Becoming American

By Stanley Renshon
Center for Immigration Studies | March 1, 2007

Summary

The long-delayed and much-needed national debate regarding immigration is in danger of missing an essential point. The most important question to be asked and answered is not how much new immigrants contribute financially or what they cost. It is not even whether enforcement of our laws should precede schemes for a guestworker program.

The central question of American immigration policy is how this country can help facilitate the emotional attachments of immigrants and citizens alike to the American national community. Given the centrifugal pulls of multiculturalism and international cosmopolitans this is easier said than done. Multiculturalists want to substitute racial and ethnic identities for an American identity, while cosmopolitans think that emotional connections to this country are too parochial and nationalistic and urge our citizens to look abroad for their primary attachments.

This paper argues that our current laissez faire policy regarding the incorporation of citizens and immigrants alike, our failures to enforce immigration laws, and the doublespeak that characterizes our responses to illegal immigration are deeply corrosive to the fabric of the American national community.