Lionel Shriver: The “Nation of Immigrants” Myth Makes America Weak

Quick Overview

Lionel Shriver argues that the American myth of being a "nation of immigrants" is a self-imposed constraint that prevents justified resentment against mass immigration, especially when the welfare state incentivizes transactional migration rather than assimilation based on shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Key Points: Shriver's novel, "A Better Life," explores the moral complexity of migration through a fictional scenario where a progressive New Yorker hosts a Honduran asylum seeker, leaving the immigrant's true nature ambiguous to the reader. The progressive left's stance that "no human being is illegal" is fundamentally flawed because presence requires permission, and Shriver asserts that Americans are psychologically entitled to normal reactions against large-scale demographic change. Unlike European nations, which often have 'blood and soil' histories, the US narrative of being a nation of immigrants is challenged by Shriver, who notes that historical European immigrants shared a common Judeo-Christian civilizational root, which is not true for all current migration. The current wave of mass immigration is made more onerous by the welfare state, exemplified by New York City's 'right to shelter' and benefits that allow new arrivals to 'mooch' rather than assimilate through hard work, unlike earlier immigrants who often returned home if they failed. Shriver contends that progressive hostility towards immigration is not self-loathing but rather an act of hostility toward their own group (fellow Americans) intended to import replacements who will support their political agenda. The novel's protagonist, Nico, who criticizes dependency, is himself a dependent mooch on his mother, highlighting the hypocrisy often present in ideological stances, as he is suspicious of the migrant, Martine, who argues she will make a better American by having children. Shriver advocates for dramatically reducing immigration and selecting immigrants based on self-interest and likelihood of blending into a unified polity, explicitly contrasting the assimilability of culturally akin groups with those from fundamentally alien cultures, particularly Islam.