Nowhere have I argued for any particular immigration policy. Immigration law is complicated and I get that. I have only taken a stance against nationalism. We can have a rational discussion about immigration without resorting to nationalist stereotypes and rhetoric.
> Italian immigrants brought the Mafia with them—the turn of the 20th century was a peak in the country’s foreign born population and also its homicide rate.
https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent...
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
Not the stats I'm finding. Foreign-born population as a percentage is pretty constant from 1870 to 1910, while murder peaks between 1920 and 1930, after the foreign-born population has already started to decline a bit. Murder then begins a dramatic increase in the 1970s, a decade in which the foreign-born population is at an all time low. Between 1990 and 2020 the murder rate has dropped dramatically even as the foreign-born population has grown to levels not seen since 1920.
This is exactly the kind of nationalistic rhetoric I object to. People spout "facts" that they heard from other people that would at best amount to a correlation if the numbers were true—and the numbers rarely are true—and use those "facts" as justification for stereotypes.
> Folks created settlements and kept to themselves.
Not really. The early settlers in my area fought wars with and displaced the natives—there are place names around here that still reflect those battles. The same is true in Oregon, as anywhere else in the Americas.
> And immigrants do change the culture.
Agreed! I'm observing it right now in my area.
Your comparison to the country’s past is mistaken on two levels. First, most previous waves of immigrants came to a much more sparsely populated country with a much weaker national government. Folks created settlements and kept to themselves. My wife’s family came here before the revolutionary war and went west to Oregon, and she’s still has almost entirely British ancestry.
Second, immigrants are almost by definition unusual people who are highly tolerant of change and honestly a little anti-social. My parents were willing to leave Bangladesh where all their family is and come to America. I would never do that, and most Bangladeshis wouldn’t either. Just because our ancestors are immigrants doesn’t mean we have any obligation to like change any more than anyone anywhere else. That’s a matter of personal temperament.
And immigrants do change the culture. My family came to Northern Virginia along with a wave of other Asians. And guess what? We changed it. We changed the politics, we changed the culture, we changed the education levels. The place I grew up doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t begrudge anyone who misses the still somewhat southern WASP culture of the place—I certainly do.