Fear of Change Driving U.S. and European Clamor Over Immigration

New York Times journalists Amanda Taub and Max Fisher have trenchant insights about the current conflicts over immigration in the U.S. and Europe.[1]

First, they assert that these conflicts “often . . .have more do with race and ethnic identity — or with simple politics.” There is anger amongst the people,, but it “stems less from migration specifically than from a broader anxiety over social change. When people feel a sense of threat or a loss of control, they sometimes become more attached to ethnic and national identities.”

“For some people, the antipathy is explicitly racial. But for many others, the mere fact of cultural change itself can be unsettling. Immigration, unauthorized or otherwise, is just one of the changes that bring about a feeling of the loss of control. Economic dislocation, changes in social hierarchies and demographic change can all produce the same effect.”

In this context, “migrants and asylum seekers have become, for many voters, a symbol of the political establishment’s failure to protect them and their interests.”

Second, in the U.S. “most voters are growing more tolerant of immigration, but a committed minority is increasingly demanding limits on immigration in all forms. Because that minority makes the issue a top priority, it holds considerable power over policy.”

“The two-party American system means that the issue has polarized voters. Both sides see the United States’ core character as at risk of being destroyed. That feeling of existential, zero-sum conflict can make people feel that extreme action is justified to prevent victory for the other side, undermining democratic norms.”

Conclusion

A prior post emphasized this blogger’s opinion that the U.S. needs more immigration to provide (a) skilled and unskilled workers for the American economy, (b) younger people to counterbalance an aging population, (c) financial contributions for the social welfare needs of increasing numbers of retirees and (d) help to rescue small towns from collapse. At the same time, the post said it should be easy to understand why many people fear the  accompanying demographic changes.[2]

Taub and Fisher rightly emphasize why this fear of immigration by many Americans makes them put a top priority on limiting immigration

This current controversy over immigration makes me recall that in American history the once dominant northern European, Protestant population feared new immigrants from southern Europe (Italians and Greeks, for example), Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland and others from Eastern Europe (Poland, for example) and from Asia. Now for most Americans the descendants of these newer immigrant groups have been subsumed into the “white” category of the population along with the elimination of the disparaging epithets previously used for such people.

Yet the American Anthropological Association has concluded that race is not a scientific concept. As the Association declared in a 1998 statement:[3]

• It “has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species. . . . [Thus,] any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations [is] both arbitrary and subjective.”

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[1]  Taub & Fisher, In U.S. and Europe, Migration Conflict Points to Deeper Political Problems, N.Y. Times (June 29, 2018).

[2] More Immigrants Needed in U.S., dwkcommentaries.com (June 23, 2018); White Anxiety and Fearing Immigration, dwkcommentaries.com (June 25, 2018).

[3] Anthropologists’ Opinion That Race Is Not a Scientific Concept, dwkcommentaries.com (June 7, 2016); Anthropologists’ Statement Regarding the Historical and Cultural Background to the Concept of Race, dwkcommentaries.com (June 8, 2016); Highlights of American Anthropological Association’s exhibit on Race, dwkcommentaries.com (June 27,  2016).