Amid the seemingly infinite mass of aliens flooding across our southern border, public opinion on immigration has swung dramatically to the right. Over the past 12 months alone, the share of Americans who want less immigration has jumped 14 points, while the share of Americans who want more immigration has declined 10 points. (As of July, 55 percent of Americans said they wanted a reduction in immigration, while just 16 percent said they wanted an increase). Support for mass deportations has surged to levels not seen in decades — as of this summer, an outright majority of Americans now supported the measure.
But a vocal cadre of political activists, pundits, and intellectuals remain committed to defending our immigration regime. The conventional policy arguments — that immigration is necessary to fill labor shortages; to prop up our sagging welfare state; to care for an aging population; or to locate the “best and brightest” to kickstart our economy — are exhausted (and exhausting), although the usual suspects continue to recycle them nonetheless. The broader appeals to identity — that mass immigration is merely “who we are,” as a first principle — enjoy the benefit of being a mere abstraction, rather than a statement that can be proven or disproven on the merits, but that, too, has become more difficult to maintain in the face of the carnage unfolding across the country. (Even if this is truly who we are, one might reasonably ask, why should we be this way?)
The final, most persistent defense of unlimited immigration is the invocation of the god of “diversity,” and the new forms of cultural enrichment that ostensibly flow from it. Of course, “diversity,” in this context, has very little to do with the term’s actual dictionary meaning — it is not a reference to difference or variety writ large, but specifically to the number of people, products, institutions, and cultures that are not straight, white, or male: “For all the jargon-laden explainers,” I wrote in April, none of today’s self-styled diversity activists “really believe that diversity, in and of itself, is of any particular value at all. What they believe is that our institutions are too white, too straight, and too male, and that the only appropriate solution is to make them less so.”
But even there, the ostensible enrichment that we’ve gained in our quest to rid ourselves of the white, heteronormative, patriarchal evils of traditional American culture have proved to be thin gruel. When activists are pressed for actual examples of this enrichment, they cite — to use a characteristic example — achievements such as the introduction of novel foods. In fact, according to a 2019 YouGov survey, Americans saw “better food” as the top benefit of immigration, while citing strains on the welfare system and crime as the greatest drawbacks.
This has been the refrain from immigration advocates for years: “How Immigrants From Everywhere Made American Food The Most Diverse In The World,” beamed a 2020 Forbes headline. The left-wing online personality Will Stancil boasted that “people who have been to Italy or Seoul or wherever will notice that while the food is often good, it’s generally EXACTLY THE SAME across most options,” whereas “we have great food options EVERYWHERE.” During the Trump administration, a “new restaurant project” titled “Immigrant Food” opened near the White House to make what its owners must have assumed to be a powerful political point: “Focusing on the role of immigrants in feeding this nation, while educating customers on how they can support causes and initiatives associated with immigration, is a key ingredient of what the team calls ‘gastro-advocacy,’” reported the Washington Post. At times, in lieu of an actual argument, activists will simply post a picture of their lunch — usually with a sort of self-satisfied oh yeah? Well look at these TACOS I just ATE caption attached:
Stop trying to prevent immigrants who want to live and work here from coming. They add so much to our culture. My lunch today. pic.twitter.com/6KJ0CVs6qX
— Texas Paul Schroder ???????????? (@Paultx890) September 5, 2024
Tacos, however, do not appear to be the novel ethnic cuisine of choice in places like Springfield, Ohio, where some of the tens of thousands of newly arrived Haitian immigrants have allegedly taken to slaughtering local wildlife — including household cats and geese from the town park, according to some reports — to cook and eat. Springfield is a working-class manufacturing town; as of 2020, it was home to just over 58,000 people, 98 percent of whom were U.S. citizens. The influx of Haitians over the past few years may have brought new food — perhaps even forms of cuisine a step or two above roast cat — but it has also brought skyrocketing violent crime, a spate of crises across the community’s hospitals, schools, and public services, deep new forms of strife and social division, ethnic balkanization, and an alien new population of foreigners from one of the world’s most notorious armpits who appear to be intent on transforming their new community into something resembling the one they came from.
Unfettered immigration may bring empanadas and griot, but it has also given birth to a stark and metastasizing crisis — one that will, if allowed to continue, dismantle and replace both America and the civilization that gave birth to it, affecting perhaps the first transfer of power from one people and civilization to another to have ever occurred without armed resistance in the history of the human race. The natives of Springfield — and of communities like it across the country — could be forgiven for asking if it was worth the trade.
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