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The Trouble With Immigration: Cultural Impact
By Ryan Malone Thursday, October 27, 2005



Unchecked immigration can hurt the economy and boost the crime rate of a host country. What sort of cultural effects does it have?

What does it mean to be “American�? Do immigrants strengthen or weaken the broad sense of national identity?

Few questions would elicit a more diverse and emotionally charged range of opinions than this one.

Whatever our opinion on the subject, we must acknowledge that, in fundamental ways, the American identity has broken loose from its historical moorings. In its infancy, the national identity included a specific religious-moral belief system and a particular political ideology. Its central elements included, in the words of Samuel P. Huntington in his book Who Are We?, “the Christian religion, Protestant values and moralism, a work ethic, the English language, British traditions of law, justice and the limits of government power, and a legacy of European art, literature, philosophy and music.�

America, as we know it today, was conceived through settlement, not immigration. We must distinguish between migration of settlersâ€â€