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Assimilation

7 min read

Part of Immigration.

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Every episode (2)

Who argued it

Benjamin Powell · Alex Nowrasteh

Immigration · Public Policy · Property Rights · Labor Markets · Chinese Exclusion Act · Open Borders

Background

Assimilation as spontaneous process

In the 2021 episode, Alex Nowrasteh describes research on “ethnic attrition,” which he defines as the intermarriage of ethnic minorities — immigrants or the children of immigrants — outside their racial or ethnic group, with the result that their children are much less likely to identify with that minority. He calls this a major reason for the extent of assimilation among Hispanic immigrants, and offers his own family as an instance: his father’s side Iranian, his mother’s side European, and himself always identifying on surveys as of white European background. He says there are tens of millions of other Americans in the same position, and attributes the pattern to intermarriage, assimilation, and the power of American culture, which he says is continually turning people into Americans even today The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).

Bob Zadek responds that fear of losing American culture is absurd, because American culture by definition has assimilation as a component: it is the mix of everybody, it started off being nothing, and it is the result of a mixture — the stew. If the stew has more carrots and less potatoes, he says, it is still stew, and stew is the American culture. He then asks whether any listener feels the Amish represent an existential threat to America, and puts the same question about Chinatowns, Japantowns, Little Italys, and the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. He characterizes these as extreme cases of non-assimilation and says he does not feel threatened by them The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).

Nowrasteh adds the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints as his favorite example: Mormons who disagreed with the Church of Latter-day Saints turning against polygamy, many of them living in the Arizona Strip, practicing polygamy, living off the grid, and in his view not assimilated to American culture in almost any way. He says he does not consider them an existential threat either The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).

Assimilation and labor-market institutions

In the 2022 episode with Benjamin Powell, Bob Zadek introduces assimilation as a social and political issue on which everyone has an opinion, and says he finds the discussion overheated — much ado about nothing. Powell answers that assimilation is important to make things go more smoothly and that it relates to the surrounding policy and institutions. He compares the United States and Europe, saying cultural assimilation is more difficult in Europe, and attributes much of that to labor-market institutions: relatively high minimum wages relative to productivity, and laws making it difficult or impossible to fire employees. He illustrates with an analogy for his students — imagine promising to marry someone with no possibility of divorce before a first date, and you know what it is like to be a French employer. Those laws, he says, make economic integration hard because immigrant productivity is low relative to the minimum wage and immigrants are a risky bet to hire The Economics of Immigration (2022).

Powell’s account of the consequence is that immigrants who are not integrated economically turn to each other and enclave, resent the host society, and are resented in turn — the dynamic he says appears in Europe. He contrasts Somali immigrants, who he says integrate better into the United States than Europe because of the more flexible labor market, and describes commerce as a great equalizer and blender that destroys prejudices and allows greater harmony through exchange The Economics of Immigration (2022).

Zadek draws the distinction he wants preserved: in the United States there are areas of non-assimilation — the large Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn and elsewhere in New York State, the Amish in Pennsylvania — but American non-assimilation is by choice or preference, whereas in Western Europe he believes the absence of assimilation is by government action, with governments discouraging assimilation. In the United States, he says, the system either encourages assimilation or is at least neutral, with fewer laws interfering with it The Economics of Immigration (2022).

Political assimilation and the culture wars

In the 2023 episode, Zadek distinguishes cultural assimilation, which he says he welcomes and does not fear, from political assimilation — the fear that immigrants from authoritarian, socialist, communist, or collectivist societies bring those political views and threaten what nativists call “our way of life,” a phrase he says he hates. He lists the Amish in Ohio, Chinatown in New York City and San Francisco, Japantown in Los Angeles, and Haredi Jews in Brooklyn as groups that refuse to assimilate, notes that the Haredi participate in New York City economic life while living insularly, and says none of it threatens him American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

Nowrasteh answers that the vast majority of immigrants and their children move toward American norms, including on political issues, and that polls of new immigrants on a range of policy questions come out very similar to native-born Americans, usually within the standard of error. He concedes that many immigrants come from authoritarian or socialist countries, but argues that those who leave differ from those who stay: they tend to dislike the policies at home and to be open to new experiences. He cites Cubans, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Venezuelan, and Iranian immigrants, and says Cubans are a massive anti-left-wing voting bloc in Florida and elsewhere because of their experience of communism in Cuba American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

Nowrasteh also cites his book Wretched Refuse, written with Benjamin Powell, whose general finding he states as: immigrants either do not affect the economic freedom of the receiving society or produce more free-market policies. He notes that the most government-interventionist period in American history, roughly 1930 to 1970, coincided with immigration being closed off, and offers his theory that immigrants undermine labor unions — which he calls the most effective pro-big-government voting and lobbying bloc in the Western world — and thereby slow the growth of government. The excerpt breaks off mid-sentence at that point American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

Across episodes: assimilation and the case for restriction

The topic recurs across the 2021, 2022, and 2023 episodes, with Alex Nowrasteh in the 2021 and 2023 episodes and Benjamin Powell in the 2022 episode. The treatment shifts in emphasis rather than in conclusion: the 2021 discussion rests on intermarriage and ethnic attrition as the mechanism, the 2022 discussion relocates the mechanism to labor-market flexibility by comparing the United States with Europe, and the 2023 discussion adds polling evidence on political attitudes and the argument that immigrants reduce rather than import support for big government. Bob Zadek’s framing is consistent across all three — American culture is itself a mixture, and non-assimilation by choice is not a threat — while the guests supply the differing mechanisms. The 2013 episode with Nowrasteh lists assimilation among its topics but the excerpt contains no discussion of it.

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