German Newspaper Praises America’s Assimilation Of Immigrants

A fascinating MUST-READ in the German edition of the Financial Times, translated here on the indispensable site Watching America. Here’s a key part:

It’s not just the tone and type of debate that distinguishes how America and Europe deal with immigration. The self-confidence shown by millions of illegal immigrants at recent mass rallies in the U.S. in, for example, demanding the right to become American, is astonishing. They see the U.S. as a promise to humanity and felt that most Americans would find it morally difficult to deny them this demand…

…We Europeans love to deride the dishwashers’ dreams of riches, sneering that they will likely never be fulfilled. This type of armchair scorn completely misses the point. The subsistence struggle of illegal immigrants breeds feelings of mistrust and resentment within Europeans: it is hard to imagine a European politician, as Senator Edward Kennedy recently did live on television, daring to congratulate hundreds of thousands of illegals on the courage they have shown in reaching the rich North.

Of course there is resistance in the U.S. as well to the “newcomers.” However, instead of complaints of “boats that are full,” so dominant in Europe [Editor's note: Several European politicians have used this expression when claiming that Europe can't handle more immigration] the general view in the U.S. sees impoverished immigrants as silent heroes – pioneers of the very kind that has turned the U.S., with its nearly 400 years of steady immigration, into what it is today.

Indeed: there is a contrast between those who consider Mexican immigrants people who need to be mass-deported and the majority of Americans who (polls show) want some kind of resolution of their status. If you tune out the noise on talk radio shows (and on many blogs) you find that many Americans do have a more tolerant attitude towards illegal immigrants than it would seem by the voices who make it into the media.

It’s just that events in Europe get less publicity — here. But there has long been that news deficit in the United States: our media (unlike many publications abroad) is more centered on domestic news and domestic concerns, except for events such as Iraq and Iran, etc. Many American don’t even know that immigration is an issue in Europe because our news media seldom covers those issues, even when writing about U.S. immigration.

Read the linked piece in its entirety.