Many, including the whiniest Southern politician to come along since John Edwards, have compared today's illegal immigrants-- the challenges and sometimes prejudices they face-- to those faced by Italians and Irish and others who came to our shores through Ellis Island a couple generations ago.
This comparison, aside from the bigotry slap at anti-bill conservatives, betrays an underestimation of the strength of anti-assimilation forces in today's America as opposed to generations ago. That's what my column's on today.
Need proof? Three very successful actors--one a first-generation American, one a second-generation American, and one a third-generation American-- made public pro-assimilation comments this week, and all of them have been sneered at for their unabashed, tacky America-firstism, despite the fact that it seems to have served all of them very well:
Alba, Schwarzenegger and Pacino have got it right. Their concern is with becoming successful, individual Americans, not with specious collective responsibilities imparted to them by their skin colors, accents, or surnames. As a result, they have all done both America and their ancestors proud. They are all walking, talking, acting illustrations of the American dream in action.
When considering legalizing 12 million illegal immigrants, Congress should consider seriously the fact that the walking, talking American dream is now politically incorrect. That doesn’t bode well for its survival.
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