You folks across the pond are simply too concerned about the planet and aren’t spending enough time in the sack engaging in procreative sex. So says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
Thanks to the BBC’s new emphasis on this crisis, Europe may finally wake up to the reality that its culture is on the verge of extinction. With global birth rates plummeting, the concern over saving the earth may soon be replaced by concern over whom we’re saving it for. As the traditional family declines, fewer children are being born to replace and support the world’s graying society.Actually, what Tony is saying there aren’t enough melanin-challenged people knocking boots. The brown folks are multiplying like bunnies. That’s what John Gibson advised Americans on Faux News:As our friend Allan Carlson has observed, “Of the 10 nations with the lowest birth rates worldwide, nine are in Europe.” Countries like Slovakia are producing only 50,000 children a year, compared to 100,000 in 1974. In nations like Russia, Belarus, and the Czech Republic, the birth rate is hovering at a mere 1.2 children per woman. The World Congress of Families (WCF) has warned of this “demographic winter” for years but only recently have the media begun to notice the chill. FRC has worked with the WCF to raise awareness of this trend. Now that we have the attention of the international community, FRC will continue to call on world leaders to implement pro-marriage and pro-family policies.
“By far, the greatest number [of children under five] are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic.” Gibson later claimed: “To put it bluntly, we need more babies.” Then, referring to Russia’s projected decline in population, Gibson claimed: “So far, we are doing our part here in America but Hispanics can’t carry the whole load. The rest of you, get busy. Make babies, or put another way — a slogan for our times: ‘procreation not recreation’.”
66 Responses to “Family Research Council: Europe, start procreating”
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Because only the melanin-challenged are capable of self-rule, democracy, and cultural greatness.
My students laugh at me when I say this (the white boy from rural Minnesota), but sometimes I hate white people. We are just an insane lot of people (OK, let me put that in sociologese: “white” people, as a group, tend to be insane when it comes to issues of race).
Wanna see the heads of these ‘wingers explode? Tell them that the way to decrease the birth rate among the melanin-gifted is to help improve the educational, economic, and political status of women, and to work with them to give them more control over their own reproductive choices.
in other words, the greater the social, political, and ecomic status of women, and the more control over their reproductive lives, the fewer children they tend to have.
Not procreating seems like a pretty rational response to the continuing societal problems in Russia. And Slovakia is exporting its people; many have emigrated to Ireland in the last few years. Why make more children for an economy that’s not working for those who are already alive?
OH MY NOES! (clutches pearls) You mean European countries are approaching a state of population equilibrium?!? And the Brown People ™ from the rest of the world may have to become Europeans to fuel growth? Bah.
I certainly hope within another generation the whole frigging world is facing this “problem”, not just Europe. Wouldn’t it be great if we could acheive worldwide population equilibrium before we blow up the planet?
“Actually, what Tony is saying there aren’t enough melanin-challenged people knocking boots. The brown folks are multiplying like bunnies.”
Funny how, when I read those sentences I was immediately reminded of this infamous quote:
“Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em.”
Mark Steyn
We share the world with a scary bunch of people, don’t we?
It must bother Perkins et al to no end that the unquestioned dominance white “christian” males have held for the last, well, forever it seems, is slowly dissipating, and I do mean slowly. It confuses my students, I think, when I mention that there’s still no greater advantage than being born a white male (which I am), because they’ve been trained by the bleating white males to think that it’s actually advantageous to be born a minority, socially and economically speaking.
I used to be confused about how white males could play the abused victim so well, until I realized that they’ve been doing it for centuries as christians–oh, we’re the oppressed even though we hold all the power and own everything!
As timely as today’s headlines:
Russians get day off to procreate, win prizes
Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6624865
Of course, they don’t think they’re being racist. And if they do possess enough self-awareness to know it’s racist, they think it isn’t in a negative way.
I swear I’ve heard some of these people talking about how they’re just taking pride in their heritage and want to see it continued. Idjits. (No, I’m not being sarcastic and supporting their point of view; I think their rationalization is weak and they are nothing but slightly less idiotic racists. Just to be clear, because this is the internet and misreadings are common)
We are just an insane lot of people
It’s not white people, it’s all people. There is a basic tribal instinct in all humans, and the self/other dynamic is seen everywhere.
But of course he’s not meaning that we need pro-family policies that would help people be able to afford children, etc. He’s meaning that we’ve got to enact anti-choice legislation to force women into it
Well, skin tone evolutionary theory indicates that darker skin evolved as a response to warmer climes once humans lost their protective fur, and that cooler climates advantage lighter skin, so it re-emerged.
So, want more light-skinned people? Stop global warming. Otherwise, in another million years, we’ll all be dark-skinned.
“Procreation not reacreation”? Only a total wingnut would see those as separate activities.
Local underpopulation in the context of global overpopulation is the world’s easiest problem to solve: just increase immigration. Next.
Hah, nice save there, John Gibson: “HISPANIC PANIC!…erm, I mean, white people should procreate too.”
“Make babies, or put another way — a slogan for our times: ‘procreation not recreation’.”
Bad slogan Gibson. More catchy would be “Fuck for the Fatherland” or maybe “Make Love and War”.
Me too, but the cynic in me thinks otherwise. The “go forth and procreate” crap that seems to be thrown about at times like this only works if the total number of people doesn’t reach the tipping point, where the population outstrips the resources. Wasn’t there a projection that in 2050, there would be 10 billion of us on the planet (up from 6 billion) ? So this quote:
is rubbish. Why do I get the feeling that blaming “abortion” and “feminists” is behind all this? Those damn women wanting to control their own bodies! We all know what “traditional family” means. Plus yeah, it’s totally racist.
No thanks.
Oh, and all this worry about “graying” populations — you mean people will live longer and we won’t have to worry about how to hold school systems together when the incoming kindergarten population is twice the size of the graduating high shool class?
Of course the fact that the US has been systematically destroying its retirement system isn’t so great for those who will survive until then…
I can’t block quote yet… but man, that last bit of the post was ghastly. I don’t know why I keep getting surprised and shocked when I read stuff like that…
Not all humans have that tribalism instinct. Look at all the people making mixed-race babies, and all the people choosing not to have children. They don’t seem too tribal.
What’s bizarre is the white American tribal thing that some people do have. Compare it to Europe, where the Serbians may distinguish themselves from Croatians, not to mention Germans and Spanish—and yet Euro-mutt Americans think their whiteness is some sort of singular tribe?
Also, we do not care for the term “melanin-challenged.” We are “persons of pallor.”
melanin challenged is much funnier.
“…melanin-challenged people..”
Oh good…now I know how to write down the answer to
‘Race?’
Which then leaves very small minority of individuals whom are not melanin-challenged yet pallourous out in the cold.
Oh, whatever shall we called the freckled??
(I’d vote for Yummy, but these tastes are my own, YMMV, etc.)
Why do I get the feeling that blaming “abortion” and “feminists” is behind all this?
Slightly off-topic, but I read something in Time today suggesting feminism is to blame for Hollywood’s inability or unwillingness to make more romance movies …
elyzabethe - I read that at Pajiba.
god… who wants more romance movies? Can’t they just make sideways over and over again?
I have freckles. We could be blemished-melinin-challenged people…
bah, i got nothin.
And those with the dreaded “farmer tan”
I like “Euro-Mutt American.”
By far, the greatest number [of children under five] are Hispanic.
Heh. Not in Europe. IIRC Spain (along with Italy) has the lowest birth rate in Western Europe.
Well, as a fifth generation of purebred Dutch descent (whatever that really means), I’m probably more ethnically Minnesotan than anything else.
Thanks to the BBC’s new emphasis on this crisis, Europe may finally wake up to the reality that its culture is on the verge of extinction.
Did I miss the memo that the majority of people in the Americas stopped speaking a European language and gave up Roman Catholicism as a religion?
The heirs of New Spain have just as much right to be considered “European” in culture as I do as a heir of New England.
Sorry, hit “post” to early. Hard to control a mouse when you’re howling with laughter.
1. This whole topic is so old that it must have become its own demographic catastrophe by now.
2. Any person from the thinly-settled, mostly-wilderness US claiming that a-village-every-mile Europe is becoming empty of people is obviously on crack.
3. What people like Perkins understand as pro-marriage and pro-family policies has proven again and again the most efficient way to lower birth rates in the first world.
4. If this guy ever took a look at charts about birth rates in Eastern Europe, he would campaign for a return to Communism.
This should have a “Conservatives are funny” tag.
It’s like these people haven’t heard of say, Crisis in the Population Question, written in 1934 (by the esteemed a href=”http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1982/myrdal-bio.html”>Alva Myrdal), about the demographics question. Of course, since that book was far more progressive than they’ll ever be, maybe they prefer not to.
That… went well.
Of course, these people would be shocked, shocked at the implication that there’s anything racist about their attitudes.
Japan has experienced declining birth rates as well (and many Japanese fear for the future of their culture). The Japanese have identified their situation as the result of children being an expense in advanced, highly technological, industrialized, capitalist systems. I imagine that at least Western and Central Europe would have a similar situation. Childrearing is hard work, and most people with some semblance of rational foresight would not want to keep having kids until the money just runs out. Once upon child mortality was so high, you had to just keep pumping out the babies to up the odds of any of your progeny reaching adulthood. Not so anymore. In Japan, the US, much of Europe, and any other country with much affluence, it is very, very likely your children will reach adulthood. So affluent parents find it more efficient to ahve fewer children and invest the hell into ‘em. Malthus never realized that widespread affluence would work to lower birthrates.
You could also think about it this way: if you come from a country where there is still an emphasis on a “traditional” role for women in the home, and yet, education for women has increased dramatically over a few generations (e.g., Japan, Italy, Spain), motherhood might look a little less appealing.
For example, an Italian gal in her 20s coming out of university, ready for work and independence, looks at her mama still getting up and ironing her brother’s jockey shorts and making him lunch before they both go to work (because he’s 27 and still lives at home), you might say to yourself, “Hmmm…no thanks.” On the other hand, if you had lengthy parental leave, flexible work schedules and high-quality affordable childcare, the whole parenting thing might look a little more attractive.
Demography…all these personal decisions with big impacts!
There is a worthwhile concern about unfettered immigration and/or demographic shifts, but it tends to be wrapped in coded racism. Liberals should be worried if a shift in cultural demography favors anti-liberal groups. The shift can take place through recruitment or migration, but either way, it’s bad for liberalism (which I’m using here in a big-tent sense to refer to the attitudes and values that underly liberal democracy and give rise to liberal democratic institutions).
The majority of the world’s people subscribe to some form of patriarchal religion, and that won’t just vanish if they move to places where the values of patriarchy have been somewhat eroded, such as the US. Given that the USA already has a problem with a resurgence of hardcore patriarchists due to recruitment, throwing open the doors to immigration by people who already hold similar values has potential bad consequences. As a conrete example, the Yazidis who were just savagely attacked in Iraq are from the same group that recently stoned a woman to death for a romantic relationship with a Sunni man. Clearly they are in a bad position within Iraq as an oppressed minority, and we feel a compassionate impulse to help them. If, for example, we were to throw open the doors and invite them to settle in Ohio, their votes would likely go to right wing candidates promising to crack down on gays and uppity women. That translates to more right wing judges, more economic polarization, and more imperialist wars.
Clearly there are important things I’ve left out of my thought experiment (the Democrats could split the Yazidi vote by pointing out right wing xenophobia or appealing to economic issues, or they might settle in non swing states, etc.). The point remains, though - liberal values are held by a minority of people in the world as a whole, and protecting the institutions that embody those values, however imperfectly, is important. Shifts in cultural demography that threaten those institutions should be a source of concern, whether the shifts are due to recruitment or to immigration. The fact that crypto-fascists engage in racist demagoguery about immigration shouldn’t blind us to the fact that there is a potential severe downside to it. It’s worth bearing in mind that just because someone is oppressed doesn’t mean they’re not an asshole.
Nick: Well, skin tone evolutionary theory indicates that darker skin evolved as a response to warmer climes once humans lost their protective fur, and that cooler climates advantage lighter skin, so it re-emerged.
Isn’t that an adaptation to latitude, not mean temperature? Or am I just unnecessarily nitpicking.
Heh - “Persons of pallor.”
I imagine this Gibson person must imagine this topic to be very serious. Thus, as my husband came home, I did my best to mimic such seriousness and concern as I told him: ” ‘Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic.’ ”
Though, I suppose the effect was totally lost when I opened up my eyes wide, threw my hands up and exclaimed, “OSHIT!” On the other hand, it was terribly fun, and I incited the “Everybody panic!” type response I wanted.
Which then leaves very small minority of individuals whom are not melanin-challenged yet pallourous out in the cold.
How’s about “person of no color?”
Although, I am freckled, so I don’t know what to do with that.
if a shift in cultural demography favors anti-liberal groups. The shift can take place through recruitment or migration, but either way, it’s bad for liberalism… The majority of the world’s people subscribe to some form of patriarchal religion, and that won’t just vanish if…
I’m guessing that what you’re trying to say here is that we should be worried about unfettered migration of people from “traditional” societies (that’s the kindest phrasing I could come up with), because their cultural baggage will help to erode the classical liberal modernist values the US was founded on.
Except that a hypothesis like that doesn’t hold true if you look at the history of American immigration. With each group that has arrived, no matter how traditionally non-liberal, religious, patriarchal, etc, the next generation becomes just as rights-loving and freedom-valuing as the next guy. If you look at any social justice movement in the US, for instance, you’ll find it composed of plenty of first and second generation Americans. Whereas it turns out that radical anti-democratic groups like the dominionist Christians tend to be almost exclusively Anglo-Americans whose families have been in the US for centuries.
Gah…The nested blockquotes worked in preview, but not on the post…
How’s about “person of no color?”
Although, I am freckled, so I don’t know what to do with that.
Isn’t that an adaptation to latitude, not mean temperature?
Scientists are still not really sure why people from certain northern climes have paler skin than people from southern climes.
It’s possible that paler skin evolved because it enables the body to absorb certain vitamins more efficiently from sunlight, despite long periods of darkness. Which would mean it’s based on latitude and exposure to sun, not actual temperatures.
Others think that Northern paleness is a fluke of sex selection, and isn’t much of an adaptive characteristic at all.
But isn’t it my birthright to expect some hispanic woman to pull the weight and do the dirty work of all this baby making so I don’t have to?
I was under the impression that groups like the Family Research Council would love to see the extinction of Europe’s culture (like the entire continent has one unified heritage, but whatever). That’s where all those white-wine-swilling, pointy-headed-intellectual ideas about social safety nets, universal health care, and reliable sex ed come from, right?
Oh, wait. “Europe’s culture” is code here for “Europe’s skin tone.”
Also, I want to be the first to predict that, by the time America has an Hispanic majority, Hispanics will be considered “white” and everyone, people of Hispanic descent included, will be busy ganging up against some new immigrant group. There was a time when Italian and Eastern European immigrants were considered non-white and a dire threat to American culture, but once their descendents made enough money they magically became white people.
Thanks, the opoponax, I can’t believe that I neglected to consider sexual selection. That makes sense.
Although, I am freckled, so I don’t know what to do with that.
If you are out in the cold, that would make you the vaunted “person who is purple with spots”.
could just call us “blancs”, as it is the opposite of a latinate word for black.
As for white countries with higher birthrates, well, the Scandinavians do pretty well by their “Nanny State” social policies. These guys don’t want to hear that.
opoponax - The assimilation factor (sort of what I was calling recruitment) is significant, but it’s not necessarily robust across all policy preferences. Lots of catholics who come to the US end up firmly in the economic justice camp while remaining quite hostile to abortion and gay rights, for example. Right now we are blessed with stupid enemies who engage in immigrant bashing and hostility to economic justice, but if the Dominionist crowd was to moderate its hostility towards catholicism and hispanics they could swing a huge number of votes on gender and sexuality issues. Right now they have allied themselves with the big money elites in order to build power, but they are starting to tire of only seeing “their” issues addressed in election years, while the rest of the time it’s all about tax cuts and cronyism. They won’t shift in the short term, but in a decade or so they might, particularly now that catholics are starting to flex a bit of political muscle.
Being generally pro-immigration, I think it is imperative that liberals go about selling our ideas vigorously, and in particular selling immigrants on the idea that the good things about liberal democracy absolutely require keeping government out of the bedroom and the doctor’s office. Keeping with the Hispanic Catholic theme, we need to do more than have the Dems reach out to Hispanics, we need to sell religiously conservative Hispanics on liberalism so that they’ll force the Democrats leftwards.
it’s not necessarily robust across all policy preferences. Lots of catholics who come to the US end up firmly in the economic justice camp while remaining quite hostile to abortion and gay rights, for example.
That might work out if you look only at first generation immigrants from certain ethnicities that have a particular history of caring about certain issues, and also factor in about a zillion different things.
But when you look at the history of immigration in America, what becomes clear right away is that you absolutely cannot predict the eventual political values an immigrant group will hold based on things like how “traditional” their society is, how religious they are, etc. Look, for instance, at the Russian Jews who came to the US 100 years ago — everyone was worked up about the same thing, at first. Very tradition-bound culture, very patriarchal, very religious, no previous exposure to liberal ideals. (The word back then was “backwards”.)
That prediction didn’t hold for very long, though; it turned out that the minute said Jews got a little bit settled in, they went to the opposite end of the spectrum from what anyone would have predicted (even other Jews from groups that had been in the US for a while already).
A similar tale could be told of the Irish. Very traditional and religious culture. Very patriarchal family structure. And yet when the Irish came to the US, they blended in pretty easily to the over-arching political framework, and have always been Democratic stalwarts.
Advertisement online at freckle fetish forums?
Beats a poor-self image and using body makeup.
Anyway - I propose we call the Blessed, “Spotted Americans”.
I predict the result of this FRC announcement will have the same result on people’s reproductive habits as the howlings of LDP geezers have had on Japanese women; i.e., zilch.
What we need is misgenation, so the descendants of white people will have better tans, and the dark people won’t be quite as dark!
Tommykey - thanks to a phenomenon called Hybrid Vigor, breeding well outside your own group is an excellent way to ensure healthy offspring. The chances of inheriting the same bad mutation from both parents is very small, and the different sets of genes tend to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. In other words, the true Master Race is mongrels.
I did Togo! My wife is a Filipina and I have two damned good looking kids.
Tommykey: Three cheers for miscegenation!
I can’t believe these fruit loops. Wow. They’re actually saying we need more people on this planet — and what’s more, they specifically mean just the sort of privileged new people who will consume vastly more than the average new person. Obscene.
I am always wierded out by the way in which Americans single out hispanics as a separate race. Here in Europe, the distinction is nationalistic and cultural. The Spanish may be ‘dagoes’–foreigners with funny habits and food–but they are otherwise treated as ‘white’.
(That said, there are some parts of the English countryside where swarthy types might get treated as gypsies. But the treatment of ‘pikeys’ is another subject for another post.)
For the record I’m married to a Japanese woman. The Japanese, I’ve noticed, are treated as racially acceptible by most whites I’ve met, in comparison with groups such as blacks and Asians. (I use there term ‘Asian’ here in its British context–as a reference to people from the Indian subcontinent.) It was interesting to see the art critic Robert Hughes once tackle an Australian nationalist over the matter of Japanese immigration to Oz. The racist was forced to concede that ‘their women were attractive’, and the Japanese themselves not so bad, based on his experience with the occupation forces after the war. Funny that.
gravitybear: Isn’t that an adaptation to latitude, not mean temperature?
Try to find “The evolution of human skin coloration” by Nina G. Jablonski and George Chaplin. (It’s online somewhere.)
IIRC they say that sunlight helps build up vitamin D but destroys folic acid. For healthy babies, both vitamin D and folic acid need to be present.
Which would make skin colour an adaption to sunlight.
MsKate, could just call us “blancs”,
I recently read a SF where exactly that was the case: Everyone could be assumed to be some darkish brown, unless they were described as “blancos”.
First and foremost, the Family Resarch Council is very anti-family. Secondly, the FRC doesn’t even know that Planet Earth is morbidly overpopulated and people have run out-of-control with their procreation. Thirdly, the birth rate is NOT falling. In fact, the birth rate is at its highest since 1965, thanks to the US and especially India.
They need to do something more constructive, like looking at a proposed 30-year procreation ban.
One funny thing about the shit fight on population replacement in Europe is that a lot of the “evidence” being thrown around is being handled in a fuzzy manner. The statistical tools used by demographers who don’t have political weight to throw around are pointing to a lack of a “problem”, simply because the measures these race-baiters are using aren’t picking up on changes in childbearing choices over time, which is called “tempo rates” in the lower linked article:
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/rw/2004/t.sobotka/
(There’s a short version article available, but it requires J-STOR access.)
So basically, a lot of European demographers are saying: keep your pants on, people! The populations that you’re worried about are actually going to replace themselves, but your crazy math isn’t showing it.
It does beg the questions mentioned earlier, about dogs wagging tails or tails wagging dogs. Somehow racist concern over “the brown gastarbeiter taking over” or “our women are working, not having bebes!” points to politicians trying to sway public opinion with bad math, rather than actually having a “demographic CRISIS” in capital letters.
Lee Brimmicombe-Wood:
Yeah, well, race is kind of a fantasy to begin with. Near as I can tell, what determines if a group of people become a different race is whether or not consensus decides they should become included or excluded–and hispanics are much too poor and Spanish-speaking to be considered white (or American) to most people of the U.S.
I am always wierded out by the way in which Americans single out hispanics as a separate race. Here in Europe, the distinction is nationalistic and cultural. The Spanish may be ‘dagoes’–foreigners with funny habits and food–but they are otherwise treated as ‘white’.
It’s all pretty arbitrary (and I’m not sure Hispanic actually was considered a separate race when I was a child - no one ever suggested that Lucy in “I Love Lucy” was in an interracial marriage, and I didn’t actually know about the separate Hispanic category until it came time for me to apply for college). But I think “Hispanic” as a separate race actually means “mestizo”; Mexican-Americans are counted as non-white because the Spanish intermingled more with the Indians than the WASPs did, and not because Spanish are less white than Italians.
I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if “white” gets extended over the next couple of decades, so that “white” can still be the majority.
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I saw this on Bill Nye, the Science Guy!!!
He had a map showing the relative melanin-ity or pallor of the indigenous folks. Amount of sunlight was the deciding factor for the most part–natural selection vying between protection from UV and need for Vitamin D–until you get to South America.
South America was colonized ~10K years ago, and by then, humans were wearing clothes. So the need for skin color to protect us from the environment was greatly lessened by outerwear. Those folks were not quite as light/dark as predicted by latitude alone.*
It was a good show, as he had his DNA analyzed to see if it would show where his ancestry lies, and it really doesn’t work at all.
I can’t wait for these racist FRC folks to get a gander at my kids. They look Irish (middle daughter is positively blue she’s so white) but they’re half-Mexican. So I can’t wait for those racist assberets to talk to my kids and think they’ve got a hold of someone of similar interests b/c of skin color alone.
We call them our “stealth Mexicans”.
Hee hee, you said “assberet.” I may have to borrow that.
And Lynn Gazis-Sax, you bring up an interesting idea about the U.S. definition of “white” expanding over the next few years so as to maintain the majority. There’s a book entitled Working Toward Whiteness I’m interested in reading, that looks to be about how the parameters of “white” changed from between the late 19th century and the mid 20th. I wonder if anyone here has read it?
Yeah, I never got why Hispanic people aren’t “white”, since I always thought they were. But then I’m Canadian–different set of racial prejudices, I guess. I do think it has something to do with many more South Americans having both Native and European ancestry than North Americans do.
Humans are so weird. But I think it’s cool that people with multiple heritages are genetically stronger. Neat. As my sister said to someone lamenting that Oh noes! Everyone was going to be a medium brown soon if we didn’t watch out! –Well, hasten the day, that would be cool.
Also, yeah, aren’t these the folks who are always going on about how terrible current European society is? I guess they just figure that the (more traditional!) immigrant cultures are even worse, or something. Illogical and tribal, yep.
For most of this country’s history, there was no “legal” and “illegal” immigration. People just came. Once we had “legal” and “illegal” immigration, some of the biggest offenders were the Irish. As British citizens, the Irish could easily get to Canada. Once they got there, they walked to the US. There were so many Italians here illegally that the racial slur “wop” - (Without Papers) was invented to refer to them.
While the Irish and Italians were hated by WASP’s, the dire predictions of the anti-immigrant groups of the late 19th century have proved false.
The same thing will happen with our most recent immigrants. They will assimmilate and are assimilating.
And yes, they are learning English. Especially the next generation. It is not uncommon to hear an immigrant barely able to speak and understand English while their children speak and understand it perfectly. In fact, in many immigrant communities, the worry is not that the kids won’t learn English, but that they will forget the language of the old country. This is nothing new and has been going on for centuries.
The wingnuts are right about one thing - Europe does have to worry about immigration more than America. However, it is because America does offer immigrants more opportunity. A large part of France’s immigration problems have happened because although France is a legally a “race blind” society, Pierre always gets the job but Mohammed never does. Large numbers of unemployed Mohammeds are causing problems in France because they are not given the chance to assimilate. America’s relatively liberal policies and relatively liberal cultural outlook means that we do not and are not going to have the same problems they have in other places.
In other words, following immigration policies advocated by the far right in the US would create new immigration problems and make the ones we have far worse.