The Novenber referendum in Switzerland that outlawed the construction of new minarets was disheartening to advocates of increased migration.  It shows again that the “western street” when given a choice doesn’t want to live with unassimilated foreigners.  Proposition 187 in California in 1994 taught the same lesson.  The successes of the British National Party, the Minutemen in the USA and the National Front in France reinforce the lesson.  People are instinctively tribal and conservative about change.   In the USA we are protected somewhat from these tribal instincts by the Constitution, which constrains legislative or populist ballot initiatives.  New legislation must pass a test of its “Constitutionality” before it can become law.  This was the case with prop 187.  Courts ruled that it violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution and it was effectively gutted. 

The minaret ban, however enforceable it ends up being after its test in the Swiss courts, illustrates how much the elite’s opinion on what to do about immigration has diverged from the electorates.  Voters have shown time and again that they don’t want unassimilated strangers living in their neighborhoods changing their way of life and imposing cost on there institutions.  Elites see migration as a long-term good that requires some short-term pain and since they are mostly insulated from the pain they promote getting on with it.

How can these two views be reconciled?

Second immigrants must be encouraged to assimilate.  They have to be educated about US values, mores and culture.  Israel’s system of absorption centers allowed the country in the 1990’s to absorb a 20 per cent increase in population.  At the absorption centers they were offered, according to Philippe Legrain in Immigrants Your Country Needs Them , “language lessons, housing, help finding jobs and a hand.”  They are not expected to completely give up their pasts Legrain writes “while Israel helps immigrants integrate socially, it respects their individual freedom.”  We could redirect a large part of the resources we currently spend on trying to keep out immigrants toward ESL and cultural integration programs.  If nobody tells a person from Laos that it is not okay in the USA to butcher animals in the front yard, he will anger the neighbors.  But whose fault is it?

Third we have to refocus on our national motto “e pluribus unum” out of many one. If elites want healthy levels of immigration they have to compromise on the goal of multiculturalism.  The “American Street,” the electorate, won’t allow immigration if it means that apple pie culture is changed to fast or too far.  This doesn’t mean that we have to close the Chinese restaurants or stop the public displays of Menorahs.  We can keep words like kayak and rodeo.  What we can’t do is things like bilingual education, value free education and bilingual ballots.  If we want more immigration it has to be assimilated immigration.

Fourth our immigration rules have to be simplified and realistic.  The current one hundred plus visa categories should be simplified down to less than a dozen.  Our neighbors should get preference to whatever number of new permanent resident visas we allow.  History has shown that they are going to be moving here anyway so lets get them out of the shadows so that the first three proposals above can be effective.  What is a realistic level of immigration needs to be the subject of a broad national debate.  About three percent of our population didn’t enter the country legally.  This is a symptom of the fact that we have had an unrealistic immigration policy for the last twenty-five years. 

More assimilating immigrants won’t just be job seekers they will also be renters, homebuyers, shoppers and students.  They will create businesses and bring us new ideas and products.  The growth that they create can help to end the recession.  These are very sound arguments for more immigration and the “American Street” will support them if the new immigration is designed to share the cost fairly, to assimilate the new immigrants, to preserve and celebrate the culture that attracts the immigrants and are realistic about the flow of people.  Attempts to ban minarets or quinceaneras should be a signal to all of us that we need to re-examine the assumptions that our immigration policy is based on and make adjustments so that the policy is palatable to all Americans. 

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