[Mb-civic] To Become an American - Fareed Zakaria - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

To Become an American
<>
By Fareed Zakaria
The Washington Post
Tuesday, April 4, 2006; A23

Seven years ago, when I was visiting Germany, I met with an official who 
explained to me that the country had a foolproof solution to its 
economic woes. Watching the U.S. economy soar during the 1990s, the 
Germans had decided that they, too, needed to go the high-technology 
route. But how? In the late '90s, the answer seemed obvious: Indians. 
After all, Indian entrepreneurs accounted for one of every three Silicon 
Valley start-ups. So the German government decided that it would lure 
Indians to Germany just as America does: by offering green cards. 
Officials created something called the German Green Card and announced 
that they would issue 20,000 in the first year. Naturally, they expected 
that tens of thousands more Indians would soon be begging to come, and 
perhaps the quotas would have to be increased. But the program was a 
flop. A year later barely half of the 20,000 cards had been issued. 
After a few extensions, the program was abolished.

I told the German official at the time that I was sure the initiative 
would fail. It's not that I had any particular expertise in immigration 
policy, but I understood something about green cards, because I had one 
(the American version) myself.

The German Green Card was misnamed, I argued, because it never, under 
any circumstances, translated into German citizenship. The U.S. green 
card, by contrast, is an almost automatic path to becoming American 
(after five years and a clean record).

The official dismissed my objection, saying that there was no way 
Germany was going to offer these people citizenship. "We need young tech 
workers," he said. "That's what this program is all about." So Germany 
was asking bright young professionals to leave their country, culture 
and families; move thousands of miles away; learn a new language; and 
work in a strange land -- but without any prospect of ever being part of 
their new home. Germany was sending a signal, one that was accurately 
received in India and other countries, and also by Germany's own 
immigrant community.

Many Americans have become enamored of the European approach to 
immigration -- perhaps without realizing it. Guest workers, penalties, 
sanctions and deportation are all a part of Europe's mode of dealing 
with immigrants. The results of this approach have been on display 
recently in France, where rioting migrant youths again burned cars last 
week. Across Europe one sees disaffected, alienated immigrants, ripe for 
radicalism. The immigrant communities deserve their fair share of blame 
for this, but there's a cycle at work. European societies exclude the 
immigrants, who become alienated and reject their societies.

One puzzle about post-Sept. 11 America is that it has not had a 
subsequent terror attack -- not even a small backpack bomb in a movie 
theater -- while there have been dozens in Europe. My own explanation is 
that American immigrant communities, even Arab and Muslim ones, are not 
very radicalized. (Even if such an attack does take place, the fact that 
4 1/2 years have gone by without one provides some proof of this 
contention.) Compared with every other country in the world, America 
does immigration superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French 
approach?

The United States has a real problem with flows of illegal immigrants, 
largely from Mexico (70 percent of illegal immigrants are from that one 
country). But let us understand the forces at work here. "The income gap 
between the United States and Mexico is the largest between any two 
contiguous countries in the world," writes Stanford historian David 
Kennedy. That huge disparity is producing massive demand in the United 
States and massive supply from Mexico and Central America. Whenever 
governments try to come between these two forces -- think of drugs -- 
simply increasing enforcement does not work. Tighter border control is 
an excellent idea, but to work, it will have to be coupled with some 
recognition of the laws of supply and demand -- that is, it will have to 
include expansion of the legal immigrant pool.

Beyond the purely economic issue, however, there is the much deeper one 
that defines America -- to itself, to its immigrants and to the world. 
How do we want to treat those who are already in this country, working 
and living with us? How do we want to treat those who come in on visas 
or guest permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path 
to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are 
groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these 
newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not 
potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have 
similarly cold feelings about America.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301621.html
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