A World (Not a Nation) of Immigrants

The United States was not created to be a nation of immigrants, as is widely believed — the exact opposite. It tried continually, decade after decade, to shut its wide borders in the faces of all peoples, even “poor and ignorant Europeans.” The Senate even refused to ratify the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the 1920s, a group of laws set immigration quotas on ethnic groups, “for the sake of placing limits on the indiscriminate acceptance of races and to prevent America’s advanced institutions from being diluted by a deluge of foreign blood. We must beware the danger of filthy non-Americans and anti-assimilationist Jews.”

But as America transformed into a great nation it was forced to open its doors bit by bit, until eventually the number of immigrants reached 20 million. After the depression of the 1920s, there was a remarkable economic boom in the 1940s and gold reserves reached $20 billion — a third of the world’s reserves. After the war, America gave $13 billion in monetary support to the ruins of Europe. Meanwhile, the American armed forces mobilized 12 million soldiers, with a naval force comprising 1,200 battleships.

Today, nearly 70,000 Indians immigrate to America every year. Immigrants invading from Mexico flood the country. Tens of thousands of Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Koreans and Africans come as well. It’s no longer possible for laws to regulate immigration or change America’s character, which in the past was “a land of white Protestantism,” when, in the world of 1947, the Haitian secretary of agriculture discovered after being invited to the United States for an official visit that not a single hotel would accept black guests.

It is believed that the conflict of the future will be the conflict of immigrants, though at a different scale. The European Union has allowed 700,000 Roma immigrants into Spain; this population represents a clear social burden, while some represent an economic danger that keeps people up at night. These gypsies have spread throughout the cities of Europe, begging for charity in a manner that both law and custom prohibits. The governments stand powerless in the face of this wave due to protests by social rights organizations.

I was surprised by the level of nostalgia for the Franco era in Spain. I am still surprised by the progress of the French right and Marine Le Pen, who took her father’s place on the seat of racism. It appears that the issue of immigration is at its beginnings, rather than at its conclusion. On the one hand, the world is coming closer together — and on the other, more and more human time bombs are being primed.