It’s a good, long, detailed article that I recommend. For those who don’t have time to read the whole thing, the most important takeaway is that the so-called “immigration movement” in the US is failing to accomplish anything because it hasn’t defined its foundational principles. It keeps suggesting intermediate steps but nobody is trying to articulate what these steps are supposed to lead to. In doing that, the “movement” assures it will lose to people with a clear organizing principle every time. If you want to be a movement, you should at the very least decide the destination where you want to move.
Just to give a few examples of different organizing principles on immigration: Trump’s organizing principle is that we need less immigrants of any kind. Justin Trudeau’s is that Canada has a tiny population in a huge uninhabited territory, so it needs more immigrants of any kind. The party that just won in Quebec has as its principle that immigrants won’t speak French anyway so there should be fewer of them and those who do come should be bullied into speaking French at all costs. Angela Merkel’s position is (or was?) that the aging population can’t support the existing welfare system, so a large sudden influx of immigrants is crucial to keep it going.
We can all have different reactions to these foundational principles but the point is that they exist. These are clear ideas that we can agree or disagree with. In the US, however, the “immigration movement” lacks anything of the kind. It’s purely reactive in that it can kind of decide that it doesn’t like somebody else’s vision but refuses to come up with its own.
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