The Melting Pot Boils Over

"Everything needed to close the cultural divide," he says, "is likely already on the books: occupancy limits, automobiles on a property or grass, loud music, etc. If the rules are broken, write a ticket."

In Edmonston, the mayor says, "you'll see no cars parked on the grass, no homes teeming with dozens of people. If there are any violations, they will be addressed through a $75 educational lesson from our school of code enforcement."

Stirrup says that approach has not worked in Prince William, where inspectors have trouble getting access to overcrowded houses if residents claim to be members of the same family. Stirrup plans to propose a law to hold landlords accountable if their properties are converted into boarding houses for immigrant workers.

Haven't we been here before? Isn't this backlash against illegal immigrants merely a repeat of the bouts of nativism that have accompanied each wave of immigration throughout our nation's history?

Stirrup says this time is different. "In previous waves of immigration, you had a vast majority of the immigrants who wanted to assimilate and embrace the American dream," he says. "These individuals have no desire to embrace American culture. Their motivation is a purely economic one -- to make money and ship it home."

I thought back on my grandmother's stories of hoarding the dollars she earned in a hat factory in New York's Lower East Side and sending what she could back to her family in her native Russia. Yet sending money back in no way diminished her determination to be a hard-core, flag-waving U.S. citizen who embraced the United States, right down to watching Lawrence Welk on TV every Saturday night.

What is different about the recent spurt in immigration is that our country has changed: Jobs and cheaper housing are no longer in city neighborhoods where immigrants live in isolated ghettos. Instead, immigrants -- legal or not -- live smack dab in the middle of the rest of us. That confronts us with the culture clash that has always been part of the glorious process of becoming American.

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