"Another American Century or Another American Civil War?"

History is written long after events have occurred for a reason: eyewitnesses often make mistakes, individuals are too caught up in events to see the whole picture or don't have access to enough material to clearly judge what is going on. Sometimes an impartial third party can see the whole picture, put it into context, and do a better job of analysis than can those in the middle of the fray.

The noted blogger, Fjordman posts at Gates of Vienna:

Americans tend to be skeptical of any criticism of their country coming from Europeans, which understandable given the amount of anti-Americanism spewing out of the European press these days. However, there is some truth in the old maxim that “clarity is gained from a distance.” Just as Americans may sometimes see more clearly than Europeans how Muslim immigration is destroying their continent, perhaps it is possible for a European to notice some developments in the USA, too.

The following account is written by a European who wishes your country well, partly because I like it and partly because I, unlike too many of my countrymen, understand that the USA is still the best insurance we have for a civilized world order. It worries me all the more to see that many of the same negative trends that are threatening to destroy Europe are also present in the US.

In 2006, the total immigrant population of the United States stood at 33 million, or 11% of the entire population, which, according to The Center for Immigration Studies, was significantly higher than at any time in history. With 10.3 million illegals there now, with at least 800,000 more entering every year, in twenty years there will be 26.3 million illegals, plus any children they may have. The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year. California has estimated that the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. This massive migration has become so ingrained in Mexico that people name their babies Johnny and Leslie, certain that their kids’ future lies in the United States. “Mexico’s economy, society and political system are built around the assumption that migration and amnesties for undocumented migrants will continue – and that the $20 billion they send home every year will keep coming, and almost certainly grow.”

Even mainstream media outlets such as Newsweek magazine have started admitting that this is not without problems:

Being brutally candid means recognizing that the huge and largely uncontrolled inflow of unskilled Latino workers into the United States is increasingly sabotaging the assimilation process.

No society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many are poor and unskilled. A study of Mexican immigrants by Harvard economists George Borjas and Lawrence Katz shows that Mexicans are now the single largest group of U.S. immigrants, 30 percent of the total in 2000. Indeed, the present Mexican immigration “is historically unprecedented, being both numerically and proportionately larger than any other immigrant influx in the past century,” note Borjas and Katz. In 1920, for example, the two largest immigrant groups – Germans and Italians – totalled only 24 percent of the immigrant population.

Some Americans take comfort in the fact that “at least Mexicans aren’t Muslims, and don’t want to blow up the entire country.” This is true, of course. Islamic immigrants are a special case, with their inherent hostility towards all others. Americans are correct in pointing out the mess Europeans have made for themselves with Muslim immigration. However, they should also remember that this difference in immigration patterns is also partly an accident of geography: When Europe gets immigrants from the third world countries at its southern flank, these immigrants frequently happen to be Muslims. If Mexico had been a Muslim county, the United States would have been in heaps of trouble now.

Read the rest of this sobering essay.