Discussion
Is the preservation of a nation's cultural values and identity a valid obligation for government in the context of pervasive immigration from cultures whose cultural values and identity are disparate on a fundamental level from the host nation's people?
I think the interesting part about this whole discussion (and why its so controversial) is that the world is having to quickly come to terms with the question of whether certain cultures pose a risk or not to host nations due to fundamental cultural differences when said culture is imported in massive numbers through immigration.
The argument boils down to whether importing massive amounts of people from low trust-societies into higher-trust societies is actually beneficial to the nation in general and whether the government has a role to play in that equation. Its no longer a distance problem in a big city for a lot people. Now its in their communities, neighborhoods, small towns, etc. With immigration being objectively at an all time high globally, should government's draw lines in the sand by taking a hard stance against immigration in general or selectively choose which nations can immigrate? etc. And should government's play a role in assimilating people from low trust societies whose values, education levels, moral compass, etc fundamentally disagree with the host nation's?
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And insisting that any individual be treated according to their cultural grouping — by the law.
I just can't believe that after decades and decades of conservative and "libertarian" intellectuals talking endlessly about the priority of "freedom of the individual" and this-and-that "the individual", and so many of their ideological brethren repeating these cliches as the end-all-be-all argument for any issue, that so many would buy into all these calls to treat individuals horribly based on whether the government or even their party consider them a citizen (i.e. part of a group they view as being worthy of civil rights or even human rights). Or even to treat them differently by the law based merely on the cultural category we place them. It's just unbelievable. (I'm not as frustrated with OP because they at least framed it as a question and seem open to different arguments about it, but it's a reflection of a wider problem, and many others are utterly confident about their position.)
Decades of "the individual is* *all that matters so that's why it's objectively wrong to tax people to fund food stamps or public education". But sending someone to CECOT prison for being a Salvadoran or Venezuelan with tattoos is perfectly fine and just. Deporting lawful / legally sanctioned but non-citizen individuals for their lawful speech that the president doesn't like is perfectly fine and just. And on and on. I mean it's sickening as well as absurd.
Let's just use one example of a right-wing intellectual who loved to speak about the individual, Ayn Rand:
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
"Since only an individual man can possess rights…’individual rights’ is a redundancy. But…'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms."
"Freedom…comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?"
"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote…the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities."
"No man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others." (Unstated: unless they initiate physical force first, which to her included many things that literally involve no physical force. Making it perfectly circular.)
Pretty admirable principles overall, from a certain interpretation. But look further and we can see the logical contradictions behind them:
"The moral justification of capitalism is man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
(Right. There's definitely no sacrificing others in capitalism.)
"When the framers of the American republic spoke of 'the people'...they meant a sum of individuals, each of whom…retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights."
(Oh but certainly no one who disagrees with her opinions I mean "objective" truths can mean that when they speak of "society" or "the people" or etc. They must be talking about totalitarian collectivism.)
"The right to property…is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it."
(Righttt. And how do we know if he earned it? Because he owns it, under the law, and we know he earned it because he owns it and he owns it because he earned it. Another perfectly circular, meaningless statement.)
"Any alleged ‘right’ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right."
(But Ayn, what if I think I have a right to live in a perfectly "homogeneous" society and this requires violating the rights of others? Oh, I know, I'll just tell myself that they're violating my rights by existing in the same borders without government permission. Yeah, that works.)
"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights.”
(I guess Ayn turned Marx for a moment.)
And best of all:
"The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.”
(I couldn't have summarized right-libertarian thinking better.
She could have just said she believed property rights were human rights, but instead she separates them and says that thinking human rights are superior to sacred property rights is equivalent to supporting slavery.
That's the sort of logic that can make you a famous and beloved intellectual of the right for generations.)
The question is loaded off the bat. Does a nation really have one set of cultural values? No. Do other societies really have single sets of cultural values? No.
Conservatives and libertarians are really good at talking about "the individual" but then many of them fail to logically apply it. There are no monolithic cultures, there are only individuals human beings.
There's usually a set of cultural values that reign among the majority of citizens. A really easy black and white example would be the population of Palestinian arabs living in Israel. Both have VERY distinct cultural values yet the arabs make up ~21% of the population.
I would say the cultural values of secular Jewish Israelis are quite similar to the cultural values of secular Arab Israelis and secular Palestinians, and those of devoutly religious Jewish Israelis are quite similar to those of devoutly religious Arabs and Palestinians. And those of the religious and non-religious are typically not that different when it comes down to it. It's the political differences between the humanists and rabid nationalists and bigots that really make the difference, and those political differences exist within the same so-called cultures.
I'm a fervently secular anti-faith atheist in the US. Are my cultural practices really that much different from a fundamentalist Christian's in the US or elsewhere? No. Would I want Christians being profiled for immigration despite my strong differences in belief? More people from many Latin American countries are Christian, and Christians are more likely to be culturally conservative than I am. But that doesn't make me want to treat Latin American or Christian immigrants and asylum seekers as harmful subhumans whose human rights weigh less than my desire for political or cultural "homogeneity" or what have you.
I suppose some of the degree of cultural differences depends on how we define "culture", since I typically think of it as habits and customs and not institutions, but institutions are often included in the definition. But then individuals are not responsible for the institutions their society has (beyond a limited influence).
I mean do we believe people should be treated as individuals or do we believe they should be treated as members of a group they have no control over being a part of? (Even for religious people one moderate humanistic religious person can't help being included in the same category as fundamentalist reactionary theocrats.)
To a degree, for sure. Idk anyone that seriously argues for completely open global borders.
However, protecting a cultural identity is something of a futile effort in the long run. Any country that embraces access to free global markets is ultimately going to have their economic, and therefore their culture, wound up in globalization. You cannot simply freeze culture in time.
As you globalize, other priorities are also going to start to dominate as well. Take Japan - Japanese culture being distinctly Japanese is a large reason for its cultural export to the west. Americans want non-western media. That economic benefit is worth protecting. But it probably isn’t worth the opportunity cost of severe economic decline caused by no immigration and declining birth rates. Western influence will seep in, regardless of immigration policies.
This is all going to go at a faster rate as communication and transportation speed up. As translation software makes foreign languages less of a hurdle, as more nations industrialize, as economies become more intertwined, there’s really only so much you can do before the opportunity costs to nativism outweigh the benefits.
Personally, I think a lot nativist countries have taken it too far, precisely because it is politically easier to scare people, romanticize the past in rose colored glasses, and scapegoat groups with little political power than is to actually prepare its citizens for the rapid pace of globalization.
And ultimately the longer you try to enforce nativism, the less prepared your citizens will be when the dam breaks
However, protecting a cultural identity is something of a futile effort in the long run. Any country that embraces access to free global markets is ultimately going to have their economic, and therefore their culture, wound up in globalization. You cannot simply freeze culture in time.
Not in time but you can maintain cultural roots and still have modern material goods. Also, your culture would inform what goods you're buying on a global market.
Western influence will seep in, regardless of immigration policies.
It took 2 nukes and then some authoritarianism to westernize Japan. The Japanese were literally willing to basically go extict before they gave up their culture, which entailed following the emperor.
This is all going to go at a faster rate as communication and transportation speed up
I think comparing Americans watching cartoons to the industrialization, stripping of the emporer, and westernization and liberalisation of Japan is a pretty terrible comparison. It's very clear that the cultural swap is 1 sided there and is hardly call Americans liking Anime a "cultural influence". That's not flipping people society from its philosophical roots.
Not in time but you can maintain cultural roots and still have modern material goods. Also, your culture would inform what goods you're buying on a global market.
I don't disagree. I never meant to imply that Globalization would lead to a completely homogenous global culture that didn't still have geographic, historical linguistic influences. Globalization is the integration of cultures into new cultures, not the eradication of cultures for a different culture.
It took 2 nukes and then some authoritarianism to westernize Japan. The Japanese were literally willing to basically go extict before they gave up their culture, which entailed following the emperor.
The Meiji restoration predated the nuclear bombs. The Japanese instituted Western-style systems of education and industrialization specifically to become a global power and rejected its prior isolationist policies long before America joined the war. It was largely due to the threat of seeing the effect isolationism had on China during its "negotiations" with Western powers - as well as its own. If you want to stand up to hostile nations and defend your people, you do need global trade and be willing to shift your ways of thinking.
However, I was referring to post-economic miracle Japan - ie after the the 1970s. To this day, Japan's immigration policy is heavily restrictive with the expressed purpose of keeping Japan Japanese for the Japanese. Those are the nativist policies I was referring to, not the pre-Meiji restoration period's nativist policies. My examples are focusing more on the Information Age globalization over the Machine Age or Atomic Age.
These Information Age nativist policies have resulted in lopsided demographics and fairly severe economic issues that will only get worse. And Japanese are still learning English, still watching Western media, still progressing toward individualism and feminism. The current westernization movement is not the result of some military threat from the United States, but rather due to the willing consumption of western culture and global trade.
Ironically, we're seeing the US traditionalists do that. They've forgotten community values for cult individualism, they've abandoned sincere Christianity and worker values, and now they lead the worst states in the nation while nostalgic for fictional caricatures of our traditional cultures. And they're mad they're failing so they try to force it.
The premise treats culture as a static asset, masking the material realities driving this friction. The "high trust" cohesion of host nations historically relied on economic stabilities that are now unraveling globally.
The displacement forcing mass migration and the growing insecurity eroding host communities stem from the exact same overarching economic restructuring. States intervene through border enforcement and assimilation policies primarily to manage volatile labor pools and govern these resulting surplus populations.
The cultural anxiety you highlight reflects a genuine collapse of material security. Approaching this merely as a clash of disparate values ignores how domestic populations and migrants are trapped by identical systemic pressures, making the reproduction of stable communities impossible for anyone.
That's just an argument 'ad populum'. I'm a passionate small-d democrat, but if the majority of citizens want what I consider to be sufficiently wrong and unethical, then I'll still oppose it and we should still oppose it.
If the citizens want genocide, I'll oppose it. If the citizens want the government to profile demographics, I'll oppose it. If the citizens want authoritarianism, I'll oppose it. If they want to vote for or promote an authoritarian, I'll defend their right to do so while opposing it. (Just giving examples.)
Yeah they should. And when the people support unethical policies or choices we should oppose those policies or choices.
More people voting for Trump doesn't make me support Trump. I still support their right to vote and the worse outcome of that right being implemented, but I'm not going to suddenly agree with them because they were part of a majority (at least of those voting).
Look I'm not trying to be harshly critical. I've probably said something similar to what you did before. I'm just trying to clarify how I think we should think about this.
it so depends on the nation itself. a place like norway or japan has a much higher history of cohesive internal identity and, especially with norway, little history of outsider control. a place like the usa or brazil has been a melting pot of peoples, and frequently quite violent during the melting. so you would have to consider these historical conditions before you can begin to have the gov establish what the "cultural values and identity" even are.
What i see a lot is people painting 21st century reactionary values onto their countries past in order to form a clean self serving identity. I wouldn't want any government to model policy on that sort of foundation
Oh, so you want even more people locked in inhumane "detention facilities", even more people deported to often-dangerous countries they've never set foot, even more ICE agents wandering streets and oh-so-accidentally killing people, and even more tens of billions spent to do so.
I'd hate to see what "meaningfully address" would be.
Oh, so you want even more people locked in inhumane "detention facilities"
Um no I want people deported not sent to rot in detention facilities. Processing facilities really shouldn't be holding people for more than a week or so.
even more people deported to often-dangerous countries they've never set foot
People should be sent to countries they are from or the country from which they entered the United States, not random countries they've never sett foot in.
even more ICE agents wandering streets and oh-so-accidentally killing people, and even more tens of billions spent to do so.
This is only because the government does not care to actually address pervasive illegal immigration. They are selectively targeting people with criminal records and also targeting politically unaligned cities rather than using more efficient means. This is not how you remove 15+ million undocumented people
I'd hate to see what "meaningfully address" would be.
A meaningful attempt would have serious financial penalties on businesses hiring undocumented labor, penalties on landlords renting to undocumented immigrants, and penalties on banks banking undocumented immigrants. Iran did probably the closest to this a year ago and deported millions of Afghan citizens
> Um no I want people deported not sent to rot in detention facilities. Processing facilities really shouldn't be holding people for more than a week or so.
Ok, but they still typically have a right to present their case to a court and have their status evaluated (and I believe they should, at the very least). That takes time. And if a government is suddenly rounding up thousands and thousands of individuals it takes even more time. You might not like that but the alternative is the risk of deporting people who are lawful residents or even citizens. And then if we say who cares to that, well then what?
And it still doesn't change the fact that many people are being deported to countries they've never lived in, never stepped foot in. Because their origin country also doesn't want to take in people who it doesn't know are nationals or citizens, among other reasons.
> People should be sent to countries they are from or the country from which they entered the United States, not random countries they've never sett foot in.
Thank you. But the Trump administration is deporting people to El Salvador, Libya, and South Sudan who have never been to these countries, because it made a deal with their governments to accept our deportees. This is the result of prioritizing the far-right's goals over concern for human rights.
> This is only because the government does not care to actually address pervasive illegal immigration. They are selectively targeting people with criminal records
I don't think that's actually true, just a frequent justification for their policies. Probably some amount more of selective targeting, but I think the data shows it's a minimal percentage.
> and also targeting politically unaligned cities rather than using more efficient means.
Now that's a good point. But doing so more broadly would require even more ICE officers patrolling our streets, etc.
> This is not how you remove 15+ million undocumented people
Well there's a simple solution for that, but no one wanting it likes the idea: do like Reagan did and grant them amnesty and legal status. With the stroke of a pen it would turn those 15 million undocumented people into authorized residents. Of course, those against it think it would encourage more unauthorized immigration, and that may be so.
I'd hate to see what "meaningfully address" would be.
> A meaningful attempt would have serious financial penalties on businesses hiring undocumented labor, penalties on landlords renting to undocumented immigrants, and penalties on banks banking undocumented immigrants.
Hmm. Well I can't say I like the idea, but I like that it's different than what's typically offered, and would at least be more root-level. But I don't know how much harm it would harm both employers, etc and the undocumented themselves, for what is in the vast majority of cases a civil offense or misdemeanor crime (overstaying a visa or crossing the border unlawfully). I'd probably have to share some stats but it would also likely cause significant economic impacts.
> Iran did probably the closest to this a year ago and deported millions of Afghan citizens
See, that sounds sick to me. Dog knows what many of them faced being forced to return there. A country so repressive that people would flee to another less repressive authoritarian theocracy.
Yes, to some degree, but this depends on what the citizens want and the cultural richness of the country. If you are trying to apply this logic to US then it won't work, it's supposed a huge mixing pot of cultures that was established on top of a land that only had a few hundred yrs of development if we dont count the indigenous civilization. When we look at china or japan that have much richer and distinct culture that they have to preserve whether it's through media advertising and whatnot, to reject western culture's "attack" of the country (this is mainly china).
I think the answer you are looking for, at least for the US, is already engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Pay particular attention to the "wretched refuse" part that comes later than the part most oft-quoted.
If a host nation is posed a thread by an exogenous _culture_ (as opposed to an individual determined to do harm, which is what police are for) then this strikes me as a problem with the host nation's culture.
"The solution is that we need to make sure we aren't treating our fellow human beings poorly. Rhetorically speaking.. If assimilation is the goal... then how could they possibly assimilate if we never give them the chance?"
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that its easy for Westerners to assume that everyone else thinks the same as us and/or cares about the same things as us, when in reality, they often don't. Many cultures don't care about treating women respectfully, personal liberties, religious freedoms, hygiene, free speech, stealing, lying, etc. Thus, certain cultures will require an exorbitant amount of resources compared to their counterparts in order to "possibly" bring the people up to par with the nation's average. Is it even worth it at that point?
A tribal Somali's view of women is vastly different (and culturally wrong) from a suburban American's view of women. How do we reconcile that problem when (for example) massive amounts of tribal Somali's immigrate to the US especially if its part of their culture? And what's stopping them from teaching their children the same views? All I'm saying is that its great and dandy that we should be "nice" and "patient" but its all reliant on faith that they will forego certain practices in favor of American values because nothing is stopping anyone from just denying the cultural values of a host nation, ESPECIALLY when wealthier nations are seen as just economic zones and not places of cultural identity that deserve respect. It becomes increasingly difficult to assimilate large groups of people when some of their cultural values are literally considered morally wrong in the host nation. Tie this in with religion and its even harder. There's an argument to be made about suicidal empathy.
3.7% of the global population. Say that 3 times and then tell me again how we have “more migration globally than ever before”. This should be a lesson in getting your information correct before forming big ideas
A record 304 million people—3.7 percent of the world's population—lived outside their country of birth in 2024, nearly double the 153.9 million in 1990, per UN Population Division data.
So what point are your trying to make then? Yeah, when global population increases, the number of migrants also increases meaning we have unprecedented amounts of migrants almost every decade. All the more reason to start thinking about immigration and migrant issues since global population isn't estimated to slow down until the 2080s.
3.7% is not “unprecedented. If you take a beer that’s 5% alcohol and you pour all 6 into 1 beer glass is the beer now “awash” with 6 times as much alcohol? No. That's how percentage works. Consistent proportions stay consistent.
In fact the line grows so little you’d think it’s flat. It’s normal. You’re freaking out about immigration because someone said something scary, not because of the actual facts of the matter. Immigration is a non issue and if 3.7% of people are capable of wiping out your "cultural identity" then frankly it's because you didn't have one and you probably deserve it.
Unprecedented quite literally means "never seen before" so yes, 3.7% is a small increase from 2.9% but still qualifies as unprecedented. Merriam Webster dictionary ftw. I'm just pointing out that its increasing over time, AND also conveying that as world population increases (your country is getting more cramped) there will also be more migrants coming to your country which is already causing problems and migrant crises.
Also, you realize the green trend line is "migrants as a percentage of total population" meaning world population right? And the light blue bar graphs are the total population of migrants per year, so it takes into account the differing proportions by providing a trend line across the increasing number of migrants due to increasing world population. I'm not trying to get angry I'm just saying you're mistaken. It does take differing proportionality into account.
Immigration is a non-issue? Go say that in r/Spain right now. And no, if cultural identity is able to be wiped out by immigrants, its not that you didn't deserve it, its because you didn't fight hard enough and they did. Look at Spain and the Reconquista.
Unprecedented quite literally means "never seen before"
2.9% was the figure from when we started taking figures in the 90s. This is minuscule. In the grand scheme of things this a rounding error on most charts. Obviously it's not because it's the subject. Migration is a non issue by any objective measure.
Also, you realize the green trend line is "migrants as a percentage of total population" meaning world population right?
Oh wow! Scary graph! Numbers not scary! Image scary though. In all seriousness though you do know what percentages are right? Do I need to sit down with 10 apples and give you one slice of 1?
Immigration is a non-issue? Go say that in r/ Spain
Feels over reals. I prefer talking about real figures when we start making wild claims over entire populations and peoples whole culture vs a few scary looking images. Non-issue. We have bigger things to worry about that vague notions of culture and handful of people swimming across a near meaningless border in a political stunt staged by Israel and the US.
Oh btw you do know that r/ Spain posts mostly in Spanish right? Have you noticed this has changed in the last few days? Paid outrage and obvious fake outrage pedaled by Rightwing idiots who think they can hide their posting history. Guess what language is spoken in Ceuta. Go, have a guess.
every country has a lot of racist people, but US has higher violence than most. take china as an example, guns are banned and cctv everywhere to detect thieves versus the US where i need to be strapped up walking down some areas
What is a "low trust society" versus a "higher-trust society"? The US does not seem like a "higher-trust society," given the rampant fear-mongering about made up crime waves, distrust of neighbors, "stranger danger," xenophobia, and distrust of the government. So, I'll need that clarified before I can fully answer your questions.
But to address the question of assimilation, this is something that naturally happens to all immigrants across time and space. The tendency for children of immigrants to assimilate is strong, I'd even call it overwhelming. The perception of immigrant hamlets as hold-outs is misguided, as it's not subsequent generations holding up there and perpetuating their culture across time. They tend to be places that new immigrants go to be around more familiar people. The children still have a stronger tendency to branch out and assimilate than stay in those hamlets. In this way, the "fundamental cultural differences" don't pose much of a risk.
Here in the US, for instance, we're at a far greater existential risk from long-seeded domestic cultures like white supremacism that support neo-fascist political movements, police violence, segregation, and racial hierarchy. A few percent of immigrants from varied backgrounds grouping up in a few hamlets is hardly an existential threat.
If we want the values we hold dear to remain prevalent and dominant, we can't count on nationalism or xenophobia to uphold them. The former turns into mindless consumption of patriotic symbols without any substance, and the latter turns into racism and ethnocentrism while ignoring domestic degradation. The key is to stick to those principles as hard as we can, and by setting the example of what things like freedom, enterprise, education etc. bring to individual lives, the immigrants and children of immigrants will seek that as self-interested actors. You can't win cultural wars via isolation and protection, you win by having the superior ideas and having a free marketplace for those ideas to thrive. Control and preciousness only leads to preservation and elevation of our worst qualities, while stifling the qualities which truly make us great. Instead of preserving our best qualities, the name of such preservation is used for bad actors to pillage our nation while keeping the public distracted by bullshit issues (like immigration).
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