11 hours ago
Diversity isn't ‘our strength' when millions of foreigners refuse to assimilate
When immigrants came to America, the unspoken deal used to be to 'leave the beefs at home'. As newcomers assimilated, they abandoned ancient feuds that mired parts of the Old World in conflict for centuries.
This has been a key to American success. Indians and Pakistanis may be at loggerheads, but in the US they were both 'South Asians' and got along fine. As the Irish Republicans and Scots Irish left Emerald Isle politics behind, so Armenians and Turks, Arabs and Israelis, Hutu and Tutsi all respected the pax Americana.
But America as a 'melting pot' was replaced with the mantra ' diversity is our strength '. The evidence for the latter being true is slim. A 2007 study based on a survey of 30,000 Americans found that 'the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects'. A German study in 2022 suggested that 'the public is more reluctant to support welfare where the proportion of migrants at the local level is larger'.
Those promoting open borders and multiculturalism preach that mass migration comes only with benefits, never costs. But that can depend on the home culture of the migrants and how quickly they adapt to a new one. Let's first look overseas.
After decades of mass migration, once homogenous Sweden now has a 20 per cent foreign born population. It has also now been dubbed the bombing and gang murder capital of Europe. Children 'whose parents were born abroad are five times more likely to be suspected of murder and manslaughter than Swedes whose parents were born in Sweden,' according to a 2021 study. In many European countries, there is evidence that crime rates among immigrants from certain countries are higher than among indigenous citizens.
In Britain, the government is finally taking seriously the grooming rings in several towns that sexually abused white girls. According to a recent report, 'disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds [are] amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation,' so the authorities were loath to confront it, for fear of being called racist. Even the phrase 'Asian ethnic backgrounds' obscures that a large number of men accused of sexually abusing children in the grooming gang scandal were of Pakistani heritage.
When Israel and Iran started trading bombs, Brendan O'Neill wrote in The Telegraph that it is 'unbelievable' that 'people are marching in London in support of the evil Iranian regime'. But it is believable. When Hamas raped, murdered, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis on October 7, 2023, there were public demonstrations in support immediately afterwards in Britain. Police were either powerless to enforce civil order or chose not to.
The white British population in London is now a minority. In the last few decades, millions of people from all over the world came to the UK, including many who are openly hostile to Israel's existence. The pro-Iran march was organised by the Palestinian Youth Movement Britain, a group that claims Israel wants to crush Iran 'under the boot of imperialism'.
Here in America, the foreign-born population is nearing 16 per cent – the highest level in history, exceeding the previous high of the late 1890s. At the same time, the idea that, when you come to the Midwest, you leave the Middle East behind, is fraying. Local politicians are appealing to micro-constituencies along ethnic or religious lines in ways more reminiscent of the 19th century than the 20th.
In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for mayor, has been accused of bringing the sectarian politics of the sub-continent to the Big Apple.
He has called Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, head of the nationalist BJP (Indian People's Party), a 'war criminal'. Mamdani's family are Muslims originally from the Indian state of Gujarat, where Modi is also from. When he was a local politician in 2005, the US refused Modi a visa due to his alleged role in communal violence.
If you don't know what 'communal violence' is, watch the movie Gandhi where the British Empire's 'jewel in the crown' was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947. Millions fled one country for another, and many died in violence between people divided by religion.
Today, India has the world's second-largest Muslim community, although they are outnumbered five to one by Hindus. The New Indian Express reported an 84 per cent rise in communal riots in 2024.
The Hindu-Muslim squabble is not the only ideological baggage Mamdani's family appears to have brought to America; he's also a hard-core socialist, supporting rent control, free public buses, universal child care, and higher taxes. Mamdani wanted to defund the city's police in 2020, writing that the NYPD is 'racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety'.
Although he's running in a city with a large Jewish population, Mamdani is unwilling to say Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He has described Israel's action in Gaza as 'genocide' and has attended public protests against Israel. He gets support from 'Jewish Voice for Peace' which, despite its name, is 'a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the boycott of Israel and eradication of Zionism,' according to Rabbi Ze'ev Smason of the Coalition for Jewish Values.
In Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative, plays to her heavily Somali district and sometimes appears to conflate Somalia's interests with those of the United States. Omar called it 'really shocking' that president Trump organised a military parade for the 250th anniversary of the United States Army – which won our independence, kept Europe free in 1917-18, and defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1942-45.
'This is not the country we were born in,' says Omar (who was not born here). 'I grew up in a dictatorship,' she told Democracy Now, where she doesn't 'remember ever witnessing anything like' the June 15th parade. Perhaps that's because, in Somalia, the militias tend to kill each other with roadside bombs, AK-47s, and souped-up SUVs called 'technicals', all of which would make for a pretty sad parade.
Rashida Tlaib, a congresswoman representing a heavily Arab area of Michigan, never lets you forget that she is Palestinian. She refers to the Palestinian people as 'we,' although she is a US citizen representing Americans of many backgrounds in Congress. In 2023, she was censured by the House of Representatives for 'calling for the destruction of the state of Israel', because of her use of the phrase 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'.
Tlaib claims that the slogan 'is an aspirational call for... peaceful coexistence', but we all know that a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea can't coexist with the state of Israel.
Let's hope president Trump closing Biden's open border, ramping up deportations, and increasing visa screening can buy us a few calmer years in which to integrate our recent arrivals and inculcate in them a common American identity and purpose to replace what they left behind.
Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of 'The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey),' forthcoming from Academica Press
