people believe what they want to believe. Religion is a cultural phenomenon.
Immigrants, like everyone else, are punished for break im ng the law. The important exception is that they are not turned over to ICE for being here. They are still punished for other crimes.
@Mike Daley
‘We expect immigrants to try to learn our language. The vast majority do try.’ No we don’t expect them to learn English when every aspect of daily life can certainly be handled if you are a native Spanish speaker. CT is filled with people who are bilingual including native citizens but also too many who have been here for 20+ yrs and still only speak their native language.
People are constitutionally guaranteed belief without state interference but not practice that violates the law or the rights of others. Native citizens push those boundaries too but are denied and admonished while ‘immigrants’ are given more leeway both legally and culturally. Look at how fundamentalist groups are treated. If you are a Hasidic Jew for instance, religion in public schools and public separation of genders is allowed because it’s ignored. That and much else is ignored because those practicing are ‘immigrants’
Illegal immigration. People know full well they have violated federal law. Why should they be exempt from consequences? And if I as a citizen lived the way illegal immigrants do, I would be prosecuted for felony tax evasion to start. Likely ID and benefit fraud.
Why should ‘immigrants’ not be held to the same legal, economic and social standards citizens are?
That’s not ‘pluralism’. It’s corruption
1
We have had a president that has brought tremendous anxiety to the white person. Being Caucasian has reminded me that others of mix colors walk around with double that anxiety. God has asked us to love our neighbor that is the root of Christianity. What you wrote David "curiosity, the opposite of anxiety" is so beautifully stated. We have to open our hearts and curiosity and let these immigrants find a home where they might prosper. My great grandmother Metz came from Germany with three children and carrying the wound of just losing her husband. Much like many of these emigrants she was strong and loving person that just wanted to make a happy home for her children. Let us do unto others.
2
Creating a true pluralistic society is a relatively new concept in human history. We are still experimenting with different recipe's while we try to figure out how to best make it work. We know that most of the progress we have made as humans has come near the intersection point of different cultures and values. However, creating a multicultural nation is in many respects an oxymoron. David presents some solid ideas, but I suspect we are still at the beginning point and have much more to learn as we travel this path that is so essential for humanity.
1
@Kim, South Asia comes to mind should you want to visit pluralistic societies. Try India, a democracy. You will be surprised to see mosques Hindu temples Christian churches Sikh gurudwaras Parsi temples Buddhist pagodas Jain shrines on the same block (Deep South you might find an ancient synagogue as well). People visit each other’s homes, celebrate their holidays, cherish cuisines. They speak different languages practice different religions but they enjoy the diversity the colors most of all. Kids enjoy school holidays for all the religions, so to compensate their school time is very intense, lot of homework long school hours.
Herman Melville addressed the challenges of pluralism in "The Confidence-Man." Mr. Brooks might find more insight into the nature of confidence in the character of Frank Goodman.
For it is the confidence we have in each other the gives our paper money its value as well as being root strength of our institutions.
When this book was written, in 1857, America was even more pluralistic than today as well as on the verge of civil war. One can sum the source of confidence as "Know Thyself".
2
I know the appeal of the cosmopolitan megacity with its many cultures. But while that has a lot of appeal for young people exploring new chances it is a low trust society where few people want to raise their children. It is one thing to enjoy some exotic restaurant. It is quite another to sit on a school board with some fresh immigrant with completely different values.
Some minorities manage to do quite well by sticking closely together. But they form a small part of society.
When you look at history you see that immigration comes in waves. After some time of high immigration resistance arises and immigration sinks.
Many of the Liberals who advocate more immigration are in my opinion hypocrites. Many of the immigrants would have preferred to stay home. Yet those "Liberals" oppose any measure - such as trade benefits - that would make life better in country of origin of those immigrants.
11
@Wim Roffel
Nonsense. Do not presume to speak for me or any other liberal.
An excellent article, Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
There's another truth that deserves equal consideration alongside the need for safety and space. Pluralism only works when there is deep engagement. The worst racism in our nation exists in suburban and urban communities where residents are grouped by ethnicity yet have very little intersction.
The same is true of universities. Simply having different cultures present near each other leads to regression of skills and views related to cross cultural interaction. The challenge isn't simply to help everyone feel safe. It's to help them feel safe yet require real interaction.
Bigotry and racism are greatest in homogenous areas where people are not exposed to multicultural experiences. In the US, that means rural areas. It’s no surprise, then, that Trump has his greatest support in these areas. In the South, they are suspicious of outsiders, with the well worn phrase, “You ain’t from around here, are ya’?” signaling their discomfort.
What’s ironic is that these same areas are home to wonderful acts of kindness and generosity to others which has been summed up in the phrase “Southern hospitality”.
There are many more ironies, like wanting to hold on to “Columbus Day” without confronting the fact that if Columbus came today, he would be rejected as part of a non-white “invasion”. It was the Spanish who settled the South, and who were themselves displaced by waves of white immigration from the north, leaving whites in places with Spanish names (like Florida, which means “land of the flowers” in Spanish) uncomfortable in the presence of Hispanics.
I don’t really understand the prescription Mr. Brooks is offering, as it is these areas that could most use cultural education that are least likely to seek it.
3
I am always astonished by the number of people who simply don't acknowledge the necessity of an immigration policy and border controls. I am equally astonished by the number of people who claim that the USA has open borders. This national embrace of two self-evident exaggerations has been carefully nurtured by the old two-party system, which relied for decades on pitting the military-industrial spending against social programs.
In the face of this bi-polar dysfunction, it is no surprise that one party has redefined its core philosophy as nationalistic populism, while the other party is engaged in a great civil war between economic populists (who advocate new policies to end the destabilization created by unaffordable housing, education, and healthcare) and denialists (who advocate a restoration of our glorious past).
The odds that economic security -- which will permit a return to domestic tranquility and foster reconciliation between the extremes -- simply by undoing everything that Donald Trump has done, seem slim.
1
If i'm forced to choose between defacto open borders or an abhorrent Japanese/Israeli approach to multiculturalism i'll hold my nose and vote for the latter, every single time.
The left and the right are losing their minds. Why can't leadership be reasonable? Is it social media?
9
All three of the Republican anti-immigration fanatics in my family, and many of my neighbors, are white upper middle class men with college educations. They own property, attend church, and have fat retirement accounts. They live in predominantly white gated communities. What do they have to be so insecure about? Unless it’s the niggling worry that their privilege comes at the expense of others, and that the others know it.
6
As climate change increasingly shows us that some things will not wait for measured, reasoned response, the likelihood is that climate migration will stress the world's capacity for adaptation, empathy, and governmental response.
While Trump's many simple, populist solutions to many complex problems are happily digested by those who prefer, or are unable to see complexity, I doubt the ability of any political party to deal with the complexity of future climate migration.
@Ben Bryant
"...prefer NOT TO, or are unable, to see complexity..."
Yes, immigration is a problem.
But the Republicans stonewalled efforts by Obama to launch comprehensive immigration reform. After which, Trump has failed to introduce immigration reform legislation even when he had the support of both houses of Congress. Instead, he demogogues the issue for votes, sowing more division in our country. He pursues policies that are irrational, ineffective, and downright cruel.
We would be in a much better place with comprehensive immigration reform that represents a compromise between the Republican and Democratic positions -- if only our fractured system were capable of delivering it.
Absent that, I have to conclude we would be better off with Democrats in charge of the Administration and both Houses of Congress. Some of them would be representing constituents in previously red districts and states and could, in concert with minority Republicans, exercise some restraint over what the more left wing Democrats might otherwise do. We will have the best chance of getting SOME improvement in the situation, because Democracts actually try to make government work, imperfect though it may be.
But we also have to figure out how to manage an increasingly multicultural society, because let's face it: The movement of people is one of the strongest forces in history. It has never been stopped before. What makes you think we can stop it now?
5
The problem of illegal immigration lies on the fact that it’s illegal.
Democrats should ask all illegal immigrants to be in line behind the people waiting to live this country through legal process. They also should ask dreamers to compete for H-1 visa with other foreigners because it is fair for all. Don’t worry about dreamers’ going back to their original countries because many sons and daughters of legal immigrants already do that and they thrive there thanks to good educations in the US. It is good for their countries, too. If democrats propose to increase the number of legal immigrants significantly after then, republicans will concede it.
10
Far too simplistic. There is also the matter of conservative judges that evangelicals and others want, putting aside all other serious issues.
@alf13
The same could be said if liberal judges who wish to legislate from the bench and anti religious zealots who want unfettered murdering of the unborn as a woman’s right to choose/ access to reproductive care whichever euphemism you prefer.
Nations have a right to control immigrants at their borders. The solutions here sound good,but they take more time than we have before the next election. Why not just affirm reasonable control of immigration is , well , reasonable and potentially desireable.
5
The premise of this article is great. However implementing the premise will require generations of goodwill and open mindness.
Some tribes are willing to accept the other into their lives. Other tribes will never accept the other. Think Jihad .
Economic cycles invariably produce winners and losers. When this occurs the losers will blame the others rather than accept personal accountability and responsibility.
In the end Darwinian economics and the passage of time will resolve these issues unless civil war interferes with that timeline
Want to live in an overpopulated, economically and environmentally burdened, culturally and ideologically splintered third world country without ever having to leave home?
If not, you will immediately reject the de facto ‘open borders/sanctuary for all’ kumbaya agenda currently being rammed down our throats by partisan factions. The American citizenry is under NO obligation to offer up our country as a pressure release valve for the world’s impoverished billions. We can barely take care of our own...
Want to experience different cultures? Great. That’s what travel is for...
21
We have many immigrants in my workplace. One negative example is an immigrant coworker with a household income of more than two hundred thousand annually. However, "his" mother in her early nineties lives on "public" assistance.
Why is it that we the taxpayer have to support an old woman that never worked and paid any tax in this country? Shouldn't her son support her? Many countries "dump" their elderly to us, to live on public assistance.
No wonder we can't afford anything anymore.
17
Since Cadet Bone-spur has no sustainable "plan" or policy regarding immigration (merely cruelty and wasting money on border guards and a useless wall), please allow me to propose (as a "liberal") some substantive measures regarding immigration:
1) Criminally prosecute anyone employing improperly documented immigrants. Throw them in jail for 2-3 years and impose huge fines. Start at the top with the owners (or your neighbors). Use "the rule of law" that people seem to talk about so much. Illegal immigration is a "demand problem."
2) Issue identity cards (at no cost) to all U.S. citizens. They would include place of birth and citizenship status. This would solve 2 big problems: a) authorities and businesses could verify who actually belongs in the U.S. b) it would also end a lot of voting issues because people would have documentation to "prove" their voting status.
3) Reinvent the "guest worker" idea so that seasonal workers can come to the U.S. for the legal purpose of supplementing agricultural activities.
4) Reevaluate the current process of citizenship. Implement "best practices" used by other countries (Canada for example).
I know, Americans hate the idea of having an "identity card" but if they want to better manage immigration, they need to quit hiding behind the idea that they can somehow remain free from identifying themselves while still complaining that there are illegals in the country. In fact, they should be proud to show they're citizens!
8
Donald Trump won the election because he was the only candidate addressing the concerns of working and middle class Americans about illegal immigration. In contrast other candidates both Republican and Democrat praised illegal aliens while dismissing those concerned about illegal immigration as "racist". I support President Trump's America first policy. It's nice to have a President who seems to care about the people who are paying the taxes and following the law. I also judge the state of the economy by how I am doing personally.I am making more money then I ever have. I have no interest at all in paying for "free" healthcare for illegal aliens as all democrat candidates have promised. The democrats appear tone deaf on this issue. The reality is any candidate who would have addressed the concerns of law abiding citizens about illegal immigration would have been as successful as President Trump. He was the only candidate smart enough to do it.
15
According to the Pew Research Center:
"The foreign-born population residing in the U.S. reached a record 44.4 million, or 13.6% of the U.S. population, in 2017. This immigrant population has more than quadrupled since the 1960s, when the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act took effect."
This is too much, too quick; too disruptive. It coincides with a time of social-economic stasis or decline for many native born US citizens, and people reasonably think this immigration may be related to that decline.
Many of these newcomers have not fully assimilated into whatever American culture is, or even learned to speak English.
It is NOT racist to want the town where you grew up not to change, to feel at home there.
I think it was Andrew Sullivan who wrote that if liberals don't limit immigration, then fascists will.
Anything that can't go on forever, won't, including increasing the size of the US population. The answer to the problems of the many peoples living in poor or oppressive countries around the earth has to be something other than that they all move to the west.
6
@semaj II
It is not reasonable to assume that declining wages, lack of job opportunities, out of control health care costs, underfunded education and the like are a result of brown people. If you don’t like those things, elect politicians who will overturn right to work and other anti labor laws, who will fund education, who will reform health care so that it is available to everyone, and won’t leave us all one major illness away from bankruptcy, who see to it that all of our children are well educated and safe. Sensible well managed immigration (not just from Norway) is important, but when Trump makes it about brown people, then race is the issue.
Now that its overt forms are nearly nowhere, the activist Left is intent on finding racism everywhere. Racism has morphed from being actions and words, to being looks; to being telepathically-read thoughts; to, as George Yancy would have it, being born white. However valid as an analysis -- and it isn't -- this is a political disaster, much like intersectionality.
But let's not forget real racism, which is still around and always will be. Is it possible to be good AND be a racist? When I was young I used to play golf with a lot of older guys. One day, a black guest was brought to play in our group. This old man I had known all my life, who was the nicest guy in the world, went home rather than play golf with a black man. There was another older man at the country club who, I later learned, was the same way.
Both of these old white men were better human beings (at least while interacting with other whites) than the guys who didn't mind one bit golfing with a black man. How do we judge these people? Are the non-racists better, even though they're ... not very good people? If someone is a good person, but only when interacting with members of his or her ethnicity, what to make of that?
People are labyrinthine. On both the Left and Right, this fact seems forgotten. ... As for why Trump's still popular, his base is filled with people whose ignorance you cannot imagine. We all love the Founders' wisdom -- except for their unanimous warnings about what mass democracy would bring.
4
@David L, Jr.
Someone (Dave Barry?) once said “if a person is nice to you and mean to the waiter, he is not a nice person.” The guy who refused to play golf with a black man is a racist pure and simple, and to your point is not a nice guy. Especially in a world full of people who do manage to be nice guys.
Mr. Brooks— yours is the position of the United Church of Christ (Congregationalism). Beyond the
the appeal for empathy and tolerance made by Christ throughout the New Testament compassion has an intellectual and theological North Star in places like the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
My point—the raw, ugly rigidity of much of the fundamentalist and evangelical communities is not America’s only “Christian” heritage. There is also one of patience, tolerance and understanding that is deeply rooted.
1
The problem with immigration is that world population is still increasing while global warming is making increasing parts of the world unlivable because of drought or being underwater at high tide. Central Americans are fleeing climate change as well as gangs and violence; so are Africans from the southern Sahara.
For conservatives, population growth (of the right kind of people, at least) is a sign of national vitality and to be encouraged. It also gives women their traditional role and keeps them busy so that men can lead.
Cosmopolitans weave communities with fellow cosmopolitans, and these communities are, duh, cosmopolitan and welcome outsiders. Non-cosmopolitans who weave close communities often wind up with communities that are not tolerant. Close-knit religious communities often avoid having anything to do with outsiders except to witness to them.
3
A mass multicultural democracy develops over time. It does not occur smoothly or nicely with a forced influx of individuals. Ethnic and cultural differences have resulted in animosity among the resident population and Caucasian immigrants to the US as demonstrated by the reactions to Irish, Italians and other southern Europeans and even to Germans and northern Europeans. So it is not simply a racist issue. Puerto Ricans were the downtrodden group moving to NYC during their influx in the 1950s. Today, they have moved up the social and economic ladder. But their arrival and that of other previous economic refugees at a time when there existed a need for low skill, manual labor that they could fill despite educational and language difficulties.
That is no longer the case with the influx from south of the border. Low skill jobs are being eliminated, creating a massive pool of cheap labor that will suppress wages and opportunities for existing Americans. The Statue of Liberty is a monument dedicated to LIBERTY. Poet Emma Lazarus decades later wrote the poem grafted onto Liberty Island beckoning the wretched and poor. Nice writing but not US law. Unfortunately the Democrats despite at least two political promises in my lifetime to control immigration, have embarked on a cynical and political plan to change the power structure of the country by importing a new set of voters that will be beholden to them. And they establish sanctuaries for aliens illegally here. Shameful!
5
@edward smith
Your President makes a point of an ugly distinction between Norwegian immigrants and judges of Mexican ancestry. So, from the top, it is simply a racist issue.
A “America First” strategy is a progressive way to ensure the well-being of its citizens. It means that the political leaders of our country must have a practical yet humane immigration policy.
The absence of such a policy encourages Xenophobia that corrupt politicians exploit for their own benefit with things like “the wall”.
Texas Public Schools are where "immigration" can be seen outside of the idealism and fantasy in this article.
Let's take the rural Texas Public schools that I attended as a child and youth as a specific, practical example. No conferences attended by rich people needed. Just go visit them.
At this time, the rural, Texas public schools are filled to the brim. They are packed. And, getting more crowded every day.
There are not enough desks, not enough classrooms, not enough teachers, and, no money to build new schools is on the horizon in the current paradigm of local tax supported public schools.
The crush of illegals, which, the Federal government mandates the Texas public schools must house during migrant seasons, have resulted in the complete degradation of the schools IN SPITE of the good people of Texas doing everything possible to prop up their schools.
There are not enough band instruments in the rural schools, because, those cost quite a bit of money and an illegal in the band just cannot get one. There are many folks in Texas that have bought band instruments for the illegal kids. But, that is unsustainable because rural farmers in Texas are not rich.
There are not enough desks. The classrooms are crowded.
The illegal kids often don't speak a word of English, which, is a real problem like it or not. They also often stay for part of the school year only.
Let's start in Texas Public Schools. Are they fixable with current policy?
8
@Michael
Is this the same Texas that was stolen at gun point from Mexico by white settlers? That Texas? Yes? Then please come up with a better definition of “illegal.”
Most people want and accept immigration. What they don't want is unlimited, uncontrolled immigration. Unlimited, uncontrolled immigration unduly stresses health care services, destroys greenspace, contributes to overcrowding etc. People who oppose unlimited or uncontrolled immigration are not racists; they are not even conservatives or liberals but rather people exercising common sense.
A country should have the right to control immigration or else face loss of green space, wildlife depletions, and devastating ecological problems, something that will become much more evident as the climate crisis becomes more severe and mass migrations become the norm.
18
The place many conservative Southerners are rooted in is the Southern Way of Life, which includes segregation and not many immigrants. Appalachia also involves a way of life with deep roots and not many immigrants. Some communities welcome visitors while others are suspicious of and hostile to outsiders, defining their unity by not being the Other.
Surely a world with borders and a wonderful diversity of nations, races, cultures, traditions and religions is a far better and more colourful world than a chaotic grey borderless one.
With multiculturalism comes a myriad of problems and it is in fact the dilution of diversity.
7
@Bruce Mullinger
And yet an argument most whites in the US raise against immigration is the failure to assimilate.
Mr. Brooks, you write: "The crucial question becomes: Do the people in the encounter feel secure enough to learn from it rather than to react with anxiety and fear? Right now, we are asking millions of Americans to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity." But then, when you suggest that their suspicion is pronounced and anger aroused when in proximity with people different than themselves, you are describing racism; especially when you claim that it's a natural response.
To defeat what is "Trump" in America and win the election, democratic candidates must convince a sufficient portion of middle-roaders that their sense of security rests on understanding that their well-being is not predicated on cultural exclusion; that cultural variety in our population is our strength. We are only culturally competitive when one culture tries to dominate the political landscape: we all benefit when each culture tries to provide the greatest freedom for the others.
Through generations, our society has struggled with and overcome resistance to each new acculturation and it has made us more resilient. It has also given us an international distinction; we are a compass-point of values to emulate; equality in action, not only espoused. Despite our perpetual difficulty with mastering the art of inclusion, it is our tradition and national identity. Its continuity is our strength.
So has it come to this, that we are all like 'Anonymous', a part of the resistance to this plague on the erosion of our values? Sad times for America. But maybe this is what the founders portended, as they wrote those now, lofty-seeming, words. Words that have to be concretised by small, hard acts, underlining collective belief in the survivability of values, and the spirit.
"The short answer is: immigration."
Legal immigration, when seen to be controlled so not disruptive, has made every nation I know of better., open-end minds and made people more accepting of differences. Mutual respect and understanding makes all people better. The important word is "mutual". It takes both sides to make it work.
Born in the US, I've lived in half a dozen countries since my childhood, am even a dual national by marriage, so can at least speak of my lifelong experience.
My short answer is that immigration and living in different cultures is not easy but can be so very enriching; ultimately it is up to the immigrant to make that choice.
When people like me have lived in many places, we are not rooted anywhere, not even "back home". We only have the choice of clinging to a fantasy of what we no longer are, trying to recreate what was... or we can embrace where we are and learn, expand our worlds by sharing a culture with those we currently live with.
To my ear, Mr. Brooks's take, though well meaning, is a bit airy and lacking in an understanding of how things actually play out on the ground. I'd like to offer the Italian experience (where I live) with migration as an example. First, most Italians I know don't mind legally sanctioned immigration. However, clandestine migration in the form of the well-known migrant smuggling route through Libya is another story entirely. When the French and Austrians closed the borders to the clandestine migrants streaming through Italy in 2015, Italian attitudes toward migration changed quickly. As the numbers of unemployed migrants in Italians cities rose rapidly, left-leaning Italian elites in the press and leftist parties lectured Italians about how racist they were if they wanted to stop the migrant surge. La Lega contested this narrative strongly, and began to win election after election. My read on this is that immigration/migration need not be a problem if the numbers are kept relatively low, if the process is seen as being managed (rather than being a free for all at the border), and if lectures about racism are kept out of the discussion. It also helps if the economy is strong enough so that people don't feel threatened about their own livelihood and believe their taxes are going to help border-jumpers rather than their own people. A migrant surge during an economic crisis is a disaster. In such a scenario, well-meaning multicultural group therapy sessions are useless.
9
I worry about any proposed solution that requires us all to work hard at embracing a new consciousness.
As numbers increase and anxieties rise, it seems both more realistic and fairer to shift the burden of change even further from the receiving societies to the newcomers. We need stronger social pressure on immigrants to integrate and even assimilate (with exceptions, like religion). That's how America managed previous waves of immigration. The benefit to an immigrant is a new and perhaps more prosperous life; the cost is leaving the old culture and joining a new one. We need to stop thinking about the ethics of immigration simply as a question of how the receiving society should behave. How about the ethics of being an immigrant? In short, the mesaage to immigrants should be: if you want to join us, then join us.
10
Those who are against immigration, like myself, may not be so for cultural nor economic reasons. Immigration has destroyed the American natural landscape, with population increases resulting in sprawl, pollution, and catastrophic loss of habitat for non-human species. I disagree with almost all of Mr. Trump's policies (especially his rollback of environmental protections), but if he could actually reduce both legal and illegal immigration to the point where U.S. population is declining, he would have my vote. Sadly, he doesn't seem capable nor committed enough to accomplish that.
9
@Kim
If you could say that in Miwok, you’d be on to something.
Mr. Brooks, I agree that achieving a multi-cultural society is an educational process that needs discourse at every level of society.
On the other hand the falsities prevailing this discourse are many. Immigration is a force like osmosis. Inequalities between nations, either by historical precedent or climate change, is a fact that no wall can reverse.
So the question is how we manage immigration. First we must counter the wrong narratives. When we say we fear for our culture we must understand our culture. What is the American culture? For some it is gun ownership, for others religious liberty, and for others yet the ability to exploit without government interference. But it is of course neither. I think American culture is defined by acknowledging individual liberty. Individual liberty necessarily is under assault as we live in more densely populated areas as well as multi cultural ethics - immigration is just a small issue in this context.
Second we must acknowledge that no immigrant is ever a threat to our economy and our jobs. After all an immigrant that lives here also consumes here. He/she so to speak creates his/her own job.
I believe the Democratic Party clearly understands this in their platform. Their problem is in the difficulty to promote this narrative. It is just so much harder to comprehend than perpetrating fear as the Republicans do.
1
Here is the way to beat Trump.
Simply adopt the part of his message that is right.
Trump is correct when he claims that illegal immigration hurts poor Americans.
So a successful Democratic candidate should explain that his goal is to cut future illegal immigration to zero, and couple that with aid packages that help the poor in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
That aid package would include help to fight gangs, but also provide family planning services to all women free of charge.
And it is here that voters need to become informed.
You see, global warming is indeed an existential threat. But in addition to shifting to fuels which are more friendly to the environment we need to get population growth under control.
That includes Guatemala which has a population that has quadrupled since 1960. And it includes Africa which is projected to have another doubling of population by 2050.
Right now, population growth is winning over the shift to alternate fuels and consumption of oil continues to increase year after year.
Without controlling population growth, global warming becomes a hopeless problem.
But the solution is not that bad. A new morality, which regards it as wrong to have more than two children in an overpopulated world, is what is needed.
Joe Biden is an unacceptable candidate. While Vice President, he lectured the Chinese on how "repugnant" the one-child policy was.
Biden doesn't know history. 15 to 45 million Chinese died in the famine of 1959-61!
11
It is wrong and counterproductive to tar all who speak of restricting immigration as racists. And yes, it is true that many people who haven’t grown up in cosmopolitan places can feel a little discomfort interacting with folks from other places. Most humans, after all, try to surround themselves with people who look and think just like themselves.
Here’s a way in for the Democrats: first, repelling refugees, refusing to process their claims, and treating them worse than animals violates domestic and international law and must be stopped, full stop. Second, snatching people from their families at 4 am and deporting them for a civil violation that occurred years ago is also wrong, and must stop.
But reasonable people can disagree about restricting labor migration. I don’t think it’s a good idea, and that the market can do a good job of driving labor flows, but one must acknowledge this country’s very problematic history with importing labor forces that are viciously exploited and cannot readily organize with local labor due to the barriers Mr Brooks speaks of. Behind all of these importations was the desire to fracture workers and set them against each other so that white men could profit. Giving all workers the same rights, and ensuring they can enforce them in court, could be one solution: erasing the possibility of exploiting imported labor would naturally prioritize local labor, since people are more likely to hire those who are like themselves.
2
The NY Times is the best newspaper in the nation when it comes to excellent articles on the sciences for the general public, or for perceptive discussion of the arts, the music of Philip Glass for example, or the exhibit in Paris on Da Vinci.
But it fails miserably on quasi-political issues like global warming.
Yes, the NY Times would not suggest that the world is only 6000 years old, as some fundamentalist religions hold. But it tries to avoid offending people with religious beliefs that hold that contraception is wrong and abortion is murder.
The result is a garbled discussion of global warming.
In this essay, Robert Brooks tries to explain why "immigration is good." But in reality our morality is twisted.
Population growth is what causes global warming. World population has doubled since 1972, the population of Guatemala has quadrupled since about 1960.
The elementary law of exponential growth that you should have learned at the University says that this is unsustainable.
Even if we could magically "cool" the planet using new source of energy (say cold fusion) population growth would ultimately cause carrying capacity to be exceeded.
Global warming will cause hundreds of millions of deaths in the next century. Without controlling population growth, the numbers will be higher than necessary.
We need a new morality. A "multicultural world" is no longer the goal. Survival is more important.
We need to provide Africa with contraception to limit deaths.
9
The article and headline would be more useful if it just read "How to Beat Trump." A comprehensive bill onreforming immigration will be stymied by a Republican Senate, and as long as the simplistic phrase "open borders," is associated with Democrats, however unfairly, it's not a winning issue for them.
1
In plain terms Brooks what are the steps necessary to do this? Frankly, your column reminds me of a story heard during the Cold War on dealing with Russian missle carrying submarines. Just heat the water surrounding the sub to temperatures beyond the boiling point and the crew cannot survive and they will high tail it back to Russia. How do we do that? Oh, that’s an implementation problem, I’m an idea man.
2
Yes, of course.
This is a surprise to anyone?
Take care of all the people here and they don't have to be afraid and anxious all the time.
Then you point your finger at other groups (immigrants in this case and say they are the problem and it works throughout history).
If we take care of our country, our infrastructure, schools, etc. with 99% of the entitlements (tax cuts) which we hand to the rich, working-class Americans could live decent lives with basic needs met.
If we stop creating wars and giving loans to governments to destabilize them, stop creating sweatshops and instead spend 1% of the money we give to the military of that money helping other countries they wouldn't need to leave their countries.
1
Thoughtful piece David but you leave out so many truths that frame the real reason people are not willing to go outside the tribe and do not feel safe with immigrants and minorities.
Those who fear minorities and immigrants are fed that fear by their tribe and its leaders from birth with effective and emotional messaging. Then it is leveraged by politicians in service to greed and power. The messaging is so effective and their prejudices so validated, that the people who support those politicians know, and really believe that letting children die, torn from their mothers arms and be put in cages are what it takes t be safe. MILLIONS of people support a leader who is doing this.
He feeds fear by the barrel full to show how much he cares about them. He makes sure they know he understands and he is there to make sure they will always be safe as long as he has their back. MAGA!
Address that first David. Then we can talk about how liberals want open boarders and need to be more realistic about the problem and people needing safety to open up to immigrants.
As long as fear of the other, enhanced by Russo-Republicans, isn’t part of our assessment, then our evaluations aren’t fully informed. Just check out how so many bad actors are counting on their skill, and our naïveté to divide us. Putin wants the USSR back, bigger and badder than ever.
1
If Maslow's Hierarchy Of Need were updated, Multiculturalism would be placed near the top of his of list of basic human needs. Multiculturalism is to successful societies, what cellphone are too millennials. Vital. Culture, not race, determines success in this connected world. Multicultural abilities gets you friends, customers, partners, and buddies. In other words self fulfilling prophecies opportunities on multiple levels.
Mr. Brooks writes that "we are asking millions of Americans to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity. Their wages are declining, their families and communities are fragmenting, their churches are shrinking, government services are being cut, their values and national identity feel unstable."
So I'll ask him: which major political party created all of this insecurity? Which party is litigating to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Which party refuses to expand Medicaid in states that it controls? Which party opposes increases in the minimum wage? Which party refuses to pass sensible gun safety measures? Republicans like Brooks have a lot of nerve doing everything possible to make people's lives more difficult and then relying on those difficulties as an excuse for Trump-like xenophobia.
1
Roads are clogged. Airports are overwhelmed. The deficit is soaring. Pollution and trash is everywhere.
No. More. Immigration.
No matter the race, the language, or any other characteristic. No more.
Got it?
None.
23
@Will.
Your logic would also mean no more children... no matter the race, the language or any other characteristics...
got it
Brooks’ level of cynicism and hypocrisy is incredible. The country began its decline when industries were off-shored, manufacturing moved to Asia thanks to Neoliberal Milton Friedman. Then thanks to Bob Rubin and his Wall Street bankers’ friends, we got the 2008 Great Recession, they got the billions of looted dollars. The FED’s rescue package went to safeguard the banks and pockets of NYC vulture capitalists billionaires once again; working families lost and are now the nervous 60% hourly waged of all US jobs. Even the global economy is still grappling with the feeble recovery from the Recession. The Neocons-led Iraqi war displace millions of people, many landed in Sweden, as Brooks notes. And so he writes without irony or Chutzpah:
“Right now, we are asking millions of Americans to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity. Their wages are declining, their families and communities are fragmenting, their churches are shrinking, government services are being cut, their values and national identity feel unstable.” Working families can’t be allowed to wake up, so a program is afoot:
Steven Miller is working OT to racialize immigration as Brooks is doing here. Sheldon Adelson, Stephen Ross, Ronald Lauder are contributing to Trump’s corrupt re-election, yet they rant about the new multiculturalism, but not to the the multiculturalism the country has had to accept for years, lest it be called anti-... hypocrisy!,
Look at the photo of the “stronger together” mural located in Kansas in the photo accompanying this essay by Mr. Brooks. Depicted are one woman of Hispanic ancestry and one of African ancestry. Conspicuous by her absence from the mural is a woman of European ancestry, which is to say, a White woman. This mural thus inflames the fear, loathing, and rage of many White Americans in the Heartland whose ancestors were the original pioneers and settlers of the Great Plains and who thus, rightly or wrongly, identify themselves as “Real Americans.” A statistically significant percentage of these White Americans of the Heartland regard those of darker complexions as hostile invaders, bent on stealing all that rightfully belongs to White, self-identified “Real Americans.” This mural serves to confirm the “Great Replacement” narrative which is the standard theme of White Nationalists. Mr. Brooks asserts, quote, “everyone is now everywhere.” This is a false statement. While huge numbers of darker-complexioned people have entered or are entering traditionally White-dominant Europe and traditionally White-dominant America and Canada, the number of White people emigrating to Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East is effectively nil. This fact of lop-sided immigration flows stokes the paranoia of large percentages of Whites in Europe and America who see themselves—rightly or wrongly—as being under existential threat. This plays into the hands of European rightists and Trump.
6
Substitute all of this with the presumption that the people who want to come here have skin as white as snow. That those from the Bible belt, who fear being outnumbered? The new blood that threatens them comes from England, Denmark, and Poland.
Let's meditate on beautiful Polish, British, and Swedish children with their perfect alabaster skin, and their sweet hearts and growing minds, and let's turn the meditation to seeing them within a very public policy, known by the entire country, of removing them from their families, forever. Never to be reunited, and locked up. Or if you have a little muscle, you can even think about adult human beings, their parents, and family, treated the same or worse. Think of us doing this to whites.
If you do that, there's nothing as complicated, as to require all these frankly astonishing words and all that weaving and weaving.
One thing that conservatives have in common is the belief that others should have patience, even if it means that their own lifetimes will be in raw suffering. Wait for the country to get on the right page with mass incarceration, homelessness, hunger.
Why would you expect that anyone would want to wait for what is right?
We Americans love ethnic food. We love imported products from around the globe. We love rap and Latin inspired pop music.
But we don't like the people who made these things?
We say we are afraid of losing our values.. because of people who are coming here to obtain those same values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
E Pluribus Unum.
Bottom line, near open border policies harm working class voters and pose the greatest vulnerability to the Dem party. The lessons from Europe are obvious ones. Just say no to Elizabeth Warren ,the squad and other so called progressives.
7
David can we start By literally speaking the same language ? I dotn care if its english, Spanish or Urdu, but how cna we possibly approach your desiderata unless we ,literally, cans peak with each other ? We must have an official language or languages that ALL are fluent in.
6
@John Wesley
Yes, this one bothers me. I welcome other cultures for the sake of diversity and the sharing our world, but I find it highly rude and unnerving when in a public place and in the presence of others, two start a conversation in a language I do not understand, then a look, and one can only wonder what was just said. It’s rude beyond anything I have ever known. I was once at a wedding shower when the bride, her mother, and her sister all started signing in sign language. It’s rude and it is unnerving in the dangerous world we live in.
2
People like to blame other people for their problems and anxieties. When you can't find your keys, who took them?
1
The reason Trump is doing so well has little to do with immigration and everything to do with buying into the conservative narrative just like Brooks did here. Immigration is just the latest boogey-man that Republicans have sold to the public as the latest and greatest threat. Let's go through a partial list:
1. Godlessness as exemplified by abortion
2. Soft on crime, not severe enough punishments
3. Corruption, like Welfare Queens
4. Weak military by lessening funding
5. Socialism
6. Not tough on Russia
7. Tax and Spend, taking from hard workers and giving it to the undeserving
8. Homosexuals changing the meaning of marriage
9. permissiveness and perversion (Bill Clinton)
10. weak family values
11. coastal elitism
12. urban lawlessness
After 40 years there's been a lot of different scare tactic used that the media presented (else being labeled biased and tainted) and the Democrats bought into it. It didn't matter that Obama deported more people in his time in office - he was still soft on immigration to the people who buy into the reality that Right Wing Media is selling. Despite the fact that the economy under Obama is identical to our current economy without the additional trillion dollar deficit, there are millions that believe that Trump saved us.
Sure, sure there are natural fears of "the other" but immigration is not the source of our problems. Outsourcing was done by corporations to get bigger profits - it is simple greed more than anything that is to blame.
3
The “maximum insecurity” that fertilizes the soil in which nativism grows—could we talk about that?
Do tax cuts for the rich help reduce that insecurity? No. Has Trump done anything in office besides the tax cut for his real estate pals? No.
Did weakening Obamacare reduce that insecurity? No.
David—please spare us further analysis that ignores the root causes.
1
Interesting piece Mr. Brooks. Does the multiculturalism include us agnostics and atheists? Consider that when making your arguments please. Arguments resting on the deity delusion appear as nonsense to me.
“In the course of this, millions of people perceive that they are losing their country, losing their place, losing their culture.“
When working and middle class people express this sentiment, they are called racist.
When the rich, famous, or parents of potential legacies (of a university) express it through their actions it is somehow not racist. Even though they perceive that a spot at that coveted college is their place. This is Caitlin Flanagan’s point.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/what-college-admissions-scandal-reveals/586468/
4
Excellent article- this issue is critical White House in 2020. In fact, democratic party has become a stupid party with zero common sense.It is very easy to figure out how Trump runs his fake propaganda machine by exploiting race. Wish they could save tears for the people in our nation, rather than the undocumented. People are anxious about the future, job, food on the table and education. We live in a different world than the past. The rise of global economy has devastated our manufacturing based jobs. Naturally, People are fearful for the future. Rural America is exploded with unemployment and resultant opioid addiction. Democrats squandered a great opportunity to counter Trump’s fake propaganda. They failed to deliver consistent message supporting border control and legal immigration. Alas, the democratic leadership with zero strategy couldn’t grasp the critical issue. Just think what message that
Portrayed
to many. Many of Trump’s supporters were ex-democrats. Our political system failed them.They are frustrated and find no option but to believe fake propaganda by Trump. It is easy to win 2020 election turning America Nice Again. Democrats need a clear strategy and focus on the issues important for the people. Truths are on democrat aide, Democrats need to deliver consistent pragmatic message to win back many voters. Time is running out.
I am alright with immigration, especially to fill labor needs, but the last 50 years of Islam-inspired terrorism in dozens of countries, including most recently southern Thailand, lead me to think that there are fundamental incompatibilities between Islam and the West, and that Islamophobia is rational.
9
There's nothing wrong with deporting folks who broke our laws. The United States is too crowded and needs to assimilate the legal immigrants it already has. Let's go on a diet for a decade or two from mass migration. Folks in the developing world deserve a chance to better their own countries, after all.
11
I continue to be astounded by David Brooks's point of view on what's happening in our politics and in our country.To hear him explain it everything makes sense and happens for precise reasons that he can explain. Brooks is not living in the same country as the rest of us, possibily because his job is to rationalize things. What we have seen in our politics and country is nothing less that a runaway freight train being stoked with abject hatred.The fuel was the color of our last presiudent's skin and his supposed birth in Kenya and his secret terrorists inclinations. In other words, we are sick and are being led by a perverse clown. How Brooks has missed this or somehow has chosen to ignore it is insanity. Immigration? My foot. The next thing that Brooks will suggest is that the Tea Party was offended by the national debt. C'mon folks!
1
"Right now, we are asking millions of Americans to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity. Their wages are declining, their families and communities are fragmenting, their churches are shrinking, government services are being cut, their values and national identity feel unstable."
Yes, Brooks hits the nail on the head with these sentences. That's what people, particularly poor people are afraid of.
And they have a right to be afraid. That immigration is driven by overpopulation in places like Guatemala. The population of Guatemala has quadrupled since 1960!
That's why Guatemala City is such an oppressive slum that residents want to leave!
And population growth in the third world will in fact swamp any efforts to releave the consequences by offering sanctuary in the US. Open borders will simply make Americans more poor, make it more impossible to provide health to the millions of Americans who don't have it.
Learning to "love multiculturalism" as Brooks suggests is not the answer.
As the sea levels rise, temperatures will also rise in the tropics making many places, Guatemala and large parts of Africa and India uninhabitable over the next century.
Liberals call Trump racist. But they are even more racist for ignoring the plight of Africans whose population is projected to double AGAIN by 2050.
OK maybe Sanders gets it---I hope so. But liberals who do not see the urgency in providing birth control to Africans are also racist.
6
“Only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference.”
Ah, what? Who, I ask, is more rooted in their own particularity than a white nationalist?
2
David Brooks wrote, "The lesson is that to create thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base. That includes economic and health care security, ..." But the Republican party has been working for decades to increase inequality of income and wealth and make most people less secure, not only in economically, not only in terms of health care, but also by stoking groundless fear. Republicans installed a president who hate-mongered Mexicans, saying "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." He hate-mongered Muslims. He hate-mongered disabled people. And he sent love to white supremist murderers. This kind of hate speech makes all Americans less secure, whether or we're Mexican or Muslim or disable or none of those. If there is a problem of security, blame it on Trump and the Republicans, for making it harder for most people to share in America's bounty, for trying to make health care unaffordable, and for fomenting hate.
1
David Brooks, how about a little less bland reassurance. If “Sweden could be between 20 and 30 percent Muslim by 2050,” what would that percent be in 2099? I guess Swedes should be blandly assured that their grandchildren, ruled by a Saudi religion that accepts no deviation from its strictures, will be just fine.
American Muslims, a tiny minority, do not attempt to force their beliefs on us, “Kiss the hand you cannot bite.”
5
Mass migration? Everybody is now everywhere? Only 3% of the world’s population live outside their country of birth.
2
We already have too many people in this country now. We don't need masses of unskilled labor driving down the quality of life for Americans. The liberal elite however love the prospect of pushing down wages even further so they can fatten their bank accounts even more at our expense.
7
Not all white people live in gated communities but the majority do. The Aging GOP live in a gated world, fear of the unknow is the common theme of the police department when they shoot minorities. Minorities in America are perceived as the servants and the GOP pass laws to put children in cages, lock people up for no good reason and protect their own interest all the time
In a perfect world there would be no hunger, no hate, everyone would be educated and good things would happen to all.
In the world that has been created in America, people dont want to be exposed and they will vote against their own interest in order to maintain their segregated life style. Walk out the door in the morning, here in NYC and see white people in fear of everything that isn't just like them.
Very pathetic but there is only so much you can do with people who refuse to grow . Life is to short to worry about their fears.
I liked Mr. Brooks' column. Balanced enough for my sensibilities.
1
Over half a million people illegally ntered our country in the past year - that we KNOW of.
The criminal behavior of some and the wage-depressing efforts of the rest of them is a big reason we will have Republican-outsider presidents for more years ahead.
Many thanks to hot-headed anti-American progressives for their backward support for these leaders who will be The Adult In The Room for decades to come.
7
Sanders came out today and announced that he is in favor of ending workplace raids and immigration law enforcement. What signal does that send to the world? What signal does that send to employers, all you worker's rights Democrats?
6
Did I miss something or is it did you imply that cosmopolitans ‘miss’ the point that they have to help provide for the stability of minorities? Noblesse Oblige I suppose.
The final nail was driven into the coffin of any chance democrats had to win 2020 and stop reelection of Trump when the democrat candidates raised their hands for open borders and free healthcare for illegals.
No way current democrats can undo that.
Bloomberg's entry just confirmed it.
14
Donald Trump is a strong advocate for legal immigration, so long as those aspiring to U.S. citizenship are white people of means.
@nzierler
This is simply untrue.
Provide a citation to something Trump has said, rather than something you choose to believe he said.
"The Soul selects her own society
- Then
- Shuts the Door..."
- Emily Dickinson
Sounds like a wonderful Utopia. Kind of like the Union, if the Southern States had just been allowed to Secede, without dragging everyone else down with them. Permanently. Now, we have the Trump Confederacy, and May never be “ Great “ again.
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Lincoln decided that it was worth the lives of 600,000 young men to keep the Southern states from leaving, all the while announcing the sacred principle that once in, you're in forever. Most people on the left thought that a noble position--until recently.
1
This is a politically correct sermon, not a sociological analysis--which Brooks is quite capable of doing when he's on form.
Clearly Mr. Brooks hasn't had the opportunity to harvest the wisdom embedded in the 8 Hispanics who rented the house next door with their 6 cars, 4 of which have to be parked on the grass and 2 of which seem always to be worked on to the rhythm of some south-of-the-border tunes.
Someone needs to explain to the Trumpers that, since the white folks aren't having enough babies, the only way we'll have more jobs and a chance to chase the dream is if we increase the population via immigration.
This gobbledygook is the key to beating Trump? Try translating it into something the average person can understand. Can you picture Biden or Warren saying any of this? Neither can I.
Beautiful
The Trumpist campaign against immigration is, bottom line, classic scapegoating, pure and simple. And it's made that much easier because the scapegoats happen to look different from "us" (whites), probably don't speak English, and come from other cultures.
Would it be ok with you if white westerners began to immigrate in large numbers to less developed, non-white countries? Does your generous dream of a multicultural world only go one way?
2
I waded through the first four paragraphs and then bogged down, Dave. Something to do with the phrase, “different from us.”
Apparently it needs to be explained to m’sieu Brooks how this actually works. So here goes, repeat after me...
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident...”
Now follow the bouncing ball...
The solution to illegal immigration is remarkably simple: fine and imprison (say $1M +1 year per offense) the head of any enterprise found to employ an undocumented worker. CEOs make enormous amounts of money because of their unique skills (we are told); they'll figure out how to monitor hires even if the worker was hired by their contractors' subcontractors.
I recognize that at first, the economy will tank (mechanisms for permits will need to be established) but let's stop pretending that this is a problem to be solved at the border. Follow the money.
1
Brooks disparages educated Clinton voters who say "it’s racist to want less immigration for ethnic and cultural reasons." But isn't "ethnic" a synonym for "racial," so how is opposing immigration for "ethnic" reasons NOT by definition racist? The crucial point, however, should be that Trump himself (despite all his denials) is a racist, and he is doing his best to incite racial paranoia among his supporters. For this reason, he has done absolutely NOTHING to solve the problems confronting Middle America; all of his immigration policies (especially the non-wall he is not building) are simply designed to heighten the paranoia. This serves his own political purposes, and Democrats will surely lose if they just oppose the wall and accuse Trump's base of racism, without offering a better way. Middle Americans would be much less susceptible to Trump's paranoia if he were actually doing something (like investing in infrastructure and public education) to rebuild the middle class and reinvigorate blighted areas across the country. That would be the path toward the secure communities that Brooks thinks would be the basis for a more accepting attitude to immigration. Yet Brooks downplays the economic and social issues in favor of vague homilies about spiritual values and "thick pluralism." His solution is long-term, probably requiring years to achieve. It is certainly NOT a practical strategy to "beat Trump on immigration," if we are talking about the 2020 election.
Your "thick pluralistic society" with "cultural and spiritual security...offering people opportunities to embed in their local culture, to practice their particular faith, to live by local values", is GOP "States Rights", it's not enforcing civil rights laws in areas with a lot of Republican bigots.
Pluralism creates a better environment for embracing legal immigration, but some Democrats advocate open borders for illegal immigration.
A first generation American whose entire extended family are immigrants, I admire most of the Democrats and agree with Sanders and Warren on many issues. However, Warren's immigration platform renders her unelectable.
The left-wing publication Mother Jones analyzed Warren's immigration platform and found it "de facto open borders", (their words) in, "Are Democrats Now the Party of Open Borders?"
Mother Jones wrote:
"No one will ever be deported-except, presumably, for serious felons...Expedited removal will be ended. The Border Patrol (can only) focus on...screening cargo, and preventing smuggling and trafficking…CBP will not be permitted to patrol the border looking for illegal crossings; if border officers happen to apprehend someone, they'll be released immediately."
The rise of the European-right because of actual mass migration is nothing compared to what a mere threat of mass migration has done to America. Americans won't stand for giving those illegally crossing the border a parking citation. Trump will bury Democrats with it.
11
"The U.S. will have no majority group in three decades. " Yes, we will: American citizens.
4
I imagine someone opening their front door in the morning to see their neighbor's family on the porch and, in the background, the neighbor's house engulfed in a widening fire.
And this person concludes there's an emergency--on the porch, of course.
Mr Brooks does not mention the real reason to oppose high levels of legal immigration. The US population hit 200 million residents in November of 1967. It hit 300 million in October of 2006. It is now at 328 million. The GAO has stated that 70 pct of this increase is due to foreigners moving to the US and their offspring. This has the effect of the US losing millions of acres of natural land to housing, parking lots, office parks, and big box stores . All of which like to be on high well drained lands such as meadows. It is the reason that meadow birds have had a 40 pct decline since 1967 due to loss of their habitat. This is according to the Audubon Society.
The USA should restrict legal immigration. It will help with lowering the increase of the cost of land and housing. And save natural areas. Why should we live in an overcrowded country so people can move here and have a higher standard of living ?
Those who want to help foreign people should devise a way for the USA to advise them on a better legal system as well as education. That would be harder to do, but would help both our country and the other countries. Our quality of life depends on stabilizing our population near the current level.
30
Human migration is a symptom of change caused by climate change, A.I., food scarcity, and globalization. The most beneficial response will redefine and expand the meaning of “place” to, at first, include all of North America, and see through the differences to focus on the similarities we share. Indeed, the small farm communities of plain states were and are model examples of positive integration. But that was before fear was poured on our nation by a madman. We must replace this fear first before we can move forward as you write in your column.
And, we also need new leadership who can project our national values into the way forward of solving the problems of the displacement created by A.I. , climate change, and food scarcity. These times are calling for such a leader but so far the call goes unanswered by people of principles and convictions. We need leadership that knows the difference between knowing the path forward and leading us down the path forward. We need leadership that understands how to walk a nation into its destiny.
1
The engineering profession has been diverse for decades. It is a common choice of profession for new citizens because of this incorporation of diversity. It works because the focus is upon the tasks at hand, the problems that have to be solved, and everyone realizes that talent is the key, and talent is not limited to any particular culture or skin color.
On the other hand, where the job at hand requires little skill, and anyone can do it, diversity depends not upon talent, but upon lots of work to go around, so you getting a job does not mean I won’t. Diversity will be accepted only if there is a lot of opportunity.
Likewise, diversity suffers if the opening for a job is there only if you fit arbitrary criteria like graduating from Harvard, belonging to a certain social clique, and so forth. Diversity will not increase unless some rare circumstance crumbles the clique, like revolution.
Unfortunately extreme inequality such as we now see in the USA encourages the last scenario.
3
The core assumption of those who want less immigration is that in every place there must be some group that is dominant. It's their country really, and so they should get first dibs on positions of employment, wealth, influence and everything else. Other people can be tolerated to a greater or lesser degree but it's never really their country. The whole idea of the nation-state is predicated on this. Even people who decry racism and xenophobia will often tacitly bow to this notion of primary ownership of the country, as if it was a natural order. This is the attitude that must be defeated.
109
@Thollian
This is a very good description of a part of human nature (and that of many other species). It cannot be defeated. We need to acknowledge it and work with it, not against it.
"Imagine there are no countries. I wonder if you can. "
37
@Thollian Of course a nation's leadership owes primary allegiance to citizens of its own state. Is that not so?
If that's not so, then the IRS has a duty to disperse tax funds evenly to every citizen on Earth instead of "hording" it only to the US population.
41
@Thollian
The nation state may well be going the way of the feudal fief and the buggy whip. I have mixed feelings about that; I may miss me.
9
Why is the core assumption that Trump must be "beaten" on immigration? Why must we necessarily live in a multicultural world? On what basis is that automatically considered a positive? Have you critically examined the relevant data or studies on this subject? I'm not saying this view is wrong, I'm surprised by the immediate automatic acceptance of it.
150
@Eugene - - Diversity is a Junior Deity to progreessives now, but it has never been proven to be the fast answer to anything.
PLEASE note that ALL the elites preaching to us that we MUST have more immigrants live behind walls and armed guards.
If everyone had the walls and constant protection that Nancy Pelosi or Mark Zuckerberg have around their estates, this wouldn't be such a complete farce.
Readers should consult the moving video of a mother whose child had been meercilessly killed by an immigrant speaking to Ms. Pelosi on a CNN stage. Pelosi has never looked icier.
42
@L osservatore There are often problems like this: a murder committed by one person of a group makes the entire group suspicious and somewhat guilty. We are quick to categorize people and judge them by their ethnic and social identities - which is the base of all racism and is fed by prejudices that we learn growing up...willingly or not. The point is to overcome this problem. I don’t know if you travel a lot abroad but coming back from any of the fairly homogenous countries in Europe is always amazing for me: there we have everything arranged nicely, people look pretty much the same and are wearing somewhat uniform appearing clothing and the moment you walk into the terminal here - colorful chaos everywhere. It is the greatest advantage this country has and not a threat - until populists like Trump playing to unfounded anxieties of his followers come along.
29
@Eugene I am personally a descendant of immigrants. Some even came from from regions that were potential battlefields at the time (early 20th century). This personal story, which I think many Americans share, makes me naturally inclined to be welcoming. I am always struck when people who are clearly also the children of immigrants (e.g. Trump with his German roots) are hostile.
14
Mr. Brooks is a good man, but his essay about mass immigration sounds more like advice for the open-minded traveler than a serious discussion of the problem.
I am well traveled by the way, and one of the greatest joys in my 50 years of living in Los Angeles is sharing my city with a vast cross-section of humanity.
But the reality is that 1,000,000 desperately poor workers pouring into our country every year undercuts our ability to increase low-skilled wages and close the gap between the haves and have-nots. It puts enormous pressure on state and municipal services, including our most-strapped public schools. (It is estimated that 25% of all LAUSD students are either here illegally, or the children of illegal aliens).
It makes any progressive plans you can imagine, from rebuilding unions to universal healthcare to free college even less feasible. Their sheer numbers are a bullet aimed at the heart of the middle class. And great for the 1%.
Pablum about how they contribute to the fabric of American society (which they do), charges of "racism" or nostalgic lectures about Ellis Island are self-flattering deflections from these facts.
359
@Livonian Thank you for itemizing some of the costs to U.S. taxpayers of bringing immigrants in.
26
@Livonian Quite true, but I don't think Brooks is advocating open borders here. I think he's just amplifying that, for contributing societal members, where you came from... or your race, religion for that matter... is irrelevant in defining your cultural worth.
How can any non-racist, non-bigot disagree w/ that premise?
The U.S. has plenty of unskilled labor and is already more diverse than many nations, so immigration should be limited to those ready, willing and able to better themselves and offer something society needs (either now or the foreseeable future) - IMHO.
20
Best comment ever, on the complexity of immigration.
21
And once again, the path to beating Trump and the foolishness of today's Republicans lies down the middle, not toward the far left.
A country that has well-defined and well-enforced rules for immigration isn't racist; in fact, it's just being a rational sovereign nation. A country that opens its borders and declares itself a haven for all isn't on the forefront of progress; it's on the road to self-destruction.
Some Trump supporters are indeed racist and small-minded. But it is very reasonable for U.S. citizens to expect U.S. politicians to put the interests of those citizens first. To defeat Trump, Democrats need to demonstrate that they recognize this by hewing to the middle on immigration: envision a welcoming nation that carefully specifies and controls inclusive in-migration policies that benefit everyone.
317
@Cary
Yes! And Democrats also need to address the problem of de facto open borders and M4A. Even if we could remake 1/5 of our economy (healthcare), there will still be limits on who has a claim to that benefit: citizens.
You cannot have a libertarian immigration policy and a nationalized healthcare policy and expect healthcare to stay solvent or there to be enough clinicians to meet demand.
Every group of human beings from the band level to the complex multicultural/ethnic democracy we have has to deal with scarcity of resources. Otherwise you kill the golden goose.
19
@Johnson ....that’s only true if the immigrants are not contributing through taxes and withholding to the system. That’s exactly the issue we have right now and that will not change even if you would close down borders completely: paying a fair share is extremely unpopular and basically everyone is trying to cheat on taxes etc. In fact: Trump and most republicans are running their political game on the idea that less services and less taxes are the way to go and they live by it promoting laws that benefit the “owner’s class”. The disparities in this society are not caused by immigration - as populist like Mr.Trump are all to willing to whisper into your ear - but ruthless capitalism and the fact that we have now exactly those “ruling” who were successfully exploiting others to become the billionaires they are. That these people have no interest in improving anything for average Americans is self evident and shows every single day. Changing this requires more than closing the borders!
21
@Cary
What you refer to as the far left used to be the middle a few short decades ago. Many Americans have lost the idea of America, what we stood for, what were our values.
People calling themselves 'conservatives' aren't the only ones wanting their country back.
5
As a person of color, I am sometimes aghast with Trump’s remarks on immigration. They range from reckless and uninformed to just bigoted. However, when it comes to his policies, he is right.
The United States already has tens of millions living in poverty. Thus, we don’t need any poverty stricken immigrants from Haiti, West Africa, or the Bahamas. We need immigrants- regardless of color and background- who can work here as scientists, engineers, and doctors.
Trump should tone down the racism, but his policies are well designed.
168
@Lauren
What well designed policy?Other than the impractical and outdated counter-measure of a Wall to stop immigrants, I don’t know what Trump has designed. Are we any closer to an immigration bill in his (he owns it now) three years in office?
I do agree your concerns of mass migration coupled with heightened inequality and poverty are extremely valid indeed.
21
if the reps were serious about this, the fix would be to greatly increase and enforce fines against employment of people who are not legally permitted to work so that the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits. but that would increase the cost of authorized labor and the power to uionize, so direct the animosity towards people who do exactly what you'd do in their shoes, and let cheap but powerless labor flow in so that our lettuce costs less and out houses bigger
24
Why? Why do we need doctors, scientists, engineers from the other countries? Is it bad for immigrants to steal low-wage jobs, but it is OK for them to steal higher-wage jobs?
8
I am an immigrant who embraced living in America as an adventure and as an opportunity to expand my world. Brooks' prescriptions for creating a more immigrant-friendly society fail to reckon with how immigration is being actually practiced:
Mass immigration has affected the labor supply. I had to retire sooner than I wanted to and expected to because in my profession (IT) the workplaces are swamped with cheap-labor under-qualified Indian techies. This has affected availability of jobs for (naturalized) citizens, especially those over 50. In addition, it has exerted severe downward pressure on wages. Finally, most jobs have turned into contract jobs with no benefits, including the all-important healthcare. I imagine it is much worse in other lower-skill jobs.
So, any discussion of immigration that does not address its effect on jobs is a non-starter for me. My loyalties are with American workers because WE do not have the option of moving to another country for work and WE should not have to!
359
@na
Programming is a profession with perishable skills. I know programmers older than 55 who are highly paid and respected. Those above 50 should not expect that they will be rewarded for their length of service. They need to be able to compete in the job market, which is a global one, whether or not the competition is resident in the USA.
19
@na
An interesting take on it - you came to the States as an immigrant and established a good career in IT until some other immigrant came along later and pushed you out of the market. Kind of ironic, no?
I think you need a better target for your pain than immigrants. I, too, was in IT for decades and got pushed aside and eventually out, but I was a casualty of the corporation outsourcing to India (to start). Once the internet was up and running (fast enough), the MBA crew went on a campaign to move as much labor as they could overseas to greener and cheaper pastures.
Soon there were huge teams of techies off shore (mostly, but not exclusively, India) to replace us locals. A couple of H!B's on site so coordinate. And so it went ... first the good contracting jobs, then the somewhat secondary IT people, and then the core staff, all except for a hand full of subject experts who knew where all the tech skeletons lived.
That's what corporations do, head for the cheap labor. Always have, always will. It's cold and cruel and they don't give a fig about you or me. I pretty much always got laid off by somebody way younger than me, for what that's worth.
The people who "took my job" for less money weren't immigrants, they didn't come to the States for the most part.
Myself, I'm angry at the "bosses" for being so removed from the harm they inflict on people when they lay people off. I blame the MBA's and the business schools for not paying attention to morale. Not immigrants.
80
Yeah, I guess they can not compete because the companies prefer to pay lower salaries than to have people with high experience
9
NO!
I am pro immigration and a pluralist. However, the West commits a mistake to allow fundamentalist believers of any organized religion to enter its domain. This is where Trump wins.
And here is how Trump can be beaten on immigration:
too many are coming with the intent of creating their own Sharia society, not willing to be part of a pluralist society. Anyone who does not drop their misogynist attitude and religious tribalism and is not fully committed to our democracies' freedoms, responsibilities, and pluralism should be denied immigration.
They are fleeing their countries only to do what? Import their doomed intolerance to the West? For decades, this is where pluralism went too far.
Those who insist on intolerance as a response to the welcoming hand of tolerant pluralist countries merit the doors shut.
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Poverty and Religious Terrorism
106
@A.J. Deus No, most people who are coming here are either fleeing violence and danger in their own countries, or seeking better opportunities here. They are not coming here to recreate the oppression in their own lands.
3
@A.J. Deus
I would be interested in hearing about your attitude toward fundamentalist Christians, our fellow citizens, who are attempting to shape government in their image and who contend that others are destined to burn in hell.
6
@A.J. Deus Do you apply your abhorrence of fundamentalism to Jews, Mormans, and "Christian" sects? Or is it reserved solely for Muslims?
4
The problem here is that migration is a symptom of an overpopulated planet. The basic resources of space, water, arable land and equitable climate are finite. People who have used up these resources are migrating to fresh supplies; but these are already being used to their limits. Until we get rid of about one and a half billion people the problems and stresses will remain.
To bring this to a community level; no matter how culturally based you feel, if you are competing for work and conditions with large numbers of additional people you will be a little intolerant. If these competitors are physically or culturally different it only adds to the antipathy.
Migration looks good in economics text-books but the global reality has shifted a long way since most of them were written. Excessive (possibly any) migration causes social, economic and environmental problems which Mr Brooks failed to acknowledge at even the most superficial level. Perhaps because he was too focussed on "gods truth".
Being concerned about the adverse effects of migration does not make you a racist, only rational. Migration is one of the very few real issues in Trump's ravings. His problem is that he cannot envision any rational solutions; a lot of other political leaders have the same problem.
127
@Philip Brown To learn more about the environmental impacts of overpopulation, visit the Overpopulation Project at https://overpopulation-project.com/
For solutions, see https://overpopulation-project.com/solutions/
2
This exact same argument may be applied with equal weight to previous slaveowners being required to live peaceably in the same country as their freed ex-slaves. It's better to have all those slaves free of course, but let's be sensitive to the emotional needs of those slaveowners.
The point is that we've always had a majority group that should be the focus of Governmental, business, and public support and promotion: US citizens. E pluribus unum, as it were.
4
Good point; integration is more successful when people affected feel secure, economically and culturally.
I was surprised by the statement, ascribed to Pew Research, that "Sweden could be between 20 and 30 percent Muslim by 2050." A 2017 report, also from Pew, projects 11.1 percent by 2050: https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/
I'm liberal, but also practical and a retired engineer. We study calculus in engineering to find the sweet spot under the curve. There is a good number or a right group of numbers.
Immigration can be great if we hit the sweet spot. If too many folks are allowed to come, we might just recreate the problems those immigrants are experiencing in their home countries. Too, many folks, not enough economic infrastructure.
46
Mr. Brooks, it is just history of isolation and intentional fear mongering. Despite the US being a country with a long immigrant history, it is concentrated in larger cities while the rest of the US is still largely isolated from other cultures. This is reflected in our voting patterns: the places exposed to immigrants over longer time tend to welcome them more.
Cosmopolitans do get it, precisely because they understand different cultures and the need for familiar practices.
Consider that Western Europe is much more open to immigration than Eastern Europe. The West has experienced large scale immigration for many decades. Immigration is new in the East and this fear is exploited the same way there as it is in the US.
9
Or, liberals could realize that mass immigration is undermining our democracy. They could make common cause with their fellow citizens and support reductions in immigration.
That seems to me like a better way forward. I’m willing to pay a little more to get my house re-roofed to do it, too.
53
As at least one other commenter notes, it isn’t clear if Brooks and commenters are distinguishing legal from illegal immigration. It’s kind of important to do so.
If we are only talking about legal immigration, then I’d like to see facts and data on how immigration “undermines” our nation in whatever way.
If we are talking illegal immigration, all non-crazed Americans realize Democrats and Republicans are not so far apart on policy. Nobody wants illegal immigration. So that is resolved! Some gap in what to do with certain categories of illegal immigrants who were hired by American businesses (e.g Trump Enterprises) and have lived here for decades, raised children here, etc.
4
This a sociological analysis of behavior, and I think you are talking about legal immigrants.
I think the friction is mostly occurring with regards to so-called illegal immigration, although that friction does not obey factual boundaries. So-called, because it is de facto legal to hire so-called illegal workers - as Trump demonstrated at his golf courses, at least up until being called out.
The way to fix it to give require employers to hire legally, using e-verify or whatever is deemed efficient. With that constraint in place, employers will lobby for visas for seasonal workers and green cards for permanent workers - congress and the president can work out how many visas and green cards to issue to satisfy that demand. Those workers will then have legal protection and legal health care. (For temporary visas, the employers should be required to pay for the health care insurance of their workers).
Let's use the law to protect workers, not force them to go outside the law to satisfy our voracious appetite for their labor.
12
No, David, you really don't get it.
Except for nativist know-nothings like Trump, almost all Americans subscribe to the Theodore Roosevelt rule (assimilation = no discrimination and welcome). What Trump exploits is the fear of non-assimilated immigrants turning hometowns into foreign enclaves.
All of my working class grandparents immigrated from Italy and became US citizens. All of my 18 aunts and uncles graduated from college here; so did all of their kids. My father and all 14 of my uncles served in the US military
We spoke Italian and English at home, prepared Italian delicacies and celebrated Italian culture, history, and religion.
We were and are Americans: as Roosevelt noted: "of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house."
People in all parts of this land fear -- as do I -- people who immigrate here and do not become Americans -- who don't speak our language, who don't know our history or ideals, who don't embrace our constitution, our institutions, and our beliefs.
They and I also fear people like Trump who act more like Osama bin Laden than real Americans.
14
@Mack
I would argue that, more than assimilation, it is integration that makes the American immigration experience. We don't demand that immigrants become the same as everyone else already here. We bring in the best of other cultures to strengthen what is already present. The United States doesn't have the ethnic constraints that European countries do in defining their identity. To be American isn't some ethnic trait, it's the acceptance of a common set of values.
1
Democrats have made the mistake of adopting the California vue on immigration as if California was one of the states they needed to win to take back the White House. If Mr Trump, yes the Trump who has lied more than 11.000 times since he was sworn in, Trump who has been cited in more criminal investigations than the last 6 presidents combined, the list goes on. If Trump is still competitive in the 2020 elections. It means there is something he is doing right.
And I believe that immigration is why most people still support Trump. There were riots in South Africa against African immigrants. In Mexico, more and more Mexicans are opposed to Central America migrants settling in their country. My point is that , racism is not the only reason people opposed immigration.
Most of these people did no grow up with access to the rest of the world that internet and now social media offer. If the economy is doing good they will trade that against any of Trump's transgressions if it means limiting immigration to the US.
Any other candidates with Trump's transgressions would lose in a landslide.
Democrats can offer a better solution. For example, a Democrat plan could encourage companies leaving China due to the trade war to relocate in South and Central America. This could be beneficial in two fronts. Limiting the flow of migrants by creating jobs, and reducing pollution caused by goods being shipped from long distance.
9
Every time I walk down the street or ride the subway or go to the gym, I hear five or six different languages (e.g., Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, French). After living in Toronto for many years, I no longer really notice. We manage to get along for the most part, partly because it's become normal and partly because of social supports, in particular a single payer public health system provided through taxes, as well as ESL classes for newcomers. Most immigrants to Canada (apart from refuges) have to pass criteria based on points awarded for education, work skills (particularly for fields in high demand) and knowledge of English or French. This means that, while, establishing oneself in a new country and culture is difficult for any immigrant, immigrants to Canada are generally better able to make the necessary transition. It's also worth noting that because of Canada's ageing population (and the same can be said of the United States) we would not have a sufficient workforce without steady levels of immigration.
20
@James, Toronto, CANADA
Well said.
All that and a decent public education system that the US would be wise to emulate.
@James, Toronto, CANADA , Trump supported shifting the US immigration system to a Canadian style skills-based/points system and the Democrats declared it dead in the water.
In his first two years, Trump also supported all of the recommendations of President Clinton's own Bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform, led by African-American, Democratic Congresswoman and civil rights icon Barbara Jordan (aka , the "Jordan Commission"). The Cotton-Perdue RAISE Act, introduced in the US Senate in 2017 or 2018, would enact all of Ms. Jordan's recommendations. But not a single Democrat was willing to cross the aisle to support it. Today's Democrats, like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, even declared that some of Ms. Jordan's recommendations, such as chain migration reform, are "racist." Apparently without recognizing or appreciating Ms. Jordan's role in civil rights history.
It is strange but it is today's Democrats who do not want the United States to become more like Canada, at least on the issue of immigration.
4
I’m sorry, James, but rational discourse and logical arguments have no place in this fraught debate.
The dynamic tension between particularity and universality is well documented in the Christian tradition... and, I'm sure, in others as well. This was a beautiful piece, grounded in the Real. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
6
Oh yes. The lessons I learned at the universities in Chicago. Pluralism, pragmatism, holism, (multiple) truth. These were the big takeaways, plus all the particulars. Now how to find pluralism in a practical way? There was an interesting op-ed in the paper this summer called "Preaching Faith in Democracy" about Citizen University and Civic Saturdays. Perhaps these kinds of gatherings are where we will find common curiosity and shared experience, instead of isolated anxiety.
2
The Middle Eastern economies are heavily dependent on expatriates. For example in Qatar, only 10% of the population are citizens, the rest are expats.
There is no pathway for citizenship for expats. That is very clear and there is no controversy. The expats do the jobs that the locals are not willing or able to do. When their contract is over, they leave the country.
Why is it so difficult to design a rational immigration system where American citizens do not feel economically threatened by immigrant workers?
19
@AM
Because the rationale is to make American workers feel threatened; so that they will work harder, longer and for less!
5
@AM,
This system may work well in Qatar because there is a system to enforce repatriation to home countries; however, we have the 14th Amendment to our Constitution which is used as a cudgel when immigrant workers have 4-5 children who we must support and so parents refuse to leave and immigrant advocates demand that they stay in the country.
I received an email from Senator Sanders this evening, I usually get three or four a day, but now he has endorsed the most liberal immigration proposal and banning ICE that will definitely make Warren fume with envy.
We are undone; too old to immigrate to Toronto; thanks AOC and Squad.
11
@AM
Simple. We have the lunacy of Birthright Citizenship. This is what enables illegal "immigrants", tourists, guest workers, etc. in the US to produce US citizens -- birth paid for by the taxpayer -- and use these citizens to tap the full largesse of the US taxpayer.
In the Middle East, guest workers get paid what they will accept and if that isn't enough to support a family, that's the way it goes.
4
"The lesson is that to create thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base. ....but it also involves cultural and spiritual security."
Academic demography has very-long shown that immigrants are most comfortable being together, in their own neighborhoods and institutions.
"A person who is firmly rooted can go out and enjoy the adventure of pluralism."
Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but not necessarily. Academic studies in demography have also shown that this may not be the case in first generation immigrants who might never really acculturate into their new society and might remain embedded in the artificial closed society they joined around their former identities. Acculturation and participation often occur only in second generation.
The rest of your construct is also somewhat shaky and iffy. The receiving society looks at step 1 with great fear and trepidation. It is hard to tell them, wait, all will be well, look at the second generation.
At the bottom line though, models are just models. Life does not work that way and people don't always abide by the model. What your essay has to do with the intent of the essay beats me.
8
@Joshua Schwartz
He's not talking about the first generation immigrants, he's talking about the thick pluralistic society as a characteristic of people in the dominant culture.
Many in the dominant culture recognize the struggles of the immigrants and enjoy learning about their culture, religion and particularly their food!
The first generation immigrants that I know do have a difficult time adapting, who wouldn't, but they want to learn and be supportive of the second and third generation, which frequently adapts very well. They also provide an important link to their home culture and identity. A robust immigrant community can enrich a secure dominant culture.
@Doug The people in the receiving culture or society act upon those immigrants.
The aspects which I relate to relate to the immigrants.
It is not enough to say that the dominant society has to do X. There are realities regarding immigrant society. The results of X I argue is not according to Mr. Brooks.
I relate to those aspects based on the essay.
1
David has resolved his own argument on how to be a pluralistic society with full acceptance of the immigrant and refugee. I quote: "Right now, we are asking millions of Americans to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity. Their wages are declining....government services are being cut...," etc. So here is my question: How do people think it has gotten this way? Certainly, it was not the Obama administration which saved us from a repeat of the 1929 Crash. Certainly, it was not President Obama's 2010 ACA with a vision to build on it. Certainly, it was not his giving huge tax breaks to the upper 2% while leaving the middle class with the onus of paying the bulk of monies to the IRS. Let us get one thing straight. The liberals do not want a free for all at the border. We are simply asking for lawful, fair, and just - for both both sides - immigration reform. The progress and health of our nation depends on pluralism, the exchange of ideas and aspirations among our many cultures. Like close-family intermarriage, keeping our country White and Christian can only lead to adverse mutations of our democracy. I would wager that most of the readers of David's column are descendants of recent immigrants, if not themselves relatively new to Lady Liberty's welcome. Think about that.
7
@Kathy Lollock
The reality is that it was Obama policies that extended the recession, invoked divisiveness, disrupted healthcare to increase profits to big medicine cronies, shut down capital investment. The only reason that we did not sink into a depression is because the Fed created money and the fossil fuel industry invested and dropped the price of natural gas and other energy.
The wacko Democrat and MSM that Republicans are racist, or that the 10% of the population that lives in is designed to rural areas is a major political force is designed to convince the ignorant coastal population they are victims.
Maybe a majority of citizens have this crazy belief that immigration should be regulated and measured; that we shouldn't simply "abolish ICE" and have an open border. Democrats will lose moderate votes if they don't recognize this.
429
@Thomas Do you realize that 'abolish ICE' does not imply 'open borders'? I often wonder whether or not enough people realize the ICE is not the same as those on the border. Though I would suggest that calling on ICE (issues dealing with migrants within the country) to be reformed makes more sense and might be less confusing.
23
@Craig Freedman
"Do you realize that 'abolish ICE' does not imply 'open borders'?"
What difference does it make whether he does or doesn't realize it? The people who watch Fox news think it does imply open borders. So all that counts right?
The Democrats just don't have clue what they are up against. The truth is irrelevant if the majority don't believe it.
39
@William, ‘abolish ICE’ means ‘stop internal enforcement of immigration laws’, which effectively equals open borders.
97
The only way to respond to banal generalizations is to point to anecdotal evidence to the contrary-- as both have the same weight.
So, if "only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference," why is it that my fellow paesani (correct spelling) have moved en mass to conservative and fairly often openly racist positions since the Civil Rights movement swept the nation?
Is it because in the 60s Italian Americans finally became white?
We are talking about very solid middle class families and entire communities insular to the point of self segregation. And the attitude is not targeted at new immigrant groups. No sir. The number one target is still African Americans and Latinos.
Explain this with your generalizations.
6
I agree with David that bridging rootedness with exploration of the "other" supports a strongly pluralistic culture.
What I see however from the Trumper universe is a regression to tribalism and what I suspect is an inability to believe that they can withstand the experience of someone from a different tribe.
My source is my own experience as a member of an underrepresented group.
People avoid conflict because deep down they don't believe they can emerge from the experience unscathed.
This is a distorted belief that unfortunately goes unchallenged.
3
And thats why Asians are refusing to back an affirmative action law in Washington state
There is no point to arguing the case for relaxing immigration laws to Trump supporters. Their minds are made up and their prejudices are intractable.
These same people don't " believe " in the evidence of global climate change, or that during the lifetimes of their children, hundreds of millions of people will become climate refugees.
These same people will deny that the U.S. has an obligation to mitigate environmental damage or open the doors to save lives put at risk by our contribution to the ecosystem collapse approaching.
2
@michael , you’re right. I don’t believe we have the obligation to open our doors to hundreds of millions. Ultimately, a nations’ most important job is to put its own citizens’ interests ahead of all others.
14
This all sounds good at a personal and philosophical level, and I don’t disagree, but how does it translate to federal immigration policy. I can’t see any Democratic candidate discussing this at a focus group, no less a stump speech.
10
Being overrun by immigrants is Republican fearmongering, and its been going on for decades. They don't want to work with the Democrats to legislate immigration reform, because they've weaponized it to their political advantage.
First, we're not being inundated with immigrants any more than years past. Second, those that are here are for the most part, very productive and a willingness to accept the low paying jobs.
The Democrats immigration plan to beat the Republican propaganda is to challenge them to legislate reforms, be fair but reasonable. Assure that our borders are secure with the latest technology, not some pile of concrete that with an extension ladder you could climb over, or a shovel to dig under.
Attack the Republicans with coomon sense initiatives and make them look stupid.
8
@cherrylog754
Obama ran in 2008 promising to help dreamers. Why didn't Democrats with a House majority and 60 Senators do anything for the dreamers? Obama declared DACA in 2012 when he didn't think he'd be re-elected even though he knew it would poison any chance of bipartisan immigration reform.
Democrats did nothing in 2009-2010 because they knew they would never be re-elected if they opened the borders as their big money donors wanted. And they are unwilling enforce the laws against illegal hiring, much less strengthen them. It is much more fun to blame Republicans and to assert that anyone opposed to illegal immigration is racist.
Senator Obama did not support immigration reform because there was no advantage to him, personally, if Bush signed reform into law. He did less than nothing while president.
2
I could not agree more that progressives are too quick to label the fear and anger that drive populist white grievance as racist. That's a cheap, easy, dismissive ploy that doesn't advance understanding at all. We need some less blunt instruments for dissecting the hatefulness that populists embrace so enthusiastically. But while I love the yin and yang of rootedness and cosmopolitanism that David argues for here, I think his piece lets populism, and the people who willingly fall into it (and it is willing), totally off the hook.
I grew up in the blue collar suburbs of a rapidly-rusting and depopulating Buffalo NY. I daresay I'm one of the few from my neighborhoods who got out, got educated, and grew into broader horizons and tolerance of difference. None of my immediate family, and few of my friends, ever did. I have as fond memories of the "rootedness" - the intense localism and the white ethnic vibrancy of the places that I grew up - as anyone. But understandable culture fear and socio-economic anxiety aren't the only things that thrive there. I've been around a lot of kitchen tables where hatefulness and small-mindedness, and ignorant judgementalism were gleefully given play. Those things are acculturated and they are also chosen and embraced and waved as a flag. Donald Trump didn't invent them, he fed off them. And every Republican who has been around since Nixon bears way more responsibility for letting them thrive than judgmental liberal elites like myself do.
14
@LG , hatefulness, Small-mindedness, and ignorant judgementalism are pretty common among NYT commenters, too, particularly when the subject involves Republican voters or Christians.
1
Hasn't the party of rootedness descended into barbarism? The current message of the political right is that would-be immigrants are worthy only of contempt. Contrast the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan with Trump's favorite poem where he likens immigrants to venomous snakes.
Brooks seems to excuse Trump's demagoguery on the grounds that current conditions make that demagoguery effective for Trump's purposes. There is nothing in Trump's approach to immigration that is at all constructive.
6
I disagree that I do not understand modern conservatives. As a group they have turned far more intolerant and their view of peaceful harmony is to enthusiastically join their tribe. The solution is not to embrace them but to silence them politically.
2
Speaking of intolerance....
2
Immigration is a tough sell even in the best of times. These are not the best of times. Too many young people in America are dead because of smuggled drugs. Too many lives ruined and families have been torn apart. Too many mass graves south of the border to remind us of our coming fate.
And, why should we welcome a culture with such a low murder "clearance rate?" If we all "look the other way" will that make us a better country? Or will that threaten America? Remember, the ultimate "sanctuary state" is the graveyard.
32
Who are the cartel’s customers? Us. Whose fault is that?
The misbegotten Reagan Amnesty was passed in 1986. For a short time, the threatened enforcement of our immigration laws was sufficient to restrain illegal "immigration". But, over time, it became clear this country wasn't going to enforce our immigration laws or our employment laws. Illegal "immigration" steadily increased.
Then, thanks to the continuing lunacy of Birthright Citizenship, a very large and growing Hispanic population developed, at first in key states, then in pockets all over this country.
A slow burning anger began to build. It built all over this country. It elected Trump despite his many obvious faults. It will elect him again if the Democrats don't learn. I am confident they will not.
I will say this very slowly: this country is pro immigrant, pro "diversity", but not in favor of illegal "immigration" and not in favor of stuff it down your throat and pay for it illegal diversity.
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@Kurfco, birthright citizenship was added to the Constitution because of slavery. It was not added to make it easy for immigrants to stay here because their children were born here. It was not lunacy when it was added. It was done to safeguard the rights of newly freed African American slaves whose ancestors were brought here against their will. Citizenship is not the problem.
The problem is what is happening in the countries asylum seekers are leaving. Seeking asylum is not illegal. Overstaying a visa is. Hiring illegal immigrants is against the law but some businesses do it as a habit. That tells me that these businesses factor the fines in as the cost of doing business. Therefore our government has to do two things and do them properly.
First of all they need to upgrade the databases they maintain so that the response to queries about a new hire's citizenship and SSN is correct 99.9% of the time. Second, they need to begin to levy heavier fines against the employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants on a regular basis. Along with that they must fine the agencies that supply these employers. Other countries do a better job than America. But other countries aren't as technologically deficient as ours is.
10
@hen3ry
You don't understand current employment law. By Federal law, all an employer is obligated to do is look at a Social Security card or other "work authorizing document" and get a completed I-9 form. Most employers keep copies of both in their files. Illegal workers submit forged Social Security cards as good looking as yours and commit perjury to complete their I-9. Employers are not required to "verify" a prospective employees identity. Some states -- all Red ones -- require the use of eVerify, but Federal law does not require this. It is a voluntary program.
As for Birthright Citizenship, we are in agreement, sort of. It was definitely meant to clarify the status of kids born to freed slaves. It was never intended to confer citizenship on kids born to people with no legal right to be on US soil. The fact that we use it that way greatly complicates immigration law enforcement.
The reason we have so many "asylum" seekers is because our policies are so ludicrous. Once the world learned that all that was required was saying "asylum" and "credible fear", all illegal "immigrants" were instantly transformed into "asylum seekers".
7
David, folks who are afraid of another person because of his or her skin color are indeed racist. What other plausible conclusion can one draw?
The economic anxiety trope has been disproved by numerous studies, including the seminal Pugh Charitable Trust report post the 2016 election. Trump voters were not worried about the economy. They were worried about brown and black people.
Republicans have lost the urban vote, except for Joe the Plumber types. The party has lost the suburban vote.
It is left with the rural white vote. And, god forbid, we leave the future of our great country to those folks!
5
I happened to be reading the Book of Ruth this morning, as it happens in Hebrew with the wonderful Jewish Publication Society translation alongside.
I was reminded. Ruth was a Moabite, one of ancient Israel’s traditional enemies. But as it happens, she became the daughter in law of the Israelite Naomi, and pledged in true friendship and loyalty to leave her own people and god and share the faith and life of Israel with Naomi. In other words, Ruth was an immigrant.
Over time, she married and had a son, Obed; and he married and had a son, Jesse, and he married and had a son, David. That David.
Yes the great grandmother of David—whom Jews consider the greatest of ancient kings, and Christians consider the type of the Messiah to come—was a direct descendant of Moabite immigrants, just a couple of generations back.
The point? Religion is NOT a conservative counterpoint to liberal multiculturalism, as you seem to suggest.
At least biblical faith—both Jewish and Christian—is a RADICAL experiment in hospitality to the stranger. God’s gracious love knows no boundaries. Any who erect them in the name of that love have turned aside from it.
Christians who have forgotten hospitality have forgotten Christ. Christians who welcome the stranger welcome Christ, or rather are welcomed by him.
15
Here is another difficulty inherent to Brooks' "generous vision": Cultural assimilation.
Why do I have to press 1 for English? All previous waves of immigrants learnt English. So should the Spanish-speaking ones. I am in favor of foreign language instruction for schoolchildren. But, I am against spending scarce resources on Spanish and myriad other languages being taught as the medium of instruction. People the world over are embracing English. Why can't the immigrants? And if they cannot, why should WE taxpayers spend money on this? Note that this DOES take away funding from enrichment programs for the entire student body, support for students needing extra help, etc.
In my last job the lunchroom was segregated by ethnicity. Indians ate together and spoke in their language. So did the Chinese. Why is this to be celebrated? When will the "multicultural" people stop getting a free pass on their mono-cultural opacity?
There were affinity groups based on identities that are in fashion - race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. Why? Since 2012 (per my reckoning) our society started privileging all identities except plain vanilla everyday Americans.
I do want to live in a multi-cultural society. But, I would much rather welcome immigrants who are capable of benefiting from all that America has to offer and who have a desire to become one of us, rather than ones who clutch their provincial identities and try to be more of what they left behind.
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@na "Indians ate together and spoke in their language. So did the Chinese. Why is this to be celebrated?" Maybe not celebrated, but certainly understood. They do that for the same reason you don't sit at their table...they are afraid. It's easier to live with people the same as you are. It's almost always the case that the first generation keeps their old ways and the second generation learns the new ways...including language. This is one reason public school is so important. They will assimilate. Meanwhile, I agree that it would be nice to stop assuming that all white EuroAmericans are automatically racist and allow that group to also celebrate its heritage....and then go out for some tacos!
Hopefully, when the economic and social environment get horrible enough, people will focus on the failure of our current administration and vote for an effective one.
(No Labels)
1
Food for thought, as usual. Human evolution, and a brighter future ahead, was accomplished not by our 'sameness' but by our differences, and our rich diversity...provided we are open to see their values, however different culturally; or at least show tolerance for varied points of view, given that our experience is usually limited to our tribe plus occasional incursions in other's terrain. For some reason (actually, no reason can explain it), some still believe to be better, more advanced, 'superior' to 'the other' just because the color of our skin (for example), a most stupid attitude...and yet, causing inmense harm through the ages. We certainly need a new Renaissance where we can integrate our humanity and share the fruits of our ingenuity. Union makes strength, however opposite the current awful Trumpian times seem to suggest, by spreading a mantra of 'fear, hate and division. Let's trust we educate ourselves and recognize our subconscious biases, and some humility for the little we know...while trying to learn from our fellow human beings, and find freedom and justice in our encounters. It's result, peace in society, would pay enormous dividends...and perhaps even redeem our shortcomings.
2
Very easy to cry racist at those who want to restrict immigration. Is it possible to not care about race but only economics? I am tired of being told to pay more to support underworking Americans. Or underpaid Americans. I certainly do not want to pay for immigrants.... not refugees, immigrants. Trump is right to consider Medicaid recipients a public charge. Families want to be reunited? The American citizen can go visit them. Or pay health costs for the immigrant. Why does someone who isn’t here somehow have rights?
Instead of constantly bashing trump, try to understand why he’s here. Because working Americans are tired of identity politics and high taxes, and supporting immigrants.
60
@Ny Surgeon Most immigrants, legal and illegal, work the hardest jobs in America. They are not "underworking Americans". Maybe you meant this a a separate issue to immigration, but that should not go uncorrected.
1
@Pontifikate
I was not referring to immigrants. I was referring to underworking AMERICANS as I wrote.
I do not want to pay for the healthcare/welfare of non-refugee immigrants who seek a better life when I am already paying for non-working or underworking americans.
The cries of family reunification nauseate me. If you want your family to move to the USA, support them. Or just visit them back home. Immigrants (NOT refugees) do not have any right to demand that we pay for their better life.
1
Tired of _other people’s_ identity politics, you mean. Your identity as American (also known as a person randomly born in the US) gets invoked in every one of your sentences.
Waves of migration? Come on, David, you are better than this. This country's "wave of migration" took place before concern about climate change, before the general talking point about people migrating, before politicians around the globe became concerned about being invaded by immigrants.
Our "wave" took place for the most obvious of reasons: failure by a feckless government to enforce immigration laws over a 30+ year period. It was aided and abetted by having laws that tell the world that getting in is rewarded: school and medical care for your kids, citizenship for kids born here - birth paid for by the taxpayer too!!-- opportunities to make more money, often "off the books" etc.
20
This is another fine essay by David Brooks -- incomplete, because what 700-word essay isn't? But it says important things that get ignored. If the party of Roosevelt and Truman had been attending to basics for the last 40 years, our present situation would not be so dire.
4
"...includes economic and health care security..."
Mr. Brooks, I dare say that economic and health care security is the first step to all the others.
Where are gangs and crime most problematic (other than Wall Street)? In the impoverished parts of the cities, towns, and countries. Where are immigrants most feared and despised? In those same places. Where are opioids damaging the largest percentage of our citizens? Yep, in trump country; the regions devastated by the move-to-the-cheapest-labor-countries-capitalists (corporate Republicans) and the gigantic corporate farming industries—it's not really very healthy food, but look how cheap it is.
We've learned more than a few times over the last 100+ years how to avoid labor crises. It was simple: pay workers a living wage. The myriad social ills you describe could easily be mitigated—no, not solved—by going against the grain of those in power who have comforted the comfortable and afflicted the afflicted; you guessed it, your Republicans.
For an empathetic and intelligent human being, you seem determined to be dense.
Bill Buckley's "conservatism" has been destroyed by the last 40 years of right-wing loonacy and shennanagins. Please, get over it and start working in the world that is, that most of us live in. That better world where the CEO's and Senators are honorable people who consider themselves Americans citizens first, is long dead. Please Mr. Brooks, put your intelligence and writing to solving real world problems.
7
The interesting thing about all this global mixing is that it only goes one way - from poor, badly-run, unsuccessful countries full of “people of color” to rich, well-run countries that were built by white people.
Would it be ok with you, Mr. Brooks, if an influx of Poles was to turn Iran 40% Christian? Would it be ok for white Americans to flood illegally into Central America and demand the preferences due to a minority group?
21
“The short answer is: immigration. “
The longer question still remains, how can a sensible immigration policy be designed, discussed or implemented when Putin &co. can, with a phone call to the White House, cause a surge of dangerous ISIS prisoners to
“ immigrate” to Europe and beyond. Putin facilitated the prior wave of immigrants from Syria to Europe purposefully to destabilize it.
How’s that working out so far? Brexit, Orban, need I go on? The same trick here makes immigration literally a trump card for Republicans and their feckless leader.
Until the Putin cord is cut, immigration will lead the way down and downer, just like Putin pictured it.
1
"In order to get people to integrate with others you have to help them weave close communities with their own kind. Cosmopolitans never get this."
What's a "Cosmopolitan?" Some sort of cocktail?
I live in a town outside of Boston that has a synagogue, a mosque, a Catholic church, and several protestant churches. We all get along. Why our wonderful heartland can't get along with anyone who isn't exactly like them is beyond me, but please don't blame 'cosmopolitans' for that.
3
@CF "Why our wonderful heartland can't get along with anyone who isn't exactly like them is beyond me." Not a helpful comment and not supported by evidence. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country; when I lived there, the very large immigrant populations seemed not just to get along but to contribute greatly to the city's dynamism. And.. I just googled "mosques in West Des Moines, Iowa." Arguably the heartland, yes? I guess you're right -- not one mosque there! Instead, there are two.
2
Those who would like to see Trump need to expand their own tent.
Best not to stereotype millions of voters as racist and misogynists lest they vote for Trump again. We need to find common ground and not call millions of voters deplorable again.
6
I have never read such fantasy from any Times writer when it comes to immigration. We are not obligated to prove to the world that we are not racist when we decide who should be allowed to come to America and who we should deny entry. Our society is already the most diverse in the world and we should permit entry based on the needs of the country. Brain power will be the means by which America continues to lead the world, which will also ensure our economic power and military might necessary to preserve our freedom. What we don't need is a flood of 3rd world citizens who are a drain on our already over extended resources and religious groups who have demonstrated they have no tolerance to live in harmony other religious beliefs.
40
The illustrations in this piece work against its message
Out of many, one. This is our national anthem and the basis of the nation state. Diversity is not a strength if people dont subscribe to an underlying narrative and set of values. Of course the nation state is created with the comfort and power of the majority of the creators in mind. We have a strong rule of law to protect minorities but that only touches on the divisions within American citizens. Western European migration posed no threat to a land that is essentially an extension of European society. Immigrants should be welcome in a process where we cherry pick the best abd brightest according to national need. We dont need full scale family clan based migration from non-developed nations. Pay Americans a little more for unskilled labor or reinstitute temp. worker programs where immigrants return after doing low skill jobs. The Ds will lose everytime in the heartland if they dont start distinguishing between illegal and legal immigrants. We are not the safety valve for the worlds ills nor can this nation take in endless massess of cultually alien migrants and illegals without dissolving the underlying bonds barely holding our divided society together. A mass plan to change voter demographics through complete amnesty for illegals and open border policies seems like sore loaing to the heartland. The Ds must convince flyover over America once again of their loyalty to their ills and not seek to replace them with foreigners. American' are dreamers too.
19
"How to Beat Trump on Immigration".....The Trump supporters believe what they want to believe; but the fact is Obama deported more illegal immigrants than any other President. When he left office illegal immigration into the U.S. was at a 40 year low, and there were no caravans of asylum seekers crossing Mexico because the Mexican government was helping secure our southern border. Now all you have to do is convince the Trump supporters that illegal immigration has actually gotten worse not better. It is true, but good luck getting them to believe it.
1
What a wonderful article! After being an ESL teacher to adults from many countries for more than 30 years, I heartily agree with your positive approach to immigration. We're all the same no matter our culture, origin, language, background or skin color. Fear of the unknown is a normal response, but treating immigrants with respect and kindness is like opening the door to a wealth of unexpected gifts. We're all part of humanity.
Wait, now I'm confused. Conservatives are always complaining that we Progressives care too much about "identity politics." Isn't that what "bonding experience within your own tradition to create rootedness" means? If so, why do you Conservatives always deride us for that?
And I'm also confused about why you think that when we Progressives "celebrate living across difference" that we discount anyone's sense of rootedness (be it our own, or other people's)? You present them as being mutually exclusive, when they're not at all!
In fact, the whole point of "celebrating difference" is predicated on the notion that "difference" can only occur if the "different" things have "different" senses of their own rootedness. Pluralism can't exist without contrasting rootednesses.
Progressives have never been anti rootedness. That's a fundamental misunderstanding made by Conservatives; or perhaps even a caricature trope that Conservatives purposely propagate to stigmatize us as being "against" them.
In fact, Pluralists are (by definition) accepting of Conservatives as part of the panoply of differences that we celebrate. But conversely, Conservatives are less accepting of Progressives, because they emphasize dividing the world into "us" versus everyone else who's not like us. That's a pretty divisive way to look at the world.
Now that I think about it, my confusion is warranted: not because I'm confused, but rather because Brooks and Conservatives are confused (and narrow-minded)!
3
This column reminds me of the Kennedy clan. They lived in a gated compound while extolling the virtues of integration. If you live in a bubble it is likely you will never be touched by the problems endemic in welcoming immigrants who are unable to make their way in modern America. As Ted Cruz stated, if it were lawyers coming over the border, the elites would stop it. But since it's potential democrat voters, see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.
27
“economic problems” such as the cheapest fruits and vegetables on earth?
Have fun cutting broccoli after you finish building the wall.
1
@sob, there's no reason for immigrants to be primarily Democrats. Many are probably quite conservative, but Republicans see anti-immigration rhetoric as an easier way to get their own votes. Certainly easier than passing comprehensive immigration reform.
How's that wall working out for you?
I have no idea on how to beat Don Trump on immigration. This sure isn't it. Mr. Brooks, why don't you explain your idea to one of the Democratic Presidential candidates, and then have them present it in one of the Democratic primary debates, or better yet, in a debate with Pres. Trump? Your ideas would fall totally flat. They do not communicate. Don Trump knows how to communicate; that is why he is President. About the only reason. And yes, he does communicate and think at a pretty cartoonish level.
Too many people in this country are dead set against immigration. And I don't really think that they have any good reasons for their opposition. There probably isn't any way to change their views. But your ideas on pluralism won't work. My idea probably won't work on a lot of people. But it is a better idea than this academic, elites' idea of pluralism.
I am pretty sure that nearly every immigrant comes to the US because they like the way this country works. They want to be Americans. The love the opportunity--jobs, education, consumer goods, etc.. Hispanics, Chinese, Koreans, Somalians, everyone. They want to be here. They want to be Americans. Just like everyone who is already here. So why not emphasize that idea? That the immigrants are no threat to the US way of life. They aren't. They are all good Americans.
1
“Their wages are declining, their families and communities are fragmenting, their churches are shrinking, government services are being cut, their values and national identity feel unstable.”
Why are their wages declining? Why are their government services being cut? Why do national values and identity feel unstable? Wages, government services and values have been sacrificed by David’s tribe on the altar of tax cuts for people who don’t need them. Meanwhile, he travels to France and tells us to be more open minded. David Brooks is the cause of all the problems he laments.
11
@Shadlow Bancroft, on top of that they take advantage of the situation they've sown and blame everything on immigrants! Easy votes, why try to actually solve anything?
1
Sorry, David, erudite but still clueless, populists use immigrants as a foil for an erosion of jobs money etc. that will take place regardless and, perhaps, in spite of that population taking its place among the working and tax paying public. The huge shift to a very powerful wealthy elite is much more of a problem and one that quite obviously the wealthy and powerful don't want addressed. I think they call what they do job creation. Sounds almost godlike or so they would like you to think.
2
Brooks you muddled through and never got to "How to Beat Trump on Immigration. "
Sociologically people in harmonious groups get a long much better than when you try and mix non-harmonious groups. This is Fact proven by Sociological Studies.
I'm a left-leaning Blue Dog Democrat but think the Dems are going to the loose the election with an Open Borders Platform. My yard men are from Mexico. They do a great job and I like them. I have good friends from Kashmire. I have no doubt that I would like most of the illegal immigrants who are here and people who are banging at the Wall to come in.
However, I AM NOT FOR OPEN BORDERS. Our government has hurt Americans with such programs like HB-1 Visa program by allowing companies to bring lower cost employees who take American's jobs.
The world is heating up and now with more information flowing to countries around the world via the Internet EVERYONE wants to come to America to escape poverty and horrible regimes.
How can America become home to the World? If it can...please explain how this is works with American's who are currently living here. Because, I don't know how this can work out.
Already our major cities are overflowing, housing prices are out of reach for many and the homeless are ruining communities because they have no where to go.
41
@Mikki If our major cities are overflowing, we need to increase housing density, especially near transit. We don't all need a single-family house with a white picket fence and a yard. More of us should be living in townhouses and multistory apartment buildings. Greater density will reduce commute times, reduce air pollution, and make it easier for teen-agers to access culture and all our cities have to offer before they are old enough to drive. Greater density will help preserve farm and forest land. And most important, it will increase the supply of housing and thereby reduce its cost.
1
@Mikki If our major cities are overflowing, we need to increase housing density, especially near transit. We don't all need a single-family house with a white picket fence and a yard. More of us should be living in townhouses and multistory apartment buildings. Greater density will reduce commute times, reduce air pollution, and make it easier for teen-agers to access culture and all our cities have to offer before they are old enough to drive. Greater density will help preserve farm and forest land. And most important, it will increase the supply of housing and thereby reduce its cost.
@Mikki If our major cities are overflowing, need to increase housing density, especially near transit. We don't all need a single-family house with a white picket fence and a yard. More of us should be living in townhouses and multistory apartment buildings. Greater density will reduce commute times, reduce air pollution, and make it easier for teen-agers to access culture and all our cities have to offer before they are old enough to drive. Greater density will help preserve farm and forest land. And most important, it will increase the supply of housing and thereby reduce its cost.
It's all very well to talk about being "rooted in a place," but tell this to the hundreds of thousands, in come cases millions, of people driven from their nations or homes by war, famine, climate disasters, and pure and simple overpopulation which mean resources do not supply needs. This bigger and faster shifting and growing world population will very likely overwhelm national and continental boundaries despite all the walls, barriers, and laws that we try to erect in the way. This swirling global world cannot just be wished away. In the 70s "the population bomb" was an important focus of interest but now we seem to have forgotten the consequences of an exploding population.
9
Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam, in a wide-ranging 2007 study (interviews with over 30,000 people) provided compelling evidence that the greater the level of diversity in a community, the lower the level of civic engagement and trust.
Putnam, a political liberal, was reluctant to accept these conclusions, but did so with reluctance.
Jasper
60
(1) No thanks to "thick pluralism:" There is no such thing as a "multi-cultural" society -- an identifiable nation or society exists by virtue of a shared culture, starting with language. There is an American culture and presumably new and recent immigrants want to assimilate, much as their predecessors did. As far as I can see (and interact with immigrants from all over) that's happening. (2) The US, despite a history of episodic nativism, is very consciously a nation of immigrants and has generally been more welcoming than most other places. (3) I don't think that has changed. Human nature being what it is, the most open society can only absorb immigrants at a certain pace. (4) The right approach to immigration will take all of that into account.
17
"Conservatives tend to emphasize the value of being rooted in place. Progressives tend to celebrate living across difference. Life is miserable, and a nation is broken, unless you do both."
That could be true. But the conservative stance is particularly susceptible to primitive tribal impulses - that is what makes it potentially much more damaging. Particularly so when leaders cloaking themselves in the mantle of conservatism appeal to their followers' basest instincts, as they have in recent times.
9
Although I agree with Mr. Brooks, successful integration of immigrants is possible only in prosperous, materially secure societies. Otherwise, it feeds the perception that immigrants are competing for already scarce resources, and breeds extreme resentment and an inevitable political backlash. This, for example, is precisely what happened in the formerly E. German states, Sachsen, for example, strengthening the right-wing parties, catapulting them into governance. Germany desperately needs skilled immigrants for its industry, but it just can't get over its Xenophobia in the East. Especially when immigrants are unskilled refugees fleeing persecution in their own countries e.g. African refugees who attempt life-threatening crossings of the Mediterranean to get to Italy. Climate change will turn this trickle into a torrent. How do you deal with the seemingly endless waves of these people who are culturally different and economically disadvantaged? At a practical level, this becomes the question.
26
Brooks claims "[It] is taboo here [to state] that immigration is always, at the most personal level, a cultural encounter." Any supporting evidence of that taboo, Brooks?
I'm so tired of claims that people who feel compassion towards those less fortunate than themselves are "PC," naive, bleeding-hearts, or practicing reverse-discrimination. We live in an incredibly, almost unbelievably wealthy nation. If the people who love power and money more than they love other humans weren't deliberately stoking the fears and insecurities of their less powerful, less wealthy fellow citizens, the riches of the US could provide comfortably for everyone here and a bunch of people in other places (or, at minimum, US plutocrats could stop stealing money from other countries). And with a national cultural policy of increased compassion and decreased fear-mongering, maybe the churches would even stop shrinking.
7
White I agree with what you’ve written, it is not realistic. You’re forgetting one critical thing: it’s the states that have the greatest power make or break a pluralistic society because it’s the states that fund education and decide whether or not to expand Medicaid. And guess what? Red states that already have a high poverty level (like Alabama) are seeing an influx of immigrants. That’s why Trumpism was so appealing to so many already-impoverished, uneducated Alabamians who don’t know how to react to a changing world.
You said to create a “thick pluralistic society, you first have to help people embed in a secure base. That includes economic and health care security, but it also involves cultural and spiritual security.”
Maslow’s Hierarchy—agree. But, I’ve worked in high-poverty schools where American kids don’t have that base-level security, and putting strain on an already strained system is just a recipe for social unrest. We already have a history of racism here, and the poverty just fuels it.
In Alabama, public education was barely scraping by long before Hispanic immigrants arrived. Now, our scores are getting even lower and of course there are those who like to play the blame game. Part of this endless cycle of low standards is because people continue to vote for Republicans. It’s difficult to create a healthy, pluralistic society when the game board looks this way. So my question is, how do red states beat Trump on immigration when this is the ugly reality?
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@Corrie while. Not white.
One minor correction Mr Brooks . The recent rise in immigration is not a social experiment . It is the reality of the world we live in . And all the carping whining and threats from the so called populists isn't going to do anything the mitigate the situation . In fact as Trump's reign has proven
It will exacerbate it
6
Part of rootedness is financial security, but today's federal minimum wage has half the purchasing power it used to have, and there are only three counties in the country where minimum wage -- even where higher than $7.25 -- is high enough to afford housing. David Brooks says when natives feel strong and rooted they will welcome immigrants, but he has called raising minimum wage a "horrible" idea. Conservatives do everything they can to uproot workers, which makes them fear immigration. Democrats will fix this by helping workers recover their financial security, their education and health, all critical for rootedness, which will in turn get rid of the conservative boogeyman, immigrants.
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Many Progressives do not seem to understand what it is like to grow up in a working class area where people had made a decent living in factories until Free Trade laws let manufacturers move their plants abroad where the labor was cheap and environmental laws were not enforced.
Many former factory workers were then able to get good paying jobs in construction until the Great Recession hit, and most construction stopped. When it finally started again, construction managers realized they could hire the undocumented for much lower wages. Many working class citizens have yet to find jobs that pay as well as their former factory or construction jobs.
As a result, many have lost their families. Women did not want to be married to the fathers of their children whom they see as one more mouth to feed. Their children are growing up in poor, single parent homes, although from time to time their mothers might have a relationship with a different man, who might try to act as their father.
Such households never seem to have enough money or time to relax and make friends with people in their area. Their areas may have so many “broken homes” in which people always feel stretched to the breaking point that it never turns into a community. Many feel isolated and in fear of their future.
If Progressives would try to understand the situation of our own working class citizens as much as they do the plight of people who are here illegally, then we would be a less polarized country.
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@ann
The below quotes are from a 10/31 NYT article titled "Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment”:
"Even in some of the hottest labor markets in the country — let alone lagging rural regions and former industrial powerhouses — workers, including skilled ones ... say they cannot find jobs that provide a middle-class income and don’t come with an expiration date.”
"Most of these people do not show up in the stunningly low official unemployment rate, which was 3.6 percent in October. Working even one hour during the week when the Labor Department does its employment survey keeps you out of the jobless category.”
"Many more show up in a broader measure, which includes people who are working part time but would prefer full-time employment, and those who want to work but have given up an active job search. That rate in September was 6.9 percent, some 11 million people. But there are also many others, ... , who work temporary jobs for months at a time and are not necessarily captured in either measure. And millions of contract workers — freelancers, consultants, Lyft drivers — lack benefits, regular schedules and job security. They have found a foothold, but it rests on loose rock.
A recent survey by Gallup found that a majority of Americans do not consider themselves to be in a “good job.”’
Yet, Progressives think we should accept illegal immigrants who compete for our jobs, for affordable housing and whose children crowd our own children’s schools .
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@ann
Absolutely willing to grant you the economic point.
But solving that definitely begins with enforcing E-Verify and severely punishing those employers who hire undocumented immigrants at undercutting wages in the first place.
Said employers are generally oligarchic enough to have a lot of influence, through campaign spending, on our representatives, so complete public funding of elections, with low three digit limits on individual contributions per campaign, and NO organizational contribution, be they corporate, union, religious, or five-oh-whatever, allowed.
Just like with our "war on drugs", we need to cut off the demand to have an effect on the supply. Keeping the unscrupulous from hiring the undocumented is the place to start.
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@ann, Progressives are not solely focused on the plight of immigrants in this country. That's just conservative spin. You can try to solve problems like crowded schools or lack of good jobs by keeping certain people out-- people who might actually prove to be economically beneficial to your aging population-- or you could prioritize funding schools for everyone. Public schools are poorly funded because we *choose to spend money elsewhere, not because of immigrants, illegal or otherwise. Wages are low in large part because we decimated unions.
Progressives weren't the ones passing Free Trade agreements or cutting funding for services or privatizing everything or throwing trillions of dollars away on wars.
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A successful integration of peoples of different cultures is dependent upon a realization by those same peoples that humanity is one, that there is only one race (the human race), and that men and women are equal. It helps when there is a leader who can propagate these values. Right now, there is no such leader in government, in chuch, in industry or anywhere else.
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Why do I think that Stephen Miller is someone who has had a hard time feeling comfortable in his family history as Jewish refugees. I look at him as a very disturbed person who gets no comfort from his own place in the pantheon of American immigration. If he recognized his grandparents struggles with AntiSemitism, he may be more open about present day refugees and their plight. Most of all, why does he oppose ALL immigration while evidence shows our economy and and culture are richer and stronger with contributions by immigrants.
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I understand what David is saying. What I cannot understand is why things are this way in big swaths of 21st century America.
My grandparents were all from working class families, and my parents were the first members of their families to attend college. From the time I was a small child, we were taught to judge persons as individuals, not to stereotype. My Catholic parents originally accepted the Church’s teaching about homosexuality, but also believed that what others do privately is no one else’s business. As society changed and friends came out, they welcomed them and their partners. As I have written before, my nieces and nephews include people of color, and we are a mix of religions.
Admittedly, we were native New Yorkers, but to say that seems to suggest that I believe that rural Americans, or those in the middle of the country, are incapable of coming to the conclusions reached by my older family members in the 1920’s or earlier. And that’s what I don’t understand. What is wrong with your faith if you can’t accept mine? Don’t you know that white Americans all came here originally from other places? Don’t you enjoy different kinds of food, music, sports, art, literature?
As I said at the beginning— I just don’t get it.
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Brooks' answer to U.S. anxiety about immigration is unrealistic. We need to agree on laws to control immigration and stick by them. A book I read written by a person who had immigrated to the U.S. proposed admitting people legally who had skills to offer. The humanitarian need is immense, but I do believe the lifeboat theory. We have to control the number coming in and who they are to preserve ourselves. Ironically, Western technology that has increased human populations at the expense of the environment is the source of the pressure millions of people abroad feel to find secure places to live. If we did not live in the style we do, we could accommodate more people, but they would be less desperate to come. On top of that is the total destruction enabled by modern warfare. All that said, things as they are now, the U.S. cannot let in as many people in need as it would appear we can precisely because of the damage our form of culture does to the natural world around us.
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@Ro Mason, not sure why it's pteferable to bring in more people who will displace Americans from even better jobs. Would you rather be changing sheets in a hotel?
I'm a strong Democratic voter who enjoys some things in other cultures, whether here or where those cultures are rooted.
But I can see that the rate of cultural change and immigration is driving every country to the right. I don't want to live in a right wing country. I'm willing to forgo immigration to ensure a figure like Trump does not arise again in my lifetime.
Also, with the CO2 footprint of Americans being so high, every person that steps across the border moves us further away from dealing with climate change. I'm willing to give up immigration to combat climate change too.
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@Djt Some day -- not in our lifetimes -- it will dawn on people in a very real way that the climate problem is a symptom of overpopulation. Reducing the population is the only thing that will stop or mitigate climate change. The question is whether the means will be climate induced disasters or something else.
10
@Mike Really? You think the carbon footprint per capita of Honduras is the same or higher than the USA?
No way. When a poor farmer moves from El Salvador to the USA, he immediately doubles his carbon footprint. This isn't rocket science.
10
Cumbia Baby, Cumbia
I feel all warm and fuzzy. David Brooks has hit the sweet spot. I am a self actualizing man who has reached Kolberg's highest level of moral capacity.
But now I'm coming off this high. I realize that we are being "played" by an incompetent individual who is only concerned about maintaining his power and enriching his pocketbook. Suddenly I'm ised-off, and feel a visceral need to go into attack mode.
But David is right:
"Those who take advantage of the 'Bind' didn't create the bind. We need to step away before we trigger an explosion. We need to trust that time will slowly diffuse the tensions.
And we need to, in one way or another, provide for health relationships and a healthy environment.
1
Kudos for writing this: "Only people who are securely rooted in their own particularity are confident enough to enjoy the encounter with difference. This is the paradox of pluralism: In order to get people to integrate with others you have to help them weave close communities with their own kind. Cosmopolitans never get this." I've lived in highly diverse areas all my life, and I've become lonely and miserable as a result, so I can confirm this from personal experience.
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The title of this column is pure Click Bait. The next presidential election is a year away and Brooks gives us some ideals to ponder but nothing substantial in regards to beating Trump on immigration.
I'm left of center politically and have voted for Democrats or Independents my entire life , but in no way do my views on immigration jibe with any of the Dem candidates. I like immigrants and enjoy other cultures (I've lived abroad in Mexico, Italy, and Czech Republic, and speak two foreign languages); you could say I'm a Xenophile. However, I am for limited legal immigration (our current system is very generous). But I'm not for illegal immigration. Nor am I for government benefits going to illegal immigrants and their families. Nor am I for decriminalizing illegal border crossing. Nor am I for allowing in potential asylum seekers while they wait for court dates. Nor am I for demonizing those of us who want limited immigration as racists or bigots. Sadly the Dem candidates only seem to have immigration policies as reactions to Trump.
And David Brooks, what's the plan again? To be more pluralistic? As I said, Click Bait.
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@Andio
Totally agree. As someone who is way left-of-center on almost every issue excepting immigration, I believe that the Dems are not facing the reality of populist sentiment (and the recent political outcomes) both in the US and in Europe, and are keeping their heads buried in the sand. I am fervently hoping that they will come up with an immigration stance that is palatable to the average voter. Brook's opinion piece, of course, was pure click bait.
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@Andio And your people presumably came here before there was such a thing as 'legal' or 'illegal' immigration. They just walked off the boat and if they weren't diseased, they went to their immigrant communities. You most certainly do not represent liberal values.
@Andio
The US system is NOT "generous".
You tell yourselves lies and then believe them.
"If Trump opponents want to reach those voters", they must stop pretending there is no meaningful distinction between illegal and legal immigration, and between asylum as properly intended and asylum as opportunism and pretext.
The most prominent Latino in American history, Cesar Chavez, opposed illegal immigration for the reasons many oppose it now. Elite progressives--Mr. Brooks included--imagine that Bad America somehow owes functionally open borders. Most Americans disagree, and will vote accordingly.
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National borders mean less now than they ever have. The internet let’s us interact in hundreds of languages across every type of border. Global institutions including Apple, General Motors, Harvard University, Most major banks, UNICEF among others operate seemlessly across the globe. Supply chains operate across every continent with few products produced and consumed in a single country.
Immigration is a nice political hot potato but in the real world it does not really matter.
4
@Jack S
So then Jack S, if what would effectively be open borders as pronounced by our Democratic candidates results in a billion poverty stricken legal and illegal immigrants, it would not really matter?
I’d rather not be forced to choose between a victim of aberrant brain development, like President Caligula or someone addled by destructively impractical ideology.
3
1) Words matter. Please do not destroy them Mr B. pruTm is NOT a "global populist." "Demagogue" is the correct label. While populist sensibilities are evident in pruTm's rhetoric such rhetoric is, as most always with him, a fraudulent misrepresentation.
2) The solution to creating a pluralistic society is to dismantle the structures that have produced the current plutocracy, which is to say the regressive taxation schemes and other assorted reactionary regulatory hijnx on the march since Saint Ronnie.
16
"The pluralist doesn’t see society as a competition for scarce resources, but as a joint voyage of discovery in search of life’s biggest answers. Pluralism offers us the chance, and the civic duty, to be a daring social explorer, venturing across subcultures, sometimes having the exciting experience of being the only one of you in the room, harvesting the wisdom embedded in other people’s lifeways. A key pluralist trait is curiosity, the opposite of anxiety."
Does this sound like a good description of the Progressive Party to anyone else?
11
This piece is thoughtful, intelligent and perhaps, most of all, a bit too optimistic. I hope that Democrats can beat Trump on the immigration policy, but It seems to me that the perspective on immigration held by a large segment of the population in the U.S. is that anything which dilutes the power of the white population is unacceptable. Creating "a mass multicultural democracy where people feel at home" will have little meaning to those who oppose immigration. To them, it's all about white power, and that divisive attitude has been promoted by Donald Trump over and over again. It may take many years to reverse the damage that Trump has done for a positive, fair immigration policy.
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Very insightful. The problem with this piece is that it considers both points of view. Most NYT readers are not interested in that.
I applaud David Brooks for his intellectual honesty. A rare commodity in today's environment.
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Mr Brooks, you make a good point, those most secure in
their cultural identity find it easier to be accomodating. Similarly, states with the highest divorce rates stood most firmly for "marriage is only between a man and a woman"
as opposed to "between people who love each other".
Two parents are generally thought to be better than one,
so perhaps proximity to 2 approaches to solving the problems of being human [cultures] is better than being fixed in a monoculture.
Just a thought
4
This is a thoughtful column on a challenging issue. At times though, Brooks seems a bit too sanguine about the challenge ahead for the United States.
The key challenge is this: how to provide conservative white Americans a sense of "security" in the midst of rapid demographic change?
Simply providing better economic supports, while laudable and helpful, is not going to be sufficient. Nor is encouraging them to "think about things from a better philosophical standpoint", which seems to be Brooks' solution. At some point, explicitly speaking to people's fears about that demographic change, and promising to slow it down, is likely to be necessary. And that need not involve fearmongering or stereotyping or nasty rhetoric - it can be done calmly and carefully.
There is also a class dynamic here that Brooks misses, and which Joan Williams nicely summarizes in "White Working Class" - an openness to change and the erosion of traditions is likely to be particularly unsettling to many in the working class, but less so to a professional elite. The latter is Brooks' perspective, and that might explain his (likely misplaced) optimism.
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@Meidner
Our political leaders once championed the working man as the beating heart of America. Now they blame white men for all of the evils of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Neither point of view is entirely honest or complete, but the former encourages the confidence that fosters pluralism, while the latter satisfies the short term demands for cartoon villains of identity politics while sowing the seeds of division. I think that is Brooks' point. Our political leaders need to derive more of their rhetorical inspiration from FDR or JFK, and less from the Woman's Studies professors of their college years.
6
As I understand you, you are saying that people can explore scary things (someone from a different group) only when they can easily return to their comfort zones (their own group). I am a lifelong horsewoman who spent the last three years painfully trying to recover my love of riding horses after a severe psychological trauma resulting from a potentially life threatening experience with a horse. The path I took, which is proving to be successful, is little by little going out of my comfort zone, but returning without blaming myself when overwhelmed by anxiety. I never thought about how this relates to people from "scary" groups, but this makes sense. It takes a very long time, and it often seems like two steps forward and three steps back, but over time, confidence and feelings of security increase, until what seemed threatening last month now seems like an interesting challenge.
12
What's sadly missing in this piece are the concepts of patience and perspective. In other words, time will tell how we respond to change that always seems to startle us when, in fact, it had been
surrounding us since long before we realized it. Two steps forward, one step back. Thanks to relatively recent contributing factors such as instantaneous communication, social media and fake news, our judgments are spontaneous instead of considered.
Think. Rinse. Repeat. Please.
3
“Social exploration...requires the ability to not merely tolerate difference, but to greet it with a generosity of spirit.”
“...humbly aware that [your convictions] ...are not the only convictions.”
“Being slow to take offense...quick to forget the transgressions of others and honest in acknowledging your group’s past wrongs.”
Mr. Brooks, none of the above is possible in America in the form in which we recognize it. We have ignored the near-genocide of the Native Peoples, throwing it under the rug of the justification of Manifest Destiny. We have never come to serious, honest grips with slavery. After the Times published its magnificent “1619 Project,” conservatives howled that it was all just revisionist history. How, in our current political, social, cultural climate are we supposed to tackle the three great moral imperatives from which I quote above?
Your visit to Europe was reminiscent of our own grand experiment here, somewhat successful, somewhat failed. We Americans largely lack the true Judeo-Christian ethos of charity. It’s a bridge much, much too far, I fear.
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@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
No doubt, there is some truth in what you say. Yet, after reading it, I feel more demotivated and discouraged. Your post is the progressive echo of Trump. Both focus on American carnage.
I feel your way, of pointing out all the wrongs, and offering no path forward, is the wrong one and I reject it.
We all know the problems and pointing them out merely highlights the obvious. The only viable way forward is embracing both truth AND hope.
11
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
Allow me to help you come to grips with slavery. There was a horrible civil war with white people and blacks essentially lining up opposite at close range with deadly rifles and just butchering each other for four years. This ended slavery. Jim Crow and racial strife are consequences of said war.
3
Thank you, Mr. Brooks for your calm and measured writing these last couple of years. As a committed pluralist (and a committee member of the American Solidarity Party, a pluralist party) I am grateful to see someone of your stature put forward smart, graceful opinions in this unstable time.
Your column today reminded me of a fantastic book I read last year that deals with this subject. I would highly recommend to you "Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear by Matthew Kaemingk, it's the best book I know on the matter.
22