On the Border: Immigration, Assimilation and the Survivor Game.

Why all the fuss about immigration?

Some Facts from the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies:

[1.] During the 1990s, the United States admitted the largest number of immigrants in its history . . . . We now have a . . . foreign-born population of about 27 million, twice the level of 1910.

[2.] Immigrants are also more concentrated, with the top four immigrant states accounting for a 20 percent larger share of the nation's immigrant population than the top four states just 25 years before.

[3.] Also, the immigrant flow is much less varied than before, with more than 50 percent of post-1970 immigrants coming from Spanish-speaking Latin America, a degree of ethnic concentration unprecedented in American history.

[4.] And finally, ongoing mass immigration is hindering the economic assimilation of immigrants, with immigrant wages falling behind those of natives and immigrant poverty steadily growing.

I think of it like a macro-Survivor game. The world is divided into teams. Team membership is fluid, but moving is difficult because of language differences. And there's more. When a team member switches teams, he can take with him the strategies of the old team or he can learn the strategies of the new team. Teams don't have to operate unanimously, of course. But the teams have challenges: farming requirements, architectural projects, scientific and medical breakthroughs, an infrastructure, a market, an economy. The team completing each task with the least wasted effort and the most bountiful result wins. And who is that going to be? The Red, White, & Blue continue as the reigning champs. But they are slowing down every day because of the team's failure to exert leadership over the new members who keep defecting from other teams. Think of it like a Viking long boat. Everyone in America, legal or not, has an oar. But they come in different sizes, and the majority is pulling for the team. Nevertheless, a growing minority is dragging its oars beside the boat, slowing it down, or maybe pulling in other directions. And how can they help it? They learned how to row elsewhere. It will take years to teach them how to row the American way, in sync with those around them, rather than banging on all the other oars while marching to the beat of different maracas.

How can the United States or any team with a united purpose - a corporation, a family, a classrooom, or a community - continue to function when swamped with unruly members who don't understand the game or the way it is played here? Twelve years of public school is arguably not enough to fully prepare kids who are born here--and raised by those born here--for their duties as a citizen. America is a complicated machine that functions on a very high level and with a great deal of intellectual principle assumed. That is, you can't just walk in and begin to contribute. Sure there are lawns to be mowed, roofs to be nailed down. But to really engage in our society, you need education and assimilation--and lots of it.

Though most immigrants will undergo a superficial assimilation however broken our immigration policy is, there is more to Americanization than learning English and getting a job. The development of a visceral, emotional attachment to America and its history, or patriotic assimilation, is increasingly unlikely when the schools and the culture at large are skeptical, even hostile, to patriotism and when technology enables immigrants to maintain strong psychological and physical ties to their countries of origin.

No thoughtful American is against all immigration. But the current flood needs to be reduced to a manageable stream. IT'S ALL ABOUT ASSIMILATION; that's the whole point. We want to bring people in, but no faster than we can train them in all things American. Keep your native food and clothing. And American pop culture will overwhelm you regardless. But in issues of citizenship, art, government, law, commerce, and philosophy, you have much to learn. So much in fact, a sensible policy would give you and yours a pass, but slow the immigration rate so that American neophytes enter the nation at about the same rate that first-generation immigrants from previous decades are dying out. (The latter is my own suggestion--and may bear little relation to proposals by the Center for Immigration Studies or anyone else.)

You can read more from the Center for Immigration Studies here.