Cultural Loss
Is fear of immigration is just a thinly disguised appeal to racism? No.
I’m a leftie with a cosmopolitan and (mostly) pro-immigration worldview. I’m certainly not a right-winger but I think we can do a better job of understanding what conservative folk are afraid of when they complain about immigration.
Let’s start with Orwell’s thoughts on patriotism.
Orwell said that patriotism is about a particular place and a particular way of life. Whether justified or not, people are often afraid that immigration will take this away from them.
That’s not justification for calling them racist but are their fears justified?
I’ve been both an immigrant in a new country and a native in a place with high levels of immigration. As immigrants to California, we tended to cluster together and cling to the culture of the old country. Eventually, we learned to like French Dip and baby back ribs on the BBQ and — eventually — the natives began to adopt some of our habits too.
Just during the time I was there, we persuaded their kids to play soccer and their pubs to serve IPA. That was great for me as I like both soccer and IPA but many folks in the native population resented this. The first time I witnessed an American couple getting VERY ANGRY that the pub they had just entered served neither Budweiser nor Miller Lite, I quietly wondered “What have we done to this country?”.
On the whole, the USA does a great job of assimilating immigrants and by the second or third generation, the culture of immigrant families is virtually indistinguishable from the culture of native families and they share the same devotion to the same particular way of life.
Immigration should be like guests arriving at a party. If you come to my party, I’d love it if you bring a new dish or a song from the old country for me to enjoy with you. Maybe you’ll share your baba ghanoush recipe and it will become part of our culture too along with fish ‘n’ chips, doner kebabs and chicken tikka masala. I might get annoyed if you sit in the corner and eat your kalamata olives on your own though. But the party vibe should change gradually over time as new friends arrive — if it changes too quickly, the early guests will be bummed.
I might resent it too if the new folks insist we only play their music or if they bring so many friends that it doesn’t feel like my party anymore. And if you don’t like bacon sandwiches — that’s fine. But don’t tell me that I can’t eat bacon sandwiches because you don’t like them.
When considering immigration, scale is important. If 100 people or 1,000 people come from a country where they don’t drink beer or eat pork, we can all still get along. But if it’s 100,000 or 1,000,000, all the pubs will close and the stalls selling bacon baps will go out of business. The natives will resent this. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with racism; it might just be the culture changing too fast for the natives to adapt.
As Orwell said, the patriotic natives are devoted to a particular place and a particular way of life and they have no wish to force it on other people — but they will surely resent it if you take it away from them. This is what conservatives are afraid of.
When I lived in the East End of London in the 90s, there was a great deal of immigration from Bengal. When our pie & mash shops and local boozers closed one by one to be replaced by Bengali restaurants, there was much sadness among the troubled natives. Fortunately, I love Bengali food! I did lament the loss of the Lord Rodney pub on the Mile End Road though when it was replaced by a shoe shop.
This sense of cultural loss is entirely understandable and ‘our side’ should respond with sympathy rather than instinctively accusing the ‘losers’ of racism. A sympathetic immigration policy should take that into account.
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It's a numbers game. I know from personal experience that a small amount of immigration from a particular culture will tend to assimilate quickly. However, once the numbers reach a certain tipping point, the desire to integrate with the home nation disappears entirely because it is possible to create a culture within a culture. I remember we were all scolded by TPTB in the 90's and onwards that we should be happy to have a multicultural society but a) that's a contradiction in terms - society is a cohesive body of people with similar values etc; and b) no one asked those living here if they wanted that - it was imposed. To use your party analogy Ragged, its like mum and dad are away for the weekend and the teens put a party invitation on Facebook and the house is swamped and trashed.
No, it's the sheer numbers moving into our tiny country, disrespecting our culture and history and at the same time draining the welfare state with a sneer of contempt for those of us who pay for it.
Exactly this.
When regular people express many of the sentiments you do, they are dismissed as xenophobes and bigots. So it’s no wonder that they begin to resent the newcomers.
Personally I think they should reserve their resentment for those who imposed this change upon them and their communities in the first place. Very often those people, the elites, have no experience of the negative effects of mass, sudden immigration on their own lives. They just get the Baba Ganoush.
Great stuff Ragged.