Vintage Radicalism May Emerge in Protest

The rising protests against proposed tough immigration reform now appear to have turned a growing number of Americans against foreign immigration. Since January, according to an AP-Ipsos poll, for example, the number of Americans who consider immigration the top national problem quadrupled, equal to the percentage naming the economy.

If the recent peaceful, and largely well-controlled, protests engendered hostility, the next round of protests, including the proposed Monday general strike, poses a still greater danger. Over time, the gradual radicalization of immigration protests could usher in a new kind of culture war -- one that pits largely native-born, middle-class Americans against a heavily Latino immigrant class.

The United States cannot afford such a conflict. No advanced Western country -- America, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, France or Japan -- produces enough new children to keep them from becoming granny nation-states by 2050. Many of the nations in Eastern Europe are in even worse shape.

In this sense, only immigration -- the work energies of newcomers and their offspring -- can provide the new markets, the manpower and, perhaps most important, the youthful energy to keep Western societies vital and growing. Western societies that cannot integrate newcomers successfully will be increasingly doomed to both social unrest and economic failure.

This issue is even more critical in the Southwest, where the Latino and immigrant populations are large, growing and, gradually, becoming politicized. Given the relative preponderance of native-born Americans among the electorate, any contest between radical advocates for open borders and nativist-oriented crackdowns, the restrictionist cause is likely to prevail.

Ironically, the best ally of the restrictionists lies in the words and gestures of the more radical activists, groups such as Latino Movement USA, who hope to turn the immigrants "rights" movement into a broader social protest. These are among the leading elements pushing for the ill-advised Monday strike.

Attached to anti-war and a host of other left-wing causes, the strike organizers call on immigrants to boycott shops and stay away from work. Some want students to walk out of school. They insist they "will settle for nothing less than full amnesty and dignity for the millions of undocumented workers presently in the U.S." They lambaste even the idea of "increased enforcement" as "a step in the wrong direction."

Even the date selected -- May 1 -- suggests the left-wing intent of the organizers. Long the secular holiday for workers in Europe, it conjures up images of the great Kremlin parades featuring missiles aimed at North America.

The implicit threat behind the protests -- to disrupt the economy and essentially de-legitimize the national border -- also will excite those who have warned of the dangers to our national unity posed by our increasingly diverse population.

Harvard's Samuel Huntington, for example, has concluded that, in a coming "clash of civilizations," the migrant tide made up largely of Latinos threatens to establish "a continuous Mexican society from the Yucatan to Colorado."

This is not the first time that the rise of irredentist and radical sentiment has shaped the immigration debate. Not all immigrants transform themselves easily into pragmatic Americans.

A certain portion, faced with the conflicts and difficulties of integrating into a new country, are attracted to alien and even subversive ideologies.

Early socialist radicals, for example, traveled to America with the large migration of Germans after the failed revolution of 1848. The know-nothings -- the Pat Buchanans and Tom Tancredos of their day -- built a political movement based on opposition to "alien" influences, including concern over the rise of Catholic immigration to a then overwhelmingly Protestant America.

Gaining considerable influence before the Civil War, these early nativists advocated a program that makes today's nativists seem lamblike. Their New York affiliate demanded, among other things, the elimination of the foreign-born from political office, a 21-year residency requirement for naturalization, the deportation of foreign paupers, mandatory Bible reading in schools and a ban on the use of foreign languages in schools or public documents.

Such concerns arose again in the early part of the last century, the last great period of immigration before the current one. Radical causes were popular among many newcomers, including Italians, some of whom carried on anarchist agitation from the old country.

Perhaps most obvious was the overrepresentation of many Eastern European immigrants, particularly Jews, in the politics of the far left. Russian Jewish immigrants, as historian Irving Howe pointed out, initially were often slow to join in the political process, like Mexican immigrants today, but later a considerable number became committed to overturning America's capitalist society.

Throughout the first decades of the 20th century, many Jews, particularly intellectuals, embraced radical causes, including both Trotskyism and the Communist Party. In New York and other cities, Jews predominated in Communist youth and student groups, many active supporters of the Stalinist dictatorship in the now-former Soviet Union.

Other immigrants, at times, lined up with radical causes. Irish immigrants provided, by some accounts, the bulk of the financial support for the terrorist wing of the IRA until well into the 1980s.

By comparison, the current Mexican and other immigrant groups have to be seen as comparatively restrained. Even Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, onetime member of the separatist campus group MEChA, has become effusively pro-American and integrationist in his rhetoric. This seems to reflect not only political expediency but the likely sentiment of most Latinos.

Like the mayor himself, Latinos, contrary to the assertions of both nativists and nationalist radicals, are integrating rapidly into the American political and social framework. Ninety percent of Latino high school graduates, for example, preferred to speak English over Spanish. Despite images of Latinos as newly arrived, the Spanish-speaking first generation is becoming a progressively smaller percentage of the Latino population; by 2040, the second generation is expected to double while the third generation, the vast majority of who don't speak fluent Spanish at all, expands threefold.

Thomas Tseng, whose Los Angeles-based New American Dimensions surveys immigrant and minority youth, sees an emerging population that is less narrowly ethnic and more American in their tastes and proclivities. "The second generation will change everything," observes Tseng. "The whole idea of ethnic marketing will change and have to focus on cross-ethnic pollination and lifestyle issues."

Over time, these integrative influences will solve many of our problems. It could also undermine both nativism and nationalist radicalism. These realities make today's blood enemies essentially allies. When Latino activists urge students to walk out of school, ask Latino workers to leave their jobs and unfurl Mexican flags, they are providing a critical service for those who wish to shut down the borders.

This is not a far-fetched notion. Radical agitation associated with immigrants early last century contributed to the passage of a draconian, and racially inspired, Immigration Control Act of 1924. This measure, backed by nativists and others concerned about the nation's internal security, essentially curtailed immigration for four decades.

The best way to deflect such a parallel path today lies in a responsible compromise that encourages both the legalization of current immigrants and guest workers on one hand, and stricter enforcement along the border. A strong emphasis on English-language acculturation of newcomers is another prerequisite. Poll data suggest these measures would be acceptable to many Americans.

Such a common-sense approach, however, may also be the last thing either the nativists or the radicals would want; all the more reason for Americans to press ahead with it.