The following was disclosed in an agitated exchange between National Review contributors Mark Krikorian and John Podhoretz: Krikorian, opposed with vehemence to accommodating foreigners who come into the United States illegally, would also occlude all lawful means of entry. His own statement was that "immigration is incompatible with a modern society." Podhoretz was reproachful, as indeed the issue, rising in these last few years to the prominence held a decade and a half ago by crime and domestic negligence, has done so partly because its advocates are thought not to be the Know Nothing Party reincarnate. Well, the rejoinder was that there hadn't been any dissembling, and, too, those allies interested in preserving naturalization would be abandoned at convenience.
Were Mark Krikorian focused only on Mexican aliens, by their numbers the de facto "illegals," he couldn't design restrictionism by association. So his view that "America is a completely different place from a century ago" whereby "the high levels of immigration that we successfully accommodated in the past are deeply problematic today," involves the Indian national and Americans of Indian ancestry, and it runs into difficulty. An émigré from India while still a British colony was rare. A signally documented influx was between 1948 and 1965, amounting to several thousand. Less than one-third of the current population of 2.6 million arrived before 1990, with nearly a million coming since 2000.
Indians in the United States can be evaluated statistically and anecdotally. Only half are citizens and nearly a quarter "speak English less than 'very well.'" But rates and profiles of employment surpass those for the rest of the country, median household income $78,000 to the national average of $48,000. They predominate in the private sector and draw a tiny portion of federal entitlements. To the naked eye, to this pair, the southwest Asians in my apartment are a modest accompaniment to other classes here — mostly young professionals and the elderly. Couples and small families appear to outnumber singles. The women are seen wearing tilaka and sarees; they are reticent, which is respectable and keep their children close, which is admirable.
Do they conform? "Modern communications and transportation technology," Krikorian argues, "have made it so that immigrant ties with the old country are less likely to be severed." Possibly, as the canny foreigner may remain in America only as long as it takes to assemble wealth to carry back home. My own great-grandfather did this, emigrating in 1914, then selling his business to return to Italy in 1930 for comfortable retirement — no transoceanic wireless or shuttle necessary. And it was told to me that childhood friends, first-generation Indians, resisted here and there introductions and admonitions on heritage. Of Brahman name but American stock — they ate hamburgers with the rest of us. Never such conversation between us children, so implicit was our common nationality.
For support Krikorian turns to National Review fellow John Miller. "If the schools miss their chance [to inculcate American language and values]," is the warning, "un-Americanized children grow up to become un-Americanized adults — at which point their Americanization becomes much more difficult and unlikely." A demographic not in either man's mind but matching the description is the un-assimilated white, the foreign indigenous, plain to anyone under the age of forty: raised to mock civic obligation, shrug off national identity and wander the land as a tenant. Want to stride back towards homogeneity? Deport the suburban malcontent and have an Asian take his place. Constitutional amendment is in order, though no less radical than barricading the country.