Civil Rights and Immigration

I ran across a New York Times article today profiling the new Swedish immigration minister. Her name is Nyamko Sabuni and her parents were originally from Congo. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Netherlands, she takes a very firm assimilationist stance.

As an opposition politician, Ms. Sabuni proposed banning the veil for girls under the age of 15. She proposed that schoolgirls undergo compulsory medical examinations to check for evidence of genital mutilation. She denounced what she called the “honor culture” of some immigrant groups, proposed outlawing arranged marriages and called for an end to state financing of religious schools.

Even as furious immigrant and minority groups demand that she be removed from her post, Ms. Sabuni, 37, insists that she is not as extreme as people make her out to be. Given that Sweden is governed by a coalition in which parliamentary votes cannot always be counted on, it is unlikely, anyway, that most of her ideas could plausibly translate into actual law. Nonetheless, she stands by her basic premise: that immigrants must try harder to fit in to their adopted country.

Some immigrants' rights groups in Sweden have accused her of betrayal.

I find these stories of polarizing European immigrant issues to be fascinating, especially in how they compare and contrast to our current debate over immigration. Europe is going to enter a time of massive cultural conflict. The core of this conflict is that they have a very low birth rate and to keep up their population, they'll need to keep letting in more immigrants. In the 21st century, they'll be going through the birth pangs of a hybrid nation, much like the U.S. and many Latin American countries experienced more than a century ago. Today we think of a "Swede" as a tall, blond tenuously Protestant white person. In 40 years that will probably change.

Despite all the problems we're currently experiencing with a revival of nativism, the United States is actually a great model of immigration for Europe. Some people uphold Canada instead, but I think Canada really has it too easy... their system, by concentrating on visas for the most highly skilled and educated immigrants, leads to a minimum of assimilation issues. We have a lot more problems, and more solutions as well.

What do immigrants and their children have in America that they don't have in Europe? They have a greater right to call themselves an American. The child of immigrant parents can speak their ancestral language, practice a different religion, be from any race, fly their ancestral flag along with the American one.... and still be 100% American. Especially if they're Mexican, stupid people are going to challenge them on this, but they still have that right and can insist that it be respected.

At one of my ESL graduations, I saw a guy wearing a green T-shirt with just three big words on it in Portuguese: SOCCER. JESUS. BRAZIL. He was proudly advertising the cultural values that were closest to his heart. He and his children will probably become 100% Americans. Those cultural values will be added to the values we already share as a nation.

Europeans of recent immigrant origin don't have as much middle ground to stand on. They tend to be forced towards one extreme or the other; complete assimilation to all the cultural values of the new country, or withdrawing and establishing ethnic enclaves.

I'm not saying America is better than Europe. We have a huge load of racial baggage. I believe a lot of aspects of the European economy are things that we should look into practicing over here. But in this immigration respect I do believe we're better. One of the main reasons is the civil rights struggle from the 1950s onward. Black civil rights protesters demanded that they be considered 100% American. They were not the right color that "real Americans" were, they worshipped in different churches, they were not treated as full American citizens but they demanded that right. Combined with Native American demands and then many other ethnic groups joining in, there is a strong idea today that there is no "default American" by birth: immigrant or non-immigrant. It's not an idea that everyone believes in yet, but it's still very powerful.

Every nation in Europe is a hybrid nation if you go back far enough. Looking at language creation and evolution and dispersal, Europe is a messy finger painting, not a neat patchwork quilt. I think they're going to make it out alright.