Fireflair wrote:And to a degree I sympathize with the idea though not his methodology. There is a strong reason for the support of the side that wishes foreigners would not come into a country, any country. They like the culture of the country where they live as it is and do not want to see it diluted or changed. Any immigrants coming into a country will certainly change the nature of the country. Enough immigrants could see the entire culture of the country change.
In my experience, nativists and nationalists do many things, but "liking their culture" is not one of them.
They sure talk a lot about it, yes, but once you get down to interrogating their beliefs about what they like about their culture, it more often than not turns out to be some chimeric ideal that has never actually existed rather than the actual culture that they do live in.
The added hilariousness and unconscious hypocrisy that happens when americans in particular start whining about how immigrants destroy american culture is delicious, too.
The argument in favor of denying immigrants relies heavily on this. The corollary to it is that if immigrants want to come into a country because the place they were leaving was so horrible perhaps they should be the one to change. What was failing them where they are should not be brought to where they are going to, otherwise they're just re-creating the system that they ran away from before.
Again, in my experience, most immigrants know intellectually that they won't be able to live their lives exactly as they did in their country of origin. But knowing that and applying it to a lifetime of lived experience are different things.
Trump is not the only person who feels that immigrants should conform to the society they are joining. Many Americans feel this way because they don't want to see their way of life drastically changed. It doesn't have anything to do with being xenophobic, racist or a white supremacist. It has everything to do with keeping the culture they know and support.
But what they actually end up doing is measuring immigrants against what they think an ideal american is like and blaming them when they aren't.
As stated above, noone emigrates to another country expecting it to be just as it was back home. But, on the flipside, noone emigrates to another country expecting to change everything about themselves just to fit in.
If you want to accept immigrants, you need to accept that they will not abandon their entire upbringing just because you do not happen to like being reminded of the fact that other religions and cultures exist.
For example, many Americans are very supportive of Muslims moving to the US because, hey! Religious freedom, tolerance and everyone deserves a chance, right? But they also bring with them baggage that is very central to their lives, such as their religious obligations, clothing and expected behaviors. When these things are brought up, most Americans would get very indignant about being forced to conform to Muslim standards in their own country.
Please cite examples of americans being forced to conform to muslim religious precepts.
If you cannot accept that a person may want to wear a burqa, you need to stop and think about what exactly gave you the idea that there's a dress code that you need to enforce.
The expectation is that since these Muslim immigrants came here they should conform to the US's standards and find ways to get along, regardless of their cultural baggage.
Many Muslims in France see the giving up of their culture as necessary to take full advantage of what being a French citizen means. They don't want to do that. The French government has a tradition of secular schools but Muslim women wear hijabs to class and it has caused a fervor because of teachers objecting to dress that is required by religion. There's been any number of cases circling around this in France since the late 80's.
Muslims do not see giving up their religion as a necessity. The French Government does. This is an important difference.
Only a quarter of French citizens believe that Muslims are compatible with French society as a whole, where as more than three quarters of the French believe that Catholicism and Judaism is compatible.
A good example of this is that in April 2018 an Algerian Muslim woman refused to shake hands with the official on religious grounds. As an applicant must demonstrate being integrated into society as well as respect for French values, officials considered her not integrated and denied her citizenship application.
And if you can't see how these standards are as bad and arbitrary as the literacy tests US officials handed out to black americans so they can prove their ability to vote, I don't know that to tell you.
There are more than a few points which are contentious when bringing immigrants of any stripe into a country. The fact that Trump is against immigrants in general doesn't make him racist (though he probably is!) as there are plenty of people who simply don't want to see their culture change without being racist.
It is impossible to be against immigration without being racist.
