the First and Second ones replenishes our work force;nabsent jobs, people would not come, or would come and gonhome (as many do). Ours is not a declining population, likenthat of Europe. But unlike the Europeans, we can makenAmericans of the dark-skinned as much as the light-skinnednpeople, Muslims as much as Anglicans, Hindus as much asnJews. A German professor once said to me, speaking of thenTurkish immigrants in Germany, “But they can never reallynbecome Germans like us. They are not even Christian.” I:n”Yes, so the Jews found out too.” But for us, there is nothingnun-American about Muslim faith, and the Turk as much asnthe Italian or the Pole or the Norwegian or the Brazilian ornthe Mexican will in due course find a home and a welcomenhere. That is how it has always been. Our system — ournsocial order—being what it is, that is how it always will be.nMy great grandmother knew nothing of the “PilgrimnFathers,” but Thanksgiving Day is very much mine. Andnthe Chicano youngster in California will one day identify, asnmuch as I do, with the Declaration of Independence. True,nmy family would bring to America a different religion fromnthe dominant one and so would change America, and thenChicano today brings us a second language — Spanish innaddition to English, one that may last longer than did Polishnor Yiddish or Italian or Norwegian or Finnish, each in itsnday. I hope it does, because through Spanish, which opensnto us the experience of a whole world to our south, we shallnbe a still more interesting country than we already are: morenof humanity’s experience will be ours.nWhy then wish we all could be what America really nevernwas, a false vision of an America that was all white, thoughnwe have always been black as well as white; all Protestant,nthough we have never known a merely narrowly-definednsingle Protestant faith; all descended from the normalnNorthern and Western European lines (but then, betternEnglish than German, better Scottish than Irish)? Nownthere is no turning back. For there is no past to which to turnnfor the normal, by which to declare the present abnormal,nexcept a meretricious and fabricated one. I shall fear fornAmerica when nearly everybody in the world no longernwants to come and become one with us.n’ Race a problem? Nothing new about that. If it is anproblem, it began in 1619, when the first Africans werenforcibly brought to this country, and not in 1865 or in 1945.nRacial diversity has characterized this country from thenbeginning: black, red, white, joined by yellow and brown. Annation “no longer stratified simply by class” has always beennhierarchized by race, and if today racial groups compete onnracial terms alone for top positions, that is something tonwhich we conservatives have long objected in the name ofnthe hierarchy of talent. So, in all, I find in the newest massnmigration only evidence for the astonishing success of thenAmerican system. No other nation in the world has thenpower that we take for granted, to take to ourselves millionsnof people, decade by decade, and accord to them all thensame opportunity that the native-born enjoy. Black, yellow,nwhite, red, brown — these all are the all-American colorsnand shades of skin; it is much too late to conceive otherwise,nand the same is so of language and religion and thengeographical origins of one’s family. And I wouldn’t want itnany other way: a greater, not a smaller, America surelynstands for what we conservatives affirm. <^nJOHN LUKACSnAuthor, Outgrowing Democracy andnConfessions of an Original SinnernTnhomas Fleming’s article (“The Real American DilemmanChronicles, March 1989) was a deeply felt andnyet moderate statement about a condition that, in thisnhistorian’s opinion, is even more than a dilemma. It is thengreat, perhaps the greatest, American problem. It is a pitynthat it is not publicly (though it is often privately) sonrecognized by Americans. It is to the honor of Chroniclesnfor having recognized it thus.nUpon the invitation oi Chronicles I will try to sum up,nnecessarily briefly and at the cost of precision, my beliefs andnanxieties concerning this vast problem.nWe face not only immigration but migration, too. Thenfirst, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “tonsettle in a country (not one’s own).” The second means “tonpass from one place to another.” “Migration” suggestsnimpermanence: a nomadic, or near-nomadic condition ofnexistence. “Immigration” suggests something more definite:na more-or-less orderly purpose, “to settle.” In the presentncrisis in the United States these two categories overlap. Theynare indistinct, to the peril of this nation. The Americanngovernment and its military instruments have largely lostncontrol over their southern borders. If that is not a matter ofnnational security (that inflated, corrupted, and overusednterm) I do not know what is.nThe conditions of electoral arithmetic and of publicndiscourse lead to a conscious avoidance of this subject. Thenadvocacies of our — so-called — conservatives are as opportunisticnand thoughtless as those of our—so-called —nliberals.nEntire generations of American youth have now beennunaware that, no matter what the present ethnic compositionnof the United States, the inherited freedoms of thisncountry are not abstract liberties but freedoms bequeathednto Americans from the British Isles, largely during the 18thncentury, from which all of the constitutional principles ofnthis country derive.nAll of this becomes especially important now when tribalnand racial ambitions in many parts of the world are eruptingnnnJULY 1990/15n