A Nation of Immigrants, Settlers, and Fallacies

I'm tired of hearing this line from pro-illegal immigration folks, including President Bush: "America is a nation of immigrants." America is not a nation of immigrants -- it is a nation of settlers.

Is there a difference?

Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington thinks so:
"Settlers and immigrants differ fundamentally. Settlers leave an existing society, usually in a group, in order to create a new community. ... Immigrants, in contrast, do not create a new society. They move from one society to a different society. ... [Settlers] came in order to create societies that embodied and would reinforce the culture and values they brought with them from their origin country. Immigrants came later because they wanted to become part of the society the settlers had created. ... Before immigrants could come to America, settlers had to found America" (Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004; p. 39-40).

In our situation, illegal immigrants are leaving their poor, corrupt governments in order to participate in a society and government not established by Spanish & Portuguese Catholics, but by British Protestants. The former created the unenviable countries to our south, from Mexico to Chile. The latter created the United States, arguably the world's envy for 150 years now. Huntington writes, "Would America be the America it is today if in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil" (p. 59).

I don't know what the numbers are, but I highly doubt that U.S. citizens are emigrating in droves to South American countries. To be sure, though, citizens from countries to our south are coming to the U.S. by the millions. They are coming to a country they had no part in creating. They are immigrants, coming to a country founded by settlers.

So do your part: stop the uneducated babel. America is not a nation of immigrants -- it is a nation of settlers.