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Neocolonialists and Immigration
Mark Steyn made a fascinating observation recently, as he is wont to do. Referring to “neocolonial condescension” in comparison with the supposed condescension of Western colonialism, Steyn noted a similar attitude among people who think all the world should be eagerly welcomed as immigrants into our great nation.
A century ago, a proud imperialist would claim the citizens of poor and war-torn nations would benefit from the Anglosphere’s legal, moral, and political examples. By imposing these models, or at least arguing for their adoption in foreign societies, Western citizens sought to aid poor peoples by exporting a superior culture.
This idea horrifies a modern multiculturalist, who denies that one culture can be objectively judged better than others (except when denigrating one’s own culture and eagerly latching on to foreign curiosities). But the presumption of cultural superiority is echoed in modern immigration arguments.
Today, rather than exporting a superior way of life, Westerners want to import anyone and everyone not already here to enjoy it. The presumption is that poor foreigners are incapable of manifesting peace and prosperity in their home countries. To want good lives for them is to remove them from the “rat-holes” they were born in and ship them en masse to our own shores.
It’s colonialism in reverse. Don’t try to make more nations of the world healthy and wealthy and wise like the good ole USA. Just get as many people as you can out of those nations… because those places are surely doomed.
To truly respect people is to place demands upon their behavior. The proper focus is to improve the world, not to concentrate people wherever is doing best at the moment.
Published in Immigration
Yes, and this is going to come back and bite us in the future. I can hear it now . . .
I’ve stated for a long time now that if other nations were serious about Their plight and want to do something about it the solution is simple: be like America. We figured it out.
We’ve even written the directions on how to do it for all to see. If They ain’t got interwebs, then We’ll mail it to ’em. If They ain’t got postal delivery, then We’ll send smoke signals.
Imperialism wouldn’t work. If You want change, the change must start from within. If They don’t want to be like America, then They can wallow in Their inferiority.
I would be more than willing to take millions of immigrants if only They would assimilate and become Americans while checking Their s-hole culture at the door.
Colonialism lifted these nations out of abject poverty into something slightly better. Great article about where we are now getting our immigrants, unlike before 1965. As the Instapundit would say, read the whole thing: What I Learned in the Peace Corps. From the article:
So here in the States, when we discovered that my 98-year-old father’s Muslim health aide from Nigeria had stolen his clothes and wasn’t bathing him, I wasn’t surprised. It was familiar.
….
We think the Protestant work ethic is universal. It’s not. My town was full of young men doing nothing. They were waiting for a government job. There was no private enterprise. Private business was not illegal, just impossible, given the nightmare of a third-world bureaucratic kleptocracy.
Steyn, a Brit, has a unique perspective on this. America was never a monarchy and we’ve never been an empire. We made a few deals with France, Mexico and Russia and we added Hawaii and a few other places – Puerto Rica, Fiji (not without the popular consent of the residents) but we’ve never been much into empire building. Alliance building, yes, but not obeisance and control. The British however, are keenly aware of Britain’s empire, weak as it may still be. The British passport is still evidence of the old empire; it allowed Styne to emmigrate (not immigrate) to Canada. But the question of the left’s obsession with open borders, diversity, immigration lotteries and all this foolishness is what needs to be addressed, understood and debunked. That’s the real issue here. The left labels anyone who is not on board with open borders and diversity as a niggardly racist (never thought you’d see those two words together; watch the ignorants’ head’s blow up.)
This is poppycock.
Niggard, derived from a Scandinavian word, nygg, means miserly or stingy. The other word does not. (I hate to see heads blow up though very unlikely here.)
Well, now, Mr. C and I have recently been pondering just how successful the exportation of culture is through colonialism. Just because the U.S. came out on top due to her adoption of British common law and Judeo-Christian values doesn’t mean it takes hold and flourishes everywhere.
The list of former British colonies (and protectorates) around the world is long. There seem to be only a handful that have made first-world status. Any thoughts about why that might be?
P.S. Steyn is Canadian — born in Toronto — but educated in Britain.
I assumed because of his accent… In any case, I believe Canadians still have free travel throughout the empire, correct, and British passports?
Neither.
Colonialism was just not that awesome for the colonised. Seems one obvious conclusion.
As a followup to the original article, Rod Dreher has some comments from the author:
But, why not? Why have the values that made the West successful not “taken” in so many of the former colonies? Someone I know traveled in Africa 20 years ago or so. When he got back, he said the indigenous people he interacted with said they’d love to have the British back — to fix the potholes, if nothing else.
What Zafar said.
The difference that is Australia, Canada, and US America is that a large set of the British populace basically replaced and displaced the indigenous of those countries.
The places where colonialism didn’t “take” were mostly unattractive to British settlers (n. Africa) or the populace was exceptionally hardy and the Brits weren’t (India).
Occupiers tend not to practice what they preach. Or at least that’s how it worked out.
Perhaps colonising another people is just unavoidably corrupting? And I mean that universally – for anybody. Not specific to European colonialism but East Asian or Indian versions as well.
Oh come on. Colonialism was what we called the process of invasion when we, all humans with the energy to invade, stopped killing people and just taking over. We became what Mancur Olsen would call stationary bandits in contrast to roving bandits. Folks whose hearts bleed over the poor illegals have not spent any time around the world where there are lines (well now virtual lines) in front of every embassy and consulate with literally hundreds of millions of poor energetic people who want to come here. The fact that they’re standing in a line, even a virtual one, gives them more moral authority to claim a visa or a green card than those who invaded and who are being coddled by the Democrats in hopes that they’ll become dependent clients and voters. The Democrat posturing on this issue makes me sick.
I think Steyn’s point is conceding too much to the open borders people. The real reason they want the third world immigrants here is to get their votes for the Democracy, not to help them achieve a better life. Steyn surely knows this. I guess he’s just analyzing the way the left’s useful idiots justify their positions?
Great, then why should we in the US let ourselves be colonized? Or invaded, if you like. That’s what has happened in Europe and that’s what’s underway here.
The solution to the problems of everyone in the world cannot be to come to the US. People are going to have to start blooming where they’re planted.
And yes, the OP is perfectly correct about the soft bigotry implicit in the attitude of open borders advocates.
I really don’t think that’s what’s happening in Europe. Invaders do not ask for inclusion (in this case asylum), colonisers do not apply to join a society. Calling this an invasion or colonisation seems hysterical at best. I mean there are surely other, legitimate reasons to question one’s country’s migration and asylum granting policies – we don’t absolutely have to drop our bundle to do so. (In fact perhaps it’s better to not drop one’s bundle? Jmho.)
Even in the US the closest you could come to this is a cultural change of Spanish speakers in S Florida and parts of some other States. They still really don’t want to replace America – they want to be part of it, which is quite different.
I tend to agree we you re any assumption that other countries and cultures are intrinsically irredeemable. In the end migration has to serve the receiving country – it can’t preponderantly be a favour to the world’s disadvantaged.
Where there is legitimate disagreement is how to measure and value the impact of migration on a country.
The West pursued certain values, and many who shared those values came, and stayed. Whether a non-Western culture views the West’s result as successful is up to their view.
And they are welcome to borrow ideas, to modify their own culture.
I don’t think they do. If so, why not learn English? And why march down our streets carrying foreign flags? But that’s not even the key question: they, and people with your viewpoint, seem to be under the impression that we in the US are hoarding something that doesn’t eist, and can’t be replicated, anywhere else on the globe. I hate to buy intothat pessimistic view of humanity. But, when you talk open borders, is there any doubt which direction the immigration tide will flow?
Or maybe, under demographic pressure, Anglophone Americans will start moving and settling depopulated areas in other parts of the globe…..oh wait: that would be “colonization”.
At its worst: manipulative and misleading. Wilfully dishonest.
Wrt anglophones moving elsewhere:
If they (you?) apply for, and get, a migrant visa to Australia they will be welcome to come here and bring their culture with them.
We realise that means Australian culture will change – that’s what immigration means for the receiving culture. But that’s also what multiculturalism means – if we accept you, we accept your culture (within limits….)
And no matter how many of you migrate, if we accept you, that means you’re joining us – it won’t be an invasion or colonisation, and your children will be Australians.
Seriously you’re holding Australia up as a paragon? It had a “White Australia” policy till 1973. Oh and hey: What’s the history of the “abbos ” again? And, last time I checked Australia’s immigration information , you make it pretty clear you don’t intend to allow immigration withourequiring proof that the wannabe citizen can afford it.
But okay: you seem to be saying it can’t be called invasion or colonization if people apply for permission. And implicit on that has to be a sovereign nation’s right to determine qualifications of foreigners it will admit, correct?
See, in the US, we are being asked to endorse people entering and remaining without legal permission, and we’re being told it is merely selfish and racist to determine and enforce qualifications.
Heres what it comes down to: Anglo-American culture and society is the most desirable in the world, to judge by the fact that everybody wants to get in here. But at the same time, any attempt to export it to less desirable parts of the globe is cultural contamination/aggression or (gasp!) “colonization”–and that’s the least desirable institution in the history of the world.
Well I don’t know you so I can’t say if you’re selfish or not, but fwiw I’m not into open borders either – though I do think how open your borders are is something a country’s people should decide together via free and fair representative elections.
Wrt why people migrate: overwhelmingly its the economy.
Is that a function of culture, or is culture a function of economy? I’d say both – and from personal observation, migrants from many Asian cultures feel down right culturally superior to the Western countries they move to. – for them it’s all about the economy.
yuh, we did that.
….meaning they can make more money here. And they’re confident that they will be able to keep what they make. All of which means: western cultures have developed a better, more stable economic system. So a syou would say, it’s not a “function of culture” that Western cultures want to control immigration; it’s just that no economy can support a waelfare state AND unlimited unskilled immigration.
As Abraham Lincoln said, calling the tail a leg does not mean that a dog has 5 legs.
There was an historian who claimed the masses that stormed and pillaged Rome wanted to be Romans, too.
The historian is from the late 19th century, I think. It’s an interesting view and not wholly inaccurate – the northern barbarians were immigrating into Roman society for decades before the visigoths made their entrance.
That’s not true. My brother is there, married to an Aussie, and can’t work because immigration control is tight. This is after my brother played baseball for their fledgling teams for the last 6 years (even blowing his knee out and losing a shot a pro-signing here because you let players slide kleats up).
Your immigration for Anglophone Americans is just as, if not more, tight than what we have here… except obviously your government understands how immigration affects native employment.
Does he have a permanent resident visa or is he waiting for one? If he’s married to an Australian those should be the two options (oh unless he doesn’t want one, option 3). They probably need to make sure it’s not a visa marriage.
And you’re right: immigration from everywhere is tight with (except for New Zealand) the same rules governing entry. I think that’s a good thing, and it’s perceived as fair – so it has support.
But also consider: there are some industries Australia no longer has because we made the choice to be a high wage (and high unemployment) economy. There is a cost to curtailing immigration – my feeling is that there’s support for more pro low skill migration in the US because you still have more of those kinds of industries? Iow you still make a lot of stuff. We really don’t.
If you’re talking about mechanical stuff, such as cars, you’re correct.
Australia still has exportable stuff, such as agricultural products (wines, especially!) and raw materials. And Vegemite. ;-)
The undiscovered superfood….