Restoring America is running a new kind of think tank series, “The Right Way Forward,” which does not ask conservatives to speak as a chorus but to argue in earnest over the defining questions of the post-Trump conservative movement.
In May, leading conservative think tanks squared off on the role of the state in the economy. The second installment of this project asks conservatives to confront what American identity is today — and how that answer applies to various policies.
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The question
For generations, immigrants arrived in America knowing they were joining a country with a distinct character rooted in a set of ideals and values. They knew that there was an expectation of assimilation, and this was something they generally understood and embraced. But today, the American creed and America’s cultural heritage are openly repudiated on the Left as a rationalization for historical oppression.
The consequences have been profound. Assimilation has been recast as cultural erasure. Hyphenated identities have replaced or are replacing the common American one. And a generation of immigrants has been actively encouraged to maintain ethnic loyalties while regarding American identity with suspicion rather than pride.
Meanwhile, on the Right, there is significant tension over the fundamental nature of American identity. Is America primarily a creedal nation, rooted in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence? Or is it a nation shaped by a specific cultural and civilizational inheritance?
Here’s what the experts had to say. Click through to read their full pieces for the Washington Examiner:
Pluralism is our strength
The naturalization oath should be our North Star
By Luma Simms, Ethics and Public Policy Center
When taking the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance, immigrants make a solemn vow to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which [they] have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”
On its face, this is usually taken to mean that the immigrant will not commit treason. However, renouncing fidelity to whom, and what, one was subject to before, and espousing — as the oath goes on to say — faith and allegiance to the United States and its Constitution, means a change in mind and heart, not just outward action.
The few, the proud, the vetted
By David P. Deavel, University of St. Thomas in Houston
Immigration is good when it is legal immigration, it is not mass immigration, it is controlled, it doesn’t overwhelm American communities and infrastructure, and it doesn’t create massive changes in culture.
Becoming an American: How to fix the legal immigration system
Whatever American policy on immigration is in the future, it will be seen as “good” only if these conditions are met. When they are not, Americans will again think that immigration must be reduced or even ended.
Deportation is key to fixing our broken immigration system
Andrew Arthur, Center for Immigration Studies
Without deportation, DHS is at best an endless benefits machine for any alien with the resources and inclination to come here, legally or otherwise, and any true sense of U.S. sovereignty, public safety, and national security is gone.
Rescuing trafficked children shouldn’t be controversial. It is
Chad Wolf and Tony Pham, America First Policy Institute
Those who regularly describe themselves as champions of human dignity and defenders of so-called “undocumented” aliens should welcome efforts to identify children who have fallen into abusive situations, rather than reflexively opposing such measures simply because they are carried out by ICE.
Fix legal immigration and enforcement takes care of itself
David Bier, The Cato Institute
Democrats and Republicans seem hell-bent on debating immigration only after it happens. Amnesty or deportation? This leaves the more fundamental question of how immigrants can come legally on the back burner. If Congress could modernize the legal immigration system, enforcement would be both easier and more popular.
Sanctuary cities are a national sovereignty problem
John C. Eastman, The Claremont Institute
The United States has always welcomed immigrants willing to become Americans. That generous tradition depends upon the prior existence of an American political community possessing the authority to establish the terms on which newcomers are admitted and incorporated Sanctuary policies invert that relationship.
I oppose sanctuary cities. The Constitution still protects them
John Malcom, Advancing American Freedom
Several states and localities, objecting to enforcement practices they think are overly zealous, have declared themselves “sanctuary jurisdictions,” refusing to cooperate with federal authorities and, in some cases, enacting laws prohibiting otherwise willing state and local officials from cooperating.
In response, the federal government is applying pressure, including naming and shaming uncooperative officials and filing lawsuits challenging this intransigence, trying to induce greater cooperation. But what does the Constitution provide, and what has the Supreme Court said on this subject?
My family came to join America, not change it
Samuel J. Abrams, AEI
Culture is not the enemy of the creed. It carries the creed from one generation to the next, and it is what a newcomer actually joins. The creed tells us who can become American; the culture teaches us how. Neither survives without the other.
Sanctuary policies undermine laws and destroy trust in government
Jessica Vaughn, Center for Immigration Studies
Our Constitution gives Congress the authority to write immigration laws, with directives, authorities, and funding for the president to implement and enforce them. In recent years, some Democratic state and local lawmakers, frustrated that Congress has not changed immigration laws to their liking, such as by offering an amnesty to those here illegally, have chosen to undermine the federal immigration agencies by adopting sanctuary laws and policies.
America was never just an idea — or just a heritage
Ryan P. Williams, The Claremont Institute
So, what makes a good American, properly understood? Acceptance of, and assimilation into, the creed and the culture that it created. This includes the habits of American self-government: self-reliance, responsible civic participation, and a jealous attachment to one’s natural and God-given rights — always attended by a sense of duty to protect those same rights in one’s fellow citizens. We should aspire to fulfill this imposing list of responsibilities ourselves, and demand of any immigrants we admit to our shores that they aspire to fulfill it as well.
America is more than an idea
Jason Richwine, Center for Immigration Studies
America is more than an idea. It’s a people with a cultural inheritance that has infused real vitality into concepts like liberty and freedom — concepts that might be mere words in other times and other places. Restoring the founders to a place of honor means understanding their full contribution to today’s America.
The conservative case for a market-based immigration system
Daniel Di Martino, The Manhattan Institute
A serious conservative immigration agenda should do what we demand of every other sphere of public policy. This is what a market-based immigration approach would do: cut back on luck and family ties and instead prioritize the economic and cultural interests of the United States by selecting immigrants who would contribute most to the economy and who also happen to assimilate best into American culture.
Congress must stop states from blocking immigration enforcement
Chad Wolf and Todd Lyons, America First Policy Institute
Trump has long recognized the dangers posed by sanctuary policies and has fought to stop them. After years of litigation and attempts to condition federal funding, states like New York continue to openly obstruct federal immigration enforcement.
Now, Congress must act.
America assimilated immigrants before. It can do it again
Howard Husock, AEI
That the goal — even the terms — of Americanization have fallen into bad odor is not news. The sociologist Nathan Glazer, having written (with Daniel Moynihan) in “Beyond the Melting Pot” (1970), arguing that ethnic groups could both subscribe to an “e pluribus unum” ethic while maintaining a distinct identity, changed his mind in “We are All Multiculturalists Now,” which acquiesced in the view that maintaining ethnic and racial separateness was both a fact and desirable.
It’s time for conservatives to rediscover the “e pluribus unum” version of inclusionary — and to promote policies that enable it.
The American creed did not drop from the sky
By Mike Gonzalez, Heritage Foundation
Take a man living in Bratislava who has never lived in or visited America, yet believes that all men are created equal and all the other aspects of the creed. Is he an American? Clearly not.
Multiculturalism: Out of one, many
By Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies
That unifying American culture is an outgrowth of our British Protestant inheritance, including its adaptations by African slaves. That culture was further shaped over the generations by the experience of living on the frontier, by the contributions of various waves of immigrants, by the Revolution’s political claims of human equality, and more.
The case for a both/and national identity
By Matthew R. Petrusek, Word On Fire Institute
The heritage position’s weakness, however, is the shadow side of its strength. National identity can’t be determined by history alone because the past does not entirely determine the future. Think of the bitter disputes between nativist Americans and Irish immigrants captured in Martin Scorsese’s great film, Gangs of New York. The heritage position in the mid-19th century was that American identity and Irish identity were fundamentally incompatible and that the Irish could never become “true Americans.”
Yet who would take that position today? Irish immigrants didn’t just assimilate into America — they changed America, adding new strands to our culture that became constitutive elements of the life and character of many great American cities.
Birthright citizenship isn’t about equality. It’s about consent
By John C. Eastman, The Claremont Institute
The 14th Amendment was adopted to overturn Dred Scott and to ensure that formerly enslaved Americans could never again be denied citizenship. It constitutionalized a principle already reflected in the Civil Rights Act of 1866: Those born in the U.S. and subject to its complete political jurisdiction, which is to say not subject to any foreign power, are citizens.
That final phrase matters. It reflected the long-standing distinction between simply being required to obey American laws while present within the country and owing complete political allegiance to the U.S.
Temporary visas should be temporary
By Elizabeth Jacobs, Center for Immigration Studies
Critics will characterize the change as hostile to foreign students and damaging to American higher education. But requiring an alien periodically to demonstrate eligibility for temporary immigration status is not an attack on international educational exchanges. It is ordinary and common-sense immigration administration.
The ‘broken windows’ effect of illegal immigration
By Luma Simms, Ethics and Public Policy Center
There’s a “broken windows” effect that starts with lax immigration enforcement and leads to broad societal decline into lawlessness. Lawlessness dehumanizes a society. It dehumanizes us individually. It is an injustice upon the citizenry — we lose trust in each other, we lose trust in our institutions, our expectations of stability and even comprehensibility of daily life crumble.
Some migrants hate America on arrival
By Simon Hankinson, Heritage Foundation
America’s early colonists, settlers, and immigrants had escaped penury, tyranny, and persecution back home and were grateful to be here. But there is a cohort in the current generation of immigrants who arrive loathing our capitalist democracy and vowing to destroy it.