The Immigration Mystique: America's False Conscience

Williamson (Roughnecking It, 1982, etc.) examines the intertwined economic and moral issues presented by the immigration debate. The author, formerly an editor of National Review, challenges what he calls the ``myth'' that immigration was always a blessing for America. He concedes that the vast numbers of immigrants from Britain, Germany, and Ireland who came here in the 19th century, despite sometimes strong opposition, were needed to settle the land. These immigrants gradually absorbed American culture and were in turn absorbed into American society. Williamson sees the massive immigration from 1870 to the 1920s as the start of great and disruptive changes, citing gradual but persistent negative effects on national identity, social and political order, population growth, and the environment. While earlier immigrants may have had a disruptive effect on America, Williamson sees the massive numbers of modern immigrants, both legal and illegal, from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and eastern Europe, and their embrace of the concept of multiculturalism, as challenging the very idea of a special American identity. He argues that the newcomers have produced levels of cultural, ethnic, and social diversity that have had the effect of loosening the old American commitment to a distinctive, homogenous identity. Rather than being transformed by American culture, the author argues, these immigrants have tried to remake it, pressing for a larger and ever-more intrusive government, thus undermining traditional American concepts of personal liberty and self-reliance, and arguing against any cohesive national culture. Williamson points to such developments as the tensions between Cuban immigrants and poorer African- Americans in Miami as demonstrating that immigration is also generating new, and potentiallly violent, economic conflicts in American society. The book, largely polemical, would have benefitted from further examples and from a discussion of remedies. Nonetheless, Williamson does raise some disturbing questions about the will of America to enforce its laws, to control its borders, and to define and protect its identity. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An "immigration mystique" purveyed since the pre-WWI era by politicians of both parties promotes high-sounding but flawed justifications for large-scale immigration to our shores, declares Williamson, senior editor of Chronicle (and formerly National Review's literary and senior editor). This mystique, he says, wrongly equates a generous immigration policy with displays of national moral worth and fosters an unrealistic dream of multicultural globalism based on the mistaken assumption that the U.S. has a special obligation to peoples of color in former European colonies of Asia and Africa. The conservative core of Williamson's argument is familiar: non-European and Third World immigrants bring with them "opposing values" from "proletarian and peasant cultures" that jeopardize the nation's dominant WASP culture, prevent us from consolidating a national identity and thus threaten "to condemn the United States to endless cultural adolescence." He further contends that mass, unskilled immigration displaces U.S. citizens from jobs, saps productivity and impedes technological advances. His polemic takes on liberals as well as conservatives who favor open borders.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Despite the passion expended on the immigration issue, Williamson believes the debaters suffer from superficiality of thought: the sides think immigration's desirability or lack thereof depends on the economic impact of the newcomers. The author, editor of the conservative Chronicles magazine, seeks to inject a nationalist dimension and writes mostly approvingly of what earlier critics expressed about the waves of immigration they lived through, notably in the 1840s and 1900s. Unlike those earlier influxes, the current 30-year-long torrent of foreigners enters a zeitgeist of multiculturalism, which asserts a moral imperative extolling immigration as a means to create the First Universal Nation, the title of immigration enthusiast Ben Wattenburg's 1991 book. The problem, Williamson insists, is that the founders "never intended to fabricate an ideologically-charged universalist dynamo," such as the one set in motion by the 1965 Immigration Act. Implicitly, Williamson champions the America-first, nativist viewpoint, heartening or infuriating depending on the proclivities of the reader, who is likely to have also sampled the anti-immigration blast Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow . Gilbert Taylor

According to Williamson, a former editor of the National Review and the current editor of Chronicle: A Magazine of American Culture, there are two sides to the immigration issue: the restrictionist view (which he favors) and what he calls the "immigrationist" view (which he blames for dividing our country and diluting its heritage). Less jingoistic and more intellectualized than Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation (LJ 4/15/95), the present work attempts to show that our national identity, natural environment, and social unity have been irreparably damaged by liberalized immigration laws. Tracing U.S. history from Colonial times to the present, Williamson contends that contrary to popular opinion, some form of immigration restrictionism has almost always been accepted as a political necessity in the United States because of the need to maintain cultural unity and to control population growth. Argued in an inflated yet refined prose style similar to that of columnist George F. Will and liberally sprinkled with quotes from literature, history, politics, and philosophy, this opinionated analysis will bolster the critics of current U.S. immigration policy.?Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.