Huntington, Kymlicka, and the Role of Culture Alexis Zhang POL4 343

26 Pages·2015·0.37 MB·English

by  Yiwei Zhang

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Re-examining Immigration Politics: Huntington, Kymlicka, and the Role of Culture

Alexis Zhang
POL4 343: Seminar: Democracy & Difference
Professor Joel Krieger
December 14, 2015
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From the Know Nothings of the 1850s to the stringent immigration quotas implemented
in the 1920s to the bombast of figures like Donald Trump today, the politics of immigration in
the United States has always been a fraught subject. Immigration politics balances on a tenuous
cultural fulcrum: symbols such as the Statue of Liberty and the melting pot represent Americans’
proud commitment to welcoming new immigrants, while a long-running nativist undercurrent
simultaneously aims to rebuff them.1,2 Now more than ever, this tension matters politically. Since
1960, the number of foreign-born Americans has quadrupled, to 42.5 million individuals in 2012,
including 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants, and by 2055, the United States is projected to
have become a ‘majority minority’ country.3 At the same time, 72% of immigrants and 82% of
Americans overall believe that the immigration system is seriously flawed, agreeing that it either
“needs major changes” or “needs to be completely rebuilt.”4
However, while Americans largely eschew the extremes of potential policy changes, such
as entirely open or closed borders, they are sharply divided about the specific reforms they
prefer. The United States, like most countries, maintains a controlled border system: through
well-defined regulations, the U.S. distinguishes between desirable immigrants, who are allowed
lawful entry, and undesirable ones, who are not. Thus, the immigration debate centers on what
controls should exist, and how restrictive they should be. There are many possible answers to
these questions, but broadly, the spectrum of responses can be understood as encompassing two
types of voices – those who are supportive of immigration and those who are more skeptical of
it. There is a foundational divide between these two groups: they disagree about the effect that
immigrants have, once they are admitted into the United States.
In the mainstream political arena – led by institutions such as political leaders and the
media – the factions in the immigration debate rely heavily on facts and figures describing the
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empirical effects of immigration, along with a healthy dose of rhetorical or emotional appeals, in
the process obscuring the underlying role of political theory. Theories of immigration and culture
gain little explicit attention in the public discourse on immigration, but they play an important
role in shaping it: competing conceptualizations of the value of culture and diversity represent an
important, if not well understood, fault line in the divisive politics of immigration. Differing
views of culture and assimilation clearly matter, in light of their effects on policy and community
relations, driving major initiatives such as California’s Proposition 227, which essentially ended
bilingual education statewide.5 Accordingly, the relationship between theory and its
consequences warrants greater attention and understanding. Political theories of immigration and
culture are complex and impactful; they cannot be ignored or reduced to buzzwords such as
“racism” or “prejudice”, as the immigration debate writ large often is.6
In this paper, I attempt to bridge the gap between political theory and the broader politics
of immigration, focusing on the intersection of immigration and cultural diversity and clarifying
two of the relevant political theories. Specifically, I focus on the major theoretical arguments of
two major scholars – the late Samuel Huntington, an immigration skeptic and defender of
America’s Anglo-Protestant cultural reign, and Will Kymlicka, an advocate of multiculturalism
and group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups. I first construct a dialogue between
the two, outlining both Huntington and Kymlicka’s theories of immigration and culture, and how
each might respond to the other. I then draw out observations from a comparison of the two
theories; Huntington and Kymlicka have both been influential, and there are both significant
areas of agreement and unresolvable divergences that can be found when comparing their
theories. Ultimately, Huntington and Kymlicka’s arguments, which underlie many other
advocates’ views, are a microcosm of the larger immigration debate: they are in a sense
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irreconcilable, in their contradictory framing of the issues and priorities, but they also evince
hope for a more meaningful dialogue, in which each argument can rein in the others’ excesses
and occasionally find common ground.
One Perspective: Huntington’s View
Debates over immigration are intimately bound up with disagreements about culture,
diversity, and identity. Identity, most generally, can be defined as “an individual’s or a group’s
sense of self.”7 For individuals, their understanding of their selves can be highly varied, and are
often shaped by their membership in different cultural groups, which are “embedded in…shared
and historically inherited system[s] of meaning and significance.”8 These cultures vary in their
degrees of intensity and size, separating the narrower subcultures of lifestyle or occupation and
“perspectival diversity” of various ideologies from more extensive cultures that organize their
own communities, united by deeply significant traits such as religion or ethnicity.9 However, the
broadest group identity, which includes the greatest number of people in any country, is the
country’s national identity. In the United States, this is the identity of being an American,
reflected in the proudly patriotic spirit of many citizens. Beyond the geographical fact of being
present in America, what does it mean to be an American? What cultural traits separate those
who are Americans from those who are not? For some theorists, such as the late political
scientist Samuel Huntington, the answers to these questions are clear. In the following
paragraphs, I outline his argument, which is founded in his understanding of historical trends.
According to Huntington, while the United States has never been culturally monolithic,
throughout its history, one culture – the Anglo-Protestant one – has always been the integral core
of the U.S.’ national identity.10 This cultural center has endured for centuries, beginning before
the U.S. ever became known as a nation of immigrants; the American identity originated in a
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nation of settlers, not immigrants. The founding settlers, who first developed this identity, sought
to build a new society, and they were categorically different from immigrants, who merely move
between societies.11 Far more than any group of immigrants, the settlers markedly shaped
America and what it means to be an American, creating a durable “core culture.” In his book
Who Are We?, Huntington details key elements of the American culture and its creed.
The central elements of that culture…include 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. Out of this culture the settlers developed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the American Creed with its principles of liberty, equality,
individualism, representative government, and private property. 12

These elements are firmly rooted in the Anglo-Protestant culture, and they can be traced
to the heritage of the initial settlers, who brought their culture with them when they migrated to
North America. Had the settlers been of some other nationality, the resulting cultural identity
would have been inevitably changed. Later, as successive groups of immigrants migrated to the
United States, they too were compelled to assimilate into the body of Anglo-Protestant cultural
and value norms. Those who could not assimilate were systematically excluded from mainstream
society, and those who attempted to resist assimilation were similarly overruled.13 In any case,
most immigrants who came to the United States wanted to assimilate – they were primarily
“converts” rather than “sojourners” to America.14. Risking their lives in often dangerous and
uncomfortable transoceanic journeys, the immigrants of old “yearned” to become Americans.
For them, assimilation meant Americanization, becoming a part of an Anglo-Protestant culture
and society. Although some initially formed enclaves with fellow immigrants, immigrants tended
to disperse across the country, intermingling with and merging into the broader populace.15 Over
time, the national American identity evolved at the margins, but the overwhelming dominance of
the English language and the Anglo-Protestant culture remained a constant.
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However, this stasis was finally upended beginning in the 1960s, when movements aimed
at “deconstructing” and diversifying the American identity emerged to push back against the
pressures of assimilation, urging immigrants to instead maintain their own, original cultural
traditions, even at the expense of participating in dominant American traditions, such as reliance
on the English language.16 The new ideal of a diverse, multicultural American identity was
warmly embraced by a combination of minority cultural groups and elites in “[government],
academia, the media, [and] business”, but less so by the public as a whole, creating a gulf
between public and elite opinion.17 For instance, despite elite support of multilingualism, as of
2013, 72% of Americans considered it “essential” for immigrants to the United States to speak
English, while only 20% saw it as essential for Americans to learn another, non-English
language, and 84% of Americans believed that English should be adopted as the country’s
official language.18,19
While minority groups and elites have not succeeded in swaying the people’s conceptions
of American identity, they have significantly influenced the process of new immigrant
acculturation, redefining how immigrants are encouraged to assimilate.20 Traditionally, both
immigrants and American society viewed assimilation in terms of Americanization as desirable,
but this is no longer the case. Despite a mandatory oath, in which all new American citizens
pledge allegiance to the United States and promise to forswear allegiance to any other lands,
many modern immigrants have not actually converted to a singularly American identity.21
Instead, they have crafted their own transnational identities.22 Unlike their predecessors, today’s
immigrants’ decisions to come to America are often driven not by any interest in American
culture or values, but by a focused desire to share in the country’s material benefits.23 New
immigrants are less interested in wholesale assimilation into the mainstream of American
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identity, and influential elites are less interested in pressuring them towards the mainstream.
Immigrants today have other options, such as assimilating into isolated, subcultural, concentrated
enclaves, not assimilating at all, or adopting dual citizenship.24
This shift has been especially pronounced with the rise of Hispanic immigrants from the
late-twentieth century onwards. Rather than dispersing throughout the country, as previous
waves of immigrants did, Hispanic immigrants have remained regionally concentrated, with
Cubans predominantly in Miami and Mexicans in the Southwest, for example.25 Moreover, while
migration was previously cyclical, alternating between waves of mass migration and periods of
relative quiet, the Hispanic influx has been unprecedented in its continuity, with immigrants
encouraging and assisting in the migration of their friends and family, gaining political clout, and
sustaining the Hispanic nature of their communities through a constant flow of new arrivals,
thereby decreasing the incentive for assimilation.26 As a result, compared to non-Hispanic
immigrants or Americans overall, Hispanics generally have weaker levels of identification with
the term “American.”27 Rather than becoming themselves Americanized, Hispanic immigrants
have “Hispanized” their adopted areas of residence in the U.S.28 This Hispanization effect is
increasingly important as Hispanics continue to grow as a proportion of the population: while
only 4% of Americans in 1965 were Hispanics, 18% today are, and by 2065, 24% will be.29
Hispanics’ population growth has been matched by an increasingly vocal political advocacy, one
that promotes a distinctive Latino identity in the United States, rather than embracing the
traditional American identity. Under the guise of multiculturalism, Hispanic leaders have sought
to transform the American system, abandoning the model of mainstream American culture as a
“core Anglo-Protestant culture plus the ethnic subcultures” and instead seeking to elevate the
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Hispanic culture, and the Spanish language, to be on equal footing with the Anglo culture and the
English language.30
For theorists such as Huntington, the shift from Americanization toward cultural
decentralization is not just a factual change, but a normatively harmful one. First, the rise of
multiculturalism has driven a wedge between the cosmopolitan elites and the general public, who
have drastically different views about the significance of a collective American identity and its
related policy implications. Compared to the average American, the elites are more
multiculturalist, less religious, and less assimilationist; translating these differences into policy,
the elites are much more supportive of mass immigration, foreign intervention, trade, and
globalization.31 Because elites tend to control the levers of governmental power, their influence
is disproportionate, allowing them to shape policy outcomes even at the expense of their
constituents’ preferences, a divergence that is increasingly common.32 The control of the elites
undermines the will of the majority and the key American tradition of representative
government, as public figures, in conjunction with minority advocacy groups, spurn the
preferences of the masses they should otherwise be responsive towards. Predictably, public trust
in government has accordingly declined, from 77% in 1964 to only 24% in 2014.33 Public
participation in political and civil society has similarly declined, and voters increasingly attempt
to make end-runs around their leaders, chiefly through the ballot initiative process.34 In the long
run, these effects are destabilizing: they harm the representative character of American
democracy and increase public tensions and societal polarization.
Another View: Kymlicka’s Theory and a Response to Huntington
Many theorists would strongly disagree with Huntington’s view, and important among
this group is Will Kymlicka, a noted Canadian political philosopher. In this section, I first outline
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how Kymlicka might respond to Huntington’s line of argument, and I then explicate Kymlicka’s
alternative, which rests on greater accommodations to minority groups, in contrast to
Huntington’s deference to the traditional Anglo-Protestant majority.
A scholar in the Kymlicka tradition would acknowledge that many of the empirical facts
underlying Huntington’s logic are sound, but he misunderstands their import. Huntington is
correct that the demographics of immigration and immigrants’ cultural backgrounds have shifted
over time. In 1965, 80% of new immigrants were ethnically white, while today, only 18% are;
instead, the plurality of new immigrants today are primarily Hispanic, a difference that is
reflected in their varying cultural backgrounds.35 However, Huntington’s conclusions about the
anti-assimilationist efforts of Hispanic leaders, in conjunction with other elites, are overstated.
His fear of societal bifurcation, in which the Anglo and Hispanic cultures are equally important,
is problematic on its face, since the term Hispanic is a panethnic categorization, which broadly
but loosely links many separate cultures and ethnicities, with very different histories, traditions,
and experiences.36 Further immigrant groups typically seek to maintain their ethnic traditions
only within their private “family lives and in voluntary associations…they are not asking to set
up a parallel society.”37 Huntington cites some strident declarations to the contrary made by
Hispanic political figures, but these quotes are not representative of the vast majority of
immigrants, who recognize the continued importance of the English language and culture, a
belief they in turn impress upon their children.38, 1 As this is the case, there has been a modest
shift only in how assimilation takes place, and not whether it occurs.39

1 One of the major instances of non-assimilation cited by Huntington, that of increasing Hispanic domination in
Miami, may actually be a result of mainstream societal pressures. As a matter of political posturing against the
Castro regime, Americans encouraged the idea that the Cubans who have come to populate Miami were temporary
exiles, soon to return to Cuba. Decades later, the return of the exiles has not yet happened, but it has discouraged
them from assimilating, since their position as a minority cultural group is considered only an interim measure.
(Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship, 16)
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In any case, though, rather than assessing the rise of minority cultural groups and their
resultant political sway with dismay, as Huntington does, theorists like Kymlicka tend to view
them as a positive development. In a representative government, if the will of the majority is
entirely unchecked, minority groups are vulnerable to discrimination and targeting. American
legislative history is replete with examples of majoritarian tyranny at the expense of minorities,
including Jim Crow laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the government’s Operation
Wetback during the 1950s.40 Minority groups deserve, at a minimum, respect, and their
increasing forays into politics serve as one way to ensure legal fairness and injustice.
Indeed, Kymlicka goes further in his defense of minority cultural groups, urging that they
be accorded limited group-differentiated rights. These rights are external in nature: they do not
restrict the autonomy of individuals within groups, but instead reduce the power imbalance
between the majority and minority groups, so that the latter is less subject to the whims of the
former.41 The goal of granting minority cultural groups collective rights is to “ensure that the
larger society does not deprive them of the conditions necessary for their survival.”42 The extent
of these rights depends on the type of minority group in question. Some, such as Native
Americans in the United States, are “national minorities”, who are indigenous to their region but
acquired their minority status involuntarily due to colonization.43 Due to this involuntary quality,
national minorities warrant more expansive minority group rights, including some level of self-
governance; Native Americans, for instance, have gained some devolved power through the
reservation system.44 In contrast, because “polyethnic” minority groups voluntarily accepted
their minority status through their decision to immigrate, their group rights are more limited, and
they neither deserve nor seek to carve out self-government in their new land.45 Desirable
polyethnic rights would simply protect immigrants against discrimination, so that they are not