Are you going to become American now?

Please understand that when I excerpt a post from another writer, it is because I believe they have something worthwhile to say. You still should go to go to their website, because I am only excerpting.

Sarah Hoyt writes about immigration and amnesty here.

Our president misunderstood the resentment abroad. He thought the prosperity of the US was holding other people down. This is Marxism, which is a mystical religion with zero contact points with the real world. In fact, the rest of the world resented us because we were enabling them to be semi-prosperous and not giving them the kick in the fundament they so sorely needed, and also because they knew they depended on us. They were in fact like forty year olds (still) living in their father’s basement, and resenting the father with every fiber of their being. Worse, I think the US is more of a mother, since we tend to be all soft and cooing and supporting. Part of the resentment he encountered in Europe on this tour is that people are starting to realize he’s removed the pole from the tent of world economy. They’re still not admitting to it, consciously, but subconsciously they know it.) The hard landing might hit us anyway.

Because the crash is coming whether amnesty comes or not. To that it’s irrelevant, save for maybe hurrying it.

Sarah is, you see, an immigrant herself. She knows first hand that

to acculturate is to die a little. I’ve mentioned before my regrets, my soul-ache at the idea that I had to leave behind my family in Portugal and everything I shared with them. You might not understand that this means more than just “I can’t spend much time with them.” In a way I had to die a little. I had to disconnect myself from the person I was, back there. It’s now visible to me only through a veil. I can sort of remember why I did things, but I can’t always understand them. When I go back, the body language, the interactions, everything is strange to me, and it hurts with the duality of knowing I was once of them – I once belonged there.

You have to want to be American, and be willing to lop off parts of you that don’t fit. This is why some number of immigrants either go back, or they come to resent the host country. They want to do this and can’t, and blame the host country for “requiring” it. This is a fallacy. America doesn’t require it. It requires it less than any other country.

And that’s problem one of the idea that legalizing illegal aliens will make them American.

Let’s start with who they are and why they’re here. Most them are here through dire economic need (which is why I don’t hold breaking the law against them.) And most of them came here by land, and can go home in less than a day. Most of them have been living at the edges, viewing the US as an alien body on which they feed.

They bring their culture with them. They come here in big groups, speak their language, behave in the ways that were appropriate back in the home country. Have to. Attempts at integrating and “acting American” will be punished by their community (trust me on this, this was true even among exchange students.)

“Oh, you are just saying that. You realize that Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, all of those also came here in big groups; many came in illegally; they lived at the margins and held the old line, but they all have integrated.”

The difference is this: back then we expected immigrants to integrate. There was no “Push one for Spanish, push two for Serb-Croat, push fifty for Cantonese.” Because it was assumed culture was not genetic (look, it isn’t. Truly. If it were, you’d all be living like people in the fertile crescent. Okay, even accounting for evolution and genetic drift, not very far off) it was not cruel to require people to learn English to transact official business. Nor was it considered evil to say you should leave your public/political culture behind, or that frankly we don’t much care what race you think you are, you should become American now.