{"id":23550,"date":"2020-08-27T15:26:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T19:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=23550"},"modified":"2020-08-27T15:26:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T19:26:17","slug":"foreign-born-assimilation-editorial-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/08\/27\/foreign-born-assimilation-editorial-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"An Immigrant Slams The Left\u2019s Paternalistic Attitude Towards The Foreign-Born"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the August 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>, Tunku Varadarajan, executive editor at Stanford University\u2019s Hoover Institution and a legal permanent resident, takes the left to task for its attitude towards immigrants. That attitude is many things at once: paternalistic, patronizing, opportunistic, cynical, simplistic, and misleading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having watched all four nights of the Democratic\nNational Convention, Mr. Varadarajan \u201cfound the Democrats\u2019\nobsession with immigrants grating.\u201d That\u2019s because \u201cscarcely a speech or\nsegment went by in which a fetish wasn\u2019t made of immigrants. They were\nportrayed, almost uniformly, as victims\u2014hapless people thwarted by \u2018systemic\nracism\u2019 and American injustice, moored forever in a netherworld of murk and\nfear by President Trump\u2019s refusal to be humane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unclear whether the author himself believes that\nPresident Trump\u2019s policies on immigration represent a \u201crefusal to be humane,\u201d\nor whether he is simply paraphrasing the left\u2019s caricatured view of these\npolicies. Either way, protecting our borders and ensuring that foreign\nnationals do not take advantage of the United States \u2013 be it by those\nattempting to get their foot in the door through meritless asylum claims, or\nthose attempting to abuse America\u2019s taxpayer-funded social safety net \u2013 is\nhardly inhumane. It is common sense. That having been said, Mr. Varadarajan\nmakes many good points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author calls out the left for being \u201cguilty of\nconflating the people who live in this country without authorization with\nthose\u2014a significant majority of immigrants\u2014who are here legally.\u201d With its \u201crelentless\nfocus on the undocumented margins,\u201d he continues, the left does \u201can enormous\ndisservice to [millions of]lawful immigrants who go about their dignified\nbusiness away from the spotlight, getting on with such concerns as work, school\nand family, grateful for the opportunity to be in America\u2014grateful, in fact,\nfor the opportunity to be Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also reminds American leftists and liberals \u2013 who\nseem to have an \u201cobsession with indigent illegal residents\u201d \u2013 that \u201cmany\nimmigrants have come to America from countries where the state interferes in\npeople\u2019s lives while pretending to help. What many of them really want (\u2026) is\nfor the state to step aside and let them carve out their own destinies.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Varadarajan also certainly has a point when\nstating that \u201cprogressives, for their own reasons, scoff at the very notion of \u2018assimilation.\u2019\u201d\nAfter all, leftists often view asking immigrants to assimilate as an arrogant\nand oppressive attempt to impose one\u2019s culture on others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he is on much shakier ground when he seeks to contrast identity-politics-embracing leftists with so-called \u201cnativists\u201d who \u201cregard the foreign-born as inherently unassimilable.\u201d Admittedly, in a country as populous (330 million inhabitants) and diverse as the United States, one is bound to find some people who express outlandish or extreme points of view. So, some \u201cnativists\u201d who hold such crude, simplistic, and deterministic views exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, being an immigrant and a naturalized citizen,\nI have personally never met even one such \u201cnativist\u201d who regards \u201cthe\nforeign-born as inherently unassimilable\u201d \u2013 and I have lived in the U.S. for\nalmost 30 years, and have interacted with many people representing various\ncurrents of right-of-center American politics (from \u201cmoderates\u201d through\nlibertarians to the most rock-ribbed of conservatives) for two decades. Even\nthe most \u201chawkish\u201d of so-called \u201cimmigration hawks\u201d have all, at least in my\nexperience, seen assimilation as both desirable and attainable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to quibble with the following\nstatement made by the author, however: \u201cperpetuating the category of \u2018immigrant\u2019\ninvolves\nthe making permanent of an identity that is by definition temporary.\u201d The\nleftists, according to Mr. Vaadarajan, \u201cwould like many of us to embrace a\ntransitory state as an aspiration in itself. \u2018E pluribus unum\u2019\u2014one out of\nmany\u2014is less attractive to them than a creed of \u2018Many out of one.\u2019\u201d That is an\ninsightful argument that the critics of the left\u2019s pandering don\u2019t make often\nenough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But perhaps the most important fragment of the op-ed is that the left\u2019s \u201ccompulsion to create ever more categories of victimized minorities by adding \u2018immigrants\u2019 to the list of the maltreated serves neither immigrants nor the country. You can see the short-term advantage to the Democrats of an ever-expanding pool of voters from abroad. But I\u2014and millions like me\u2014did not regard the U.S. as a country where you can never acquire a mainstream identity, and where political forces tell you that the surest way to become accepted is to nurse your grievances forever.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the August 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan, executive editor at Stanford University\u2019s Hoover Institution and a legal permanent resident, takes the left to task for its attitude towards immigrants. That attitude is many things at once: paternalistic, patronizing, opportunistic, cynical, simplistic, and misleading. Having watched all four nights of the<\/p>\n

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