While out on a run I was listening to a recent podcast appearance by Scott Baugh about his upcoming race with Katie Porter to represent Orange County’s 47th District. (Yes, I am very cool).
Baugh, a Republican and former assemblyman, said basically all the usual Republican things. He expressed concern about federal spending. Said some words about a strong national defense. Standard stuff.
And then he started on the issue of immigration.
Baugh was asked if he thought America’s civic and political code was being torn apart.
He answered, “When you talk about this being torn apart, being stretched, of course we are. When you dilute the culture with other cultures so rapidly it necessarily starts to fray.”
The interviewer then argued that today’s immigrants are different from the immigration waves of the past, like the Irish, because “the left” is pushing immigrants against assimilating. Baugh agreed, saying, “You have people that are being invited here, they’re encouraged not to even assimilate.”
On all of these points, Baugh’s views are just classic nativist gibberish.
New targets, same old nativism
Germans, the Irish and Italians all once upon a time were spoken of the same way Baugh now talks about recent immigrants. They were all derogated for not being consistent with the Protestant, Anglo-American version of America that many preferred.
They were smeared with ethnic stereotypes, especially around alcoholism and criminality. They faced employment discrimination. They were condemned for speaking different languages. The Irish and Italians faced anti-Catholic sentiment, while the Germans were othered for their Lutheranism.
Groups like the “Order of the Star Spangled Banner” spawned to protest the influx of Catholic immigrants. The Native American Party, better known as the Know Nothing Party, sprung up to oppose the influx of immigrants (one chapter opened in San Francisco in opposition to Chinese immigrants).
And yet, they all pushed on. Today the once-vilified Germans, Italians and Irish have been integrated into America to the point where I am almost certain to get an email from someone with a German, Italian or Irish last name condemning me for not understanding that America is being invaded.
Do immigrants ‘dilute’ the culture?
It is pretty clear that Scott Baugh and others who have this notion of an America fabric being torn apart by “others” don’t believe the Germans, Italians or Irish diluted America.
I doubt you’ll find many who would say they believe Chinese and Japanese Americans, who all faced horrific, even violent discrimination, have fundamentally “diluted” America.
I doubt you’ll find many who think that rapid influxes of immigrants and refugees from places like Armenia, Cuba, Iran or Vietnam at various points in history “diluted” America.
Immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees today are no different. They aren’t coming here to destroy the fabric of America. And no, they’re not coming here for the food stamps or whatever. They’re here and they want to come here because they view America as a land of freedom and opportunity. How dare they?
Of course immigrants assimilate
While assimilation can take some time, even generations, it’s impossible to pretend it isn’t happening.
Back in 2015, the National Academies of Sciences published a book on this very issue, concluding that, “Across all measurable outcomes, integration increases over time, with immigrants becoming more like the native-born with more time in the country, and with the second and third generations becoming more like other native-born Americans than their parents were.”
The NAS notes that immigrants commit crimes at a fraction of the rate of native-born Americans, divorce and have children out of wedlock at lower rates than Americans. But, you know, American culture isn’t perfect, and those measures get worse over time.
On the brighter side, immigrants and their descendents learn and speak English the more they’re here, they economically integrate, they become homeowners, they start businesses.
To the extent that immigrants are having a hard time integrating and assimilating, in the case of undocumented immigrants, most of that is a function of their legal status.
The solution for those people is simple: legalize them so they can integrate and assimilate.
Likewise, expand legal pathways for people to live and work here, that way you can reduce the need for so many people to illegally immigrate. It’s not rocket science.
The thing is, even Scott Baugh recognizes this.
In a 2014 commentary for the Orange County Register, he supported the establishment of a work-permit program for undocumented immigrants.
“To deal with these undocumented immigrants, many propose self-deportation, which means that access to employment … is cut off so that the immigrant wants to self-deport,” he wrote. “These proponents often say ‘illegal means illegal’ and hang their hats on ‘rule of law’ arguments. These phrases bypass the thornier discussion of what to do with undocumented immigrants who have grown up in this country, have children born in this country, and have been employed by American businesses and homeowners for decades.”
The bottom line
I know railing on the people at the southern border is the thing to do, but all it does is obfuscate the reality that the main immigration problem America has is that government policy unreasonably restricts legal immigration and thereby has forced millions of people to choose the illegal route. And even then, undocumented immigrants themselves aren’t actually a problem; millions have been living productive lives, raising families and living among us for sometimes decades.Do you know why? Because that’s all they want to do.
To the extent America is fraying, it’s not immigrants, legal or illegal, who are responsible or will ever be responsible.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com
