Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.

• Author: Johnson, Kevin R.
• Position: Brief Article - Book Review

WHO ARE WE? THE CHALLENGES TO AMERICA'S NATIONAL IDENTITY. By Samuel P. Huntington. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2004. Pp. xvii, 428. $39.95

Samuel Huntington's provocative new book Who Are We?: The Challenges to National Identity is rich with insights about the negative impacts of globalization and the burgeoning estrangement of people and businesses in the United States from a truly American identity. The daunting question posed by the title of the book is well worth asking. After commencing the new millennium with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. military torture of Iraqi prisoners, indefinite detentions of U.S. citizens declared by the President to be "enemy combatants," and a massive domestic "war on terror" that has punished and frightened Arab, Muslim, and other immigrant communities, many Americans have asked themselves the very same question.

Professor Huntington's fear is that the increasingly multicultural United States could disintegrate into the type of ethnic strife that destroyed the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, or, in less dramatic fashion, divided Quebec for much of the twentieth century. Forming a cohesive national identity with a heterogeneous population is a formidable task but, as Professor Huntington recognizes, critically important to the future of the United States. (1)

Professor Huntington identifies and analyzes a perceived loss of national identity in the United States over the tail end of the twentieth century, during roughly the same period that the civil rights revolution forever changed the nation. In that analysis, Who Are We? takes a controversial stance about U.S. immigration law and policy, which has proven to be a formidable challenge to policymakers and frequently touches a nerve with the public. Professor Huntington sounds a familiar--if not tired--alarm that immigration and immigrant law and policy are out of control and must be reformed.

In asking the nation to reconsider its immigration policies, Professor Huntington again asks a question well worth asking. Immigration frequently has provoked controversy in the United States and, even when not at the forefront, lurks ominously in the background of the discussion of many policy issues, from public benefits to affirmative action to driver's license eligibility for undocumented immigrants. Time and again, immigration has proven to be a volatile political issue in the United States. Although the nation often claims to be "a nation of immigrants" open to the "huddled masses," (2) sporadic outbursts of anti-immigrant sentiment mar its history, (3) dating as far back as the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s. (4)

In Who Are We?, Professor Huntington expresses fear about the impacts of immigrants--specifically Mexican immigrants--on the United States, its culture, and, most fundamentally, the "American" way of life. He sees immigration and immigrants as transforming a white-Anglo-Saxon cultural nation and fears what he sees on the horizon for the United States, which he suggests is something apocryphal, raising the specter of the fall of Rome (pp. 11-12). In expressing such fears, Professor Huntington ties immigration to critical aspects of national identity and sees the identity of the United States changing slowly but surely as new and different--culturally and otherwise--immigrants are coming in large numbers to the United States.

We agree wholeheartedly with Professor Huntington that national identity is central to the discussion of immigration and immigrants. In turn, the race and culture of immigrants affect the national identity. Unfortunately, such aspects of immigration law are frequently overlooked in academic studies of the subject. (5)

Immigration, as it has done throughout U.S. history, is changing the face of the nation. Moreover, immigration law impacts domestic minority communities and civil rights in the United States. (6) Indeed, Professor Huntington's prescription of assimilation and the end of any racial and ethnic consciousness is a more general critique of identity politics and, at its core, a challenge to multiculturalism. He leaves little doubt that he deeply disagrees with the claim of Nathan Glazer that "we are all multiculturalists now." (7)

Immigration has contributed to the multicultural nature of the United States and has transformed the nation and its civil rights Agenda. (8) The nation cannot ignore the impacts of immigration on national identity, race, and civil rights if it wants to avoid potential unrest from those opposing the transformations taking place--the vigilante groups in Arizona using violence to enforce the immigration laws, immediately come to mind (9)--and immigrants who may resist efforts at forced assimilation, deportation, and other actions that adversely impact immigrant communities. To ignore the changes risks a domestic explosion like that which the nation has never seen.

The integration of immigrants into the political, social, and economic fabric of the United States undisputedly is an important public policy issue that fully warrants the careful attention of academics and policymakers. Law and policy should strive to foster integration of immigrants into U.S. society, for example, by seeking to eliminate the immigrant caste structure in the labor market. Unfortunately, law has often done the opposite, (10) with distinctions between different groups of immigrants thwarting, if not facilitating, their assimilation into American social life.

We strongly disagree, however, with Professor Huntington's normative evaluation of the impacts of immigration and what changes in immigration law and policy are necessary. One glaring weakness of Who Are We? is that it fails to weigh the positive impacts of immigration and immigrants. Consequently, it resembles a cost-benefit analysis that focuses exclusively on costs.

Importantly, immigration is a function of economic, social, and political pressures that are not wholly within any one nation's sovereign control. Closed borders simply are not a policy option in the United States today. Nor, in light of the modern civil rights consciousness, are blanket prohibitions on the immigration of certain races or national origins generally viable. Indeed, the various national origin, religious, and other profiling measures utilized by the federal government in the "war on terror"--with national security perhaps the most compelling justification for such measures--have provoked controversy. (11)

One can acknowledge the changes brought by immigration, proclaim the need for the assimilation of immigrants, and, at the same time, offer more constructive approaches than the alarm and pessimism of Who Are We? (12) Professor Huntington's book is surprisingly slim on policy recommendations. (13) Rather, it is more of a general critique of the immigration status quo with a sweeping endorsement of reducing immigration and policies fostering immigrant assimilation, with little in the way of specific recommendations about how this might be accomplished in the modern United States.

One aspect of Professor Huntington's analysis has provoked anger and strident charges of racism. He unequivocally proclaims that immigration from Mexico is a specific--and most dangerous--threat to the national identity and unity (pp. 221-56). In Professor Huntington's estimation, Mexican immigrants refuse to assimilate into the mainstream of U.S. society and live and act in separatist--"un-American"--ways.

Even though some observers have labeled Professor Huntington's arguments as racist, (14) Who Are We? should not be disregarded as a racist tract. Professor Huntington grounds his concerns with the changes caused by Mexican immigrants to the nation's culture, with a particular emphasis on language (Spanish rather than English) and religion (Catholic rather than Protestant). Although we fear and suspect that language, national origin, and religion in certain circumstances serve as convenient proxies for race, we take Professor Huntington at his word that race is not the core basis of his concern with Mexican immigrants. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all those who seek to reduce immigration from Mexico and some anti-immigrant activists who may invoke his arguments to attempts to justify restrictionist immigration laws and policies.

This review focuses on two fundamental flaws in Professor Huntington's analysis of immigration in the modern United States. First, contrary to the claim that a separatist Mexican nation is emerging in this country, all immigrants in fact do assimilate to a certain degree into U.S. social life. (15) The available empirical evidence shows that, in the aggregate, immigrants from all nations, including Mexico, overwhelmingly participate in the labor market, learn English, exhibit high labor participation rates, are firmly committed to family, and participate in community life in ways comparable to other Americans. (16) This is not surprising given that most immigrants come to the United States because they embrace American political values and economic freedoms. (17)

None of this should be taken as suggesting that stresses and tensions do not result from immigration and the presence of newcomers in the community. Immigrants do not assimilate instantly, and the integration process is not without individual and social stresses. (18) Nevertheless, immigrant assimilation generally has prevailed over the long haul.

Consequently, we do not entertain the same fears about immigration and immigrants that Professor Huntington holds. We therefore unequivocally reject any suggestion that efforts must be made to curtail Mexican immigration, and find unnecessary mandatory assimilation programs to destroy Mexican culture, cabin Catholicism, and require the embrace of Protestant values. We recognize that change brought by immigration--as well as cultural change generally (19)--is normal and something that simply cannot be halted in its...