Immigration debate is latest fight over what it means to be an American

By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Both sides in the emotional debate over immigration agree on at least one thing: This is a fight over what it means to be an American.
The passions that are being unleashed in street protests, on talk radio and in Congress are as old as the American dream. We may be a nation of immigrants, but we sometimes recoil from foreigners with different languages, religions, cultures and complexions.
Even Benjamin Franklin, one of the most open-minded founding fathers, objected to foreign newcomers - in his case, from Germany.
"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them," he asked in a 1751 essay.
More than 170 years later, President Calvin Coolidge put it more succinctly: "America must be kept American."
Yet even ardent advocates of tighter immigration controls acknowledge the contributions that immigrants have made, and continue to make, to the most diverse society on Earth. Polls show deeply conflicting views about immigration. Americans are just as likely to think that immigrants strengthen the country as they are to consider them a burden.
"People are seeing immigration as a negative. That's a shame, because if it's done right, it's a positive," said Ron Woodard, the director of NC Listen, a North Carolina group that favors tougher immigration policies. "Americans believe in reasonable legal immigration, but they have major heartburn with people breaking the law."
Although the current debate over immigration is in many ways a replay of past battles, there are some new twists.
The terrorist attacks in 2001 have heightened concerns about border security. Globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs have increased economic anxieties. Multiculturalism and the emphasis on tolerance for alternative lifestyles have helped fuel doubts about the durability of what are considered traditional American values.
If all that weren't enough, political polarization, TV's talk-show culture and the fractious Internet blogosphere have made a hot-button issue even more combustible.
"The middle ground gets lost. Anybody who talks about a sensible middle ground gets devoured by the extremes on both sides," said Edward O'Donnell, a professor at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., who specializes in Irish-American history. "It's either immigration is a plague, or wide-open, unhindered immigration and wide-scale amnesty is the answer."
Americans who are tolerant of mass immigration express confidence that the nation's economy and culture can absorb the newcomers.
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