Valhalla, I am coming

Half a million strong, they march through the streets of Los Angeles. Thousands more in Chicago, and Denver, and Phoenix. Some want justice, some want Aztlan, some conflate the two. And thus the political issue of the year arrives full force.

My natural inclination is to have great sympathy for immigrants. What makes our nation great is that we have generally accepted those who seek a better life. Whether Irish from the coffin ships, or Bavarian Catholics escaping the Kaiser's conscription, or Jews escaping the furies of European pogroms and the Holocaust, or Italians, or Poles, or Cubans, or Vietnamese, or Hmong, there has always been room in America to accommodate those seeking a better life. I admire anyone with the gumption to pull up stakes and leave horrors behind, betting on a brighter future.

But the tension always comes - all these newcomers are different. They speak a different language. They have different customs. Their foods smell funny. They don't accept our notions or our values. They take away our jobs. So sayeth the critics now, echoing the complaints of the Know-Nothings 150 years ago.

How dare we call them Know-Nothings? After all, the millions who are here illegally are here illegally, doncha know? They are criminals, we are told.

The marchers respond, "somos ilegales, no somos criminales." They are not criminals, just illegal. Distinctions, of course. We must make distinctions. Unsophisticated Red State rubes! Can't understand, won't understand. Tancredo, that demagogue! Might this be racismo? Claro, es obvio.

*****

Are things really different now? And are these latest immigrants different? The impulse, the noble striving, that drives the immigrant to cross the border, to board the raft, to overstay the student visa, is the same as always. People do want a better life. The Rascals sang it way back in '68 - People Got To Be Free. It's such a cliche that Garry Trudeau put the words in the president's mouth in a Sunday cartoon not long ago. The problem we face -- how do we, all of us, define better? Do the sojourners who risk so much accept the American ideal? Or do they come and follow the dictates of the professional grievance mongers, the cult leaders of identity, La Raza? And how do they choose?

How do we choose? When half a million people are marching on the streets of Los Angeles, it's not a rent-a-mob. We have to make intelligent decisions about how we deal with the 11 million people who are here, who live in the shadows, who find their way to El Norte. These immigrants are not simply sent back across the border. It doesn't work that way. It won't happen. We don't have the means. We don't have enough guns and bayonets. And if we did, this would no longer be America.

But if the people are coming, how do we teach them what it means to be an American? We have such difficulty deciding these most basic questions; civics classes are anything but civil. The word that hangs over all, a giant wall cloud flashing with electricity and pregnant with flooding rains, is assimilation. How do we ensure that those who come to America become Americans?

We need to answer this question first. Otherwise we are, at best, Quebec. At worst, we become Iraq, or Kosovo, or Darfur. We live in an existential era, where we face existential threats. But do we recognize the work ahead?