A Truly Alien Nation

We usually don’t think of the first wave of European immigrants as ‘immigration’; we call it ‘colonization’. But this wave of immigrants relates to the surge of immigration which we can expect several decades in the future.

In his book, The Next 100 Years, George Friedman paints a rather believable picture of immigration and the baby boomers in 2030: There will be a disproportionate population of aged, non-working citizens in the US, and the rising generation will not be enough to replace them in the workforce. Americans have been having fewer offspring, and they are living longer after retiring. This is not anomalous to the US; governments of all industrialized countries will work to induce foreign workers to immigrate.

With respect to waves of US immigration, we tend to reflect on the Irish, Eastern Europeans, and Chinese, on whom the natural-born Americans heaped considerable persecution. Said persecution was unbecoming of a decent people, but it had the effect of inducing the immigrants to become American-ized, at least. After all, when countries are divided into divergent cultures, we end up with Yugoslavia, a short-lived nation, ready to tear itself apart and unprepared or unwilling to unite for its own defense.

Treatment of immigrants is currently vastly different from what it was in olden days, and so shall it differ in future. Treatment of illegal immigrants, if given so heartlessly as to the legal immigrants of yesteryear, is popularly condemned, unenlightened, we would say.

Speaking again of the first wave of European immigrants to the present-day US, the Native Americans (Amerindians) did not require the first immigrating English and Scots to adopt the native culture or language. Doubtless they did not have the might to force the Europeans to assimilate, but regardless, as a consequence of their failure to do so, the Native Americans became outnumbered in remarkably short time. Their culture, languages, and race were in short order nearly wiped from the land.

Ere the reader insist that the Europeans only effaced the Native Americans because of the former’s superior arsenal, recall that our immigrants will have access to the only weapons they’ll need: the candidate’s soapbox and the voting booth. (Recall furthermore, the US’s history of disseminating its military technology, witness Iran in the 80’s.)

Now I am a native American. I already pay my government to print its documents in a foreign language. I have lived in neighbourhoods where my language was scarcely spoken. I have seen the disparity of culture. I have seen firsthand that immigration does not lead to integration, not without a sizeable population of natives to immerse the immigrants and, furthermore, strong social incentives (such as persecution).

When the immigrants come to replace the baby boomers in the workforce, the face of the American population will change dramatically. When the baby boomers die out, it will change again. And then we may find ourselves in a foreign land.