Why immigration works better in America


An English perspective
Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes a letter to the Boston Globe. I think he sums it up pretty well.

There is a contradiction between the welfare state and the ''diversity" beloved of progressive opinion, which can be summarized as ''Sweden versus America"-a universal welfare state based on a homogeneous society with intensely shared values, or, as in America, a much less homogeneous and more individualistic society which believes in self-worth and does not have the same sense of obligation between citizens.

Those transatlantic divides stem from starkly different historical experiences. America has always been a land of immigration-and until recently, or even now by European standards, of cheap labor. The explosive industrial development of the Gilded Age in the half century after the Civil War was fueled by British capital and by the labor of immigrants, peasants, and proletarians: men, women, and not least children, from all the corners of Europe. Employers in Massachusetts mill towns and Pennsylvania coal mines used those workers like machines, as expendable as any inanimate raw material.

But it worked after its fashion, and it worked because of work. To a remarkable degree, these incomers accepted the American gospel of equality through toil and dignity through reward.

After what has happened in France, I would like to know what Europe's solution is going to be.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - December 15, 2005 at 05:19 AM  Tag


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