The debates about legal immigration, paths to citizenship and the status of millions of undocumented long term residents not born in the US territory has been part of the history of a country of immigrants."America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
Until 1924, when the first Act restricting and selecting immigration was implemented, immigrants from all over the world were actively encouraged to come and settle in the expanding territory of the United States. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any resident in America, included free slaves, to put claim over 160 free acres of Federal Land. Ultimately 1.2 million claims were approved and 400,000 acres of federal land became property of residents.
That sounds like a far cry from the current DACA negotiations about protecting from illegality and deportation 800.000 young residents brought as children illegally to the US or the bargaining about building border walls, establishing "merit-based" quotas and prioritizing immigration by countries of origin (creating a new "shit hole" category for the unwanted).
Republican president Theodore Roosevelt advocated for the "melting pot" doctrine, under which all Americans must be willing to adopt and embrace the Constitution and laws of the country, abandoning all allegiances to their native cultures that might stand in the way. This for Roosevelt, included adopting a simple, non-hyphenated "American" identity.
TR was however, a self-declared "progressive" -in a time when that wasn't incompatible but even politically expedient and popular for a Republican running for office-. As immigration grew, so did successive laws restricting and selecting immigration -from the original free immigration stance of the Naturalization Act of 1790 to the present-
From the "give me your poor, huddle masses" poem written in the Statue of Liberty to reality there has been so many twists and turns as Charlie Chaplin -later himself an immigration case- immortalized in The Immigrant:
The "melting pot" doctrine remained, however, based as it was in the fact that the United States is a voluntary federation of preexisting independent states which retained a substantial part of their sovereignty and remains open to accommodate new members (from 14 to the current 50+Puerto Rico) based on the oath of loyalty to the law of the land, not ethnicity, religion, culture or country of origin.
Not a minor feat for a 327 million people country that according to scholars includes 11 different cultural "nations" :
That is why the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance ask those who was for American citizenship to renounce to any previous allegiance to any "foreign sovereignty" . After all, our first generation Americans -this country's Founding Fathers were citizens or subjects or foreign countries (8) and also of 13 different new colonies now turning into States (48).
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."An emotional event that documentarist Alexandra Pelosi filmed in the 50 states:
Under the First Amendment, all people in the US (residents or visitors) are free to speak and practice their religion.
But becoming new US citizens carries also a duty, explicit in that public oath: they must put the US Constitution over any other law and obey the laws of the land regardless of their religious or personal beliefs. Hence, sharia law or any other religious practices remain private and not enforceable on anybody.
Traditionally, "melting pot" meant also learning and using English as a common language -something much easier now that the entire world has adopted English as the "common language of work and trade-.
Ethnic-nationalists on the Left (like La Raza o Black nationalists) or Islamic fundamentalists think otherwise, conceiving the US as a "salad bowl" like the European Union. where "multiculturalism" means keeping separate cultures and norms, and even languages.
Some of them -like the Amish- choose to live in close communities and endogamy to preserve their traditions, others establish ethnic neighborhoods and ghettos.
The "salad bowl" doctrine has historically provoked backlashes, especially when jobs are hard to find.
More recently, White nationalists and White Supremacists have pushed for a "blood and soil" criterion that puts "their" "America First". This means not just prioritizing Americans over immigrants, but those born over those naturalized and those "white" poor over "colored minorities".
The swings between these two un-American doctrines: multiculturalism and ethnic nationalism have been stronger since US elected its first Black president, succeeded by a president who ran in an white nationalist platform.
Both multiculturalism and ethnic nationalism share the concept of backward-looking "identity politics' as opposed to our forward-looking Constitution and are one of the key sources of the current lack of civility:
Midterm elections invite populist politicians to play identity politics to shore their ethnic vote bases increasing the likelihood of "hang up parliaments" and gridlock.
Whichever way identity-based politics weigh in the coming elections, the result will be a more fractured and incivil civil society.
The civil way: make yourself an American
After all, this is a country of self-made people who can even chose (and often do) change their last names to start over again.
The problem with "salad bowls" is on plain sight with the ethnic riots in EU and US. "Blood and Soil" is a civil war solution that US and EU have tried with very well-known consequences. Starting a new one over the monuments of the previous is not a good idea.
Peter Schrag describes this paradox of immigrants against immigrants in his book "Not Fit for Society: Immigration and Nativism in America":
"Our contemporary immigration battles, and particularly the ideas and proposals of latter-day nativists and immigration restrictionists, resonate with the arguments of more than two centuries of that history. Often, as most of us should know, the immigrants who were demeaned by one generation were the parents and grandparents of the successes of the next generation."
The "melting pot" metaphor may also be unrealistic: people are not alloys and cultures do not "melt" well in a few years. Becoming a non-hyphenated American is not automatic. It doesn't come with legal citizenship papers. It comes with an open, forward-looking attitude. Learning English and the country's ways. And time, a lifetime of self-building hard work.
The "melting pot" works better if we conceive it as it is: a slow, multi-generational process in which the first generation sacrifices its native language giving a big handicap in the labor market to help the next generation become fully and easily integrated.
Another way to understand how the immigration process has worked for the past 250 years in the United States, is by noticing that each one of the three alternatives is part of the process itself.
When immigrant arrive in large numbers when jobs declines (which tends to be always the case, since US economy drags or propels the rest of the world), the first reaction they provoke is "blood and soil" attacks on the newcomers. It happened with Irish, Germans, Chinese and Mexicans, on top of black slaves forced to live here.
The second phase starts almost in parallel, with the newly arrived immigrants turning their lower-income neighborhoods and adoptive towns into multilingual "salad bowls" while they learn English to communicate with their neighbors and send their children to school.
There, at school and at work starts the "melting pot" phase: immigrant children and adults "melt" together with a long time of hard working, volunteering in wars and taking hard and dangerou
Finally, those who went through the long process feel full-fledged, taxpaying Americans and start complaining about the next wave of illegal immigration.
There is no way around for first-generation immigrants. I'm one of them and we know that very well. We accepted the challenge when we applied and swore to play by the rules of the Constitution.
Members of each immigrant generation can become Americans by following a true and tried set of civility rules: pull your own weight (and your family's), master English, drop the hyphen (hyphens are chains), practice real diversity by joining and share a culture different from your parents'.
And, over all: Don't take the bait of either side of identity politics.
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