🌊 The Great Multiculturalism Debate

Did someone forward you this? Subscribe here free!

By Max Towey

It’s easy to forget the scale of immigration in the United States today, but here’s a stat that puts it into perspective: With 52M foreign-born residents, the US has a greater foreign-born population than the next four closest countries – Germany, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Egypt – combined. 

Driving across the country reminds you of this reality. During our swing state road trip last summer – which, pardon yet another victory lap, led us to correctly predict the outcomes of all seven swing states – we encountered immigrant communities in the unlikeliest of places: A Hmong community in the rural Wisconsin town of Wausau; a Korean neighborhood in Duluth, Georgia; and an Arab-majority city in Dearborn, Michigan. It was there that we saw a stunning image of multiculturalism: Girls wearing hijabs under their cowboy hats in the student section of a high school football game.

In western and central Pennsylvania, the reality of immigration was fainter, though still palpable. In every steel town, we saw “ethnic clubs,” like the Serb Club or Slovak Club. The Poles had their own church, community center, and neighborhood, while the Italians had theirs. In one of our more memorable meals, we met the owner of Dabrowski’s, a Polish diner in Erie, PA. At one point, she (affectionately, I hope) told me to “shut the f*** up!” after I had evidently asked too many questions. Her family had run that diner since she was a little girl. 

These trips revealed, in many ways, the beauty of immigration. After all, as we learned in grade school, immigrants built this country. And despite early prejudices, which seemingly every new group endured, assimilation followed. Just last week, we toured Little Italy in New York City with a historian who showed us newspaper clippings from the early 20th century that revealed jaw-dropping instances of anti-Italian discrimination. For decades, Italian-Americans had to fill in their own bubble on the US Census, the historian told us. But now it’s hard to imagine a more American night than watching The Godfather with a large pizza in front of you while a Joe DiMaggio Yankees jersey and Frank Sinatra poster hang on the wall in the back. 

With this in mind, multiculturalism seems to be a beautiful thing, and assimilation seems inevitable. But there’s an alternative viewpoint to mass migration and multiculturalism, and one that we saw come to life in Jackson Heights, Queens – the country’s most diverse neighborhood.

The anti-multiculturalism and -mass migration viewpoint hinges on two core beliefs: 1) The US has 330M people and a shortage of housing and quality jobs, both of which migrants exacerbate for current residents; 2) Immigrants used to come primarily from Europe, but today they come from cultures that don’t share core Western values and don’t mix as well with America’s founding principles, no matter how nice the people from those groups seem at an individual level. 

We heard variations of these sentiments all over the country. In rural Pennsylvania, voters told us that illegal immigrants push down wages by taking blue-collar jobs at criminally low pay, enriching companies while hurting US citizens. In the Bronx, voters lamented that migrants got debit cards to swipe at grocery stores and hotel rooms to sleep in while they have to work difficult or multiple jobs to barely scrape by. In more candid conversations, others expressed that migrant-heavy communities don’t “feel” or “look” American, echoing the words of President Obama in his book The Audacity of Hope: “When I'm forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.” For all these reasons and more, many feel our country is full.

This fear of mass migration, by the way, is nothing new. Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant himself, wrote this in The New York Evening Post in 1802:

We saw the complexities of the multiculturalism debate brought to life during our trip to Jackson Heights. The neighborhood, abutting New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, has 160 languages spoken within its 300 acres and 100,000 people. Over 60% of its residents are foreign-born, and its main strip, Roosevelt Avenue, smells of curry on one block, empanadas on the next, and kebabs after that. 

One longtime resident remarked, “I like watching the mothers pick up their kids from school cause there’d be one mother with a tight skirt and high-heeled platform shoes, and another with a burqa and a hood. And their kids would be going to the same school.” Another longtime resident told us, “My idea of what looks good and beautiful have changed. Because when I grew up it was all Irish and Italians, but now I appreciate the different looks and shapes and colors.”

The history of Jackson Heights reflects the shifts in US immigration overall. With the passage of the highly consequential but little-known Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the face of immigrants in the US changed overnight. Until then, the country admitted immigrants based on a quota system that brought in people in proportion to those who were already here. Essentially, the US was made up of Europeans, so it let in Europeans. But the 1965 Act removed those quotas, and waves of Latin American and Asian immigrants began to arrive.

Editor’s Note

We hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. We’re very curious to hear your thoughts: Is multiculturalism the key to America’s success, or is it something you worry about? Email us here to let us know.

As always, find our latest stories here:

• The Great Polish Housing Miracle

• The Conspiracies That Weren’t

• The Sport That Took Over American Politics

• The Woman Who’s Taking Down Pornhub

• How Pride Became R-Rated

Lots of responses to yesterday’s article on Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. Read the emails below:

Gabriel from Munich wrote:

Carrie from California wrote:

Rebecca from Albuquerque wrote:

And to end on a good note, Robert from Cincinnati wrote:

Thank you all, we love hearing from you. We’ll be back tomorrow.

–Max and Max