The threat America’s way of life is a quite questionable context to define. What I see here is a Catch 22, where we either allow immigrants and that changes America, or we don’t allow immigrants and that changes America. As John Isbister said, “The essence of American life is that it is composed of different groups, different cultures, races, religions, attitudes, folkways and ideologies, differences that give the country its distinctiveness. Current im-migration is sure to change the mixture, but change is not new; the cultural mixture of America has been changing continuously.” There is no auto defined definition to the American way of life, it is always changing whether we want it to or not. As Charon mentions, “Change occurs in every social organization, and it is ongoing and inevitable”. However, I do see this threat to be almost negligible, our biggest problem is within the racial conflictions of society adapting to a change. America has always been seen as a melting pot of cultures; however the melting pot concept is too vague to define. A melting pot means the society confirms to a new identity, however this is not such the case. The traditions are all varying and different outlooks still; we are not some culture defined as a mix of one pot, but rather a mix of many other pots. This correlates to Charon’s idea of the individual making a difference, “Attempts to influence society are countered by the power of long-standing social patterns that are normally defended by people who have a stake in those patterns”. The fact that American way of life changes does not immediately constitute that a certain person’s way of life will be affected anyhow. Those who are against the change will more or so likely will be against it still; those people will not be moved. This widens the barrier of change but also breeds a new barrier for immigrants to refuse to change addressed in The Hispanic Challenge.
Peter Brimelow mentions the various criminal activities brought upon by immigration and the amount of immigrants in jail, what he does not understand is the social pressures of the American society in their views of immigration playing a huge role in the pressures to be out of the social norm. Anyone, not just immigrants, referred to as an outcast of society would perform similarly. He brings about a rather ridiculous argument that some 14 American’s would be spared due to these social misfits immigrants. That matter is a matter of statistics alone. You bring over millions of immigrants and some small percent is going to cause some homicide, no different from having over a million babies and expecting one of them to be a criminal. Media does not help but blow up matters when it comes to minority making such cases rather greater than they should seem. He continues to charge the economic growth to be of not benefit at all or quite minimal at .2 to .3%. Although not efficient, the growth is still a growth. That small decimal increase is something when we talk about American GDP of trillions of dollars. Although the labor and capital efficiency is not quite there yet, from my economic knowledge they are just facing a diminishing return in labor. In the long run, as capital is controllable we’ll see the benefits of this small .2 to .3% increase. The future prospects of benefits seem substantial. With globalization arising, this will seek as a true benefit of a diverse un-uniformed culture. We think too much about the American ways it affects our thinking of the benefit outside America; which comes to my mind of the other discussion we talked about with the selfish behavior of the United States. We are already viewed as a country of influence. At most optimism, in due time in the future, we’ll see more countries that mirror the United States. As Isbister said to end his debate, “One of the reasons that it is important for America to become a country in which different cultural groups encounter one another on the basis of equality and respect is that America could become a model to the world. The world needs models of cultural respect.” With countries more openly accepting immigrants such as us, we will see a shift into a better world. We will see immigrants not looking just at us for options to leave their country. In other words, going along with immigration in the long-run future could end immigration.