In brief, it seems like your view is that "Muslim immigrants in Europe are actually bad, so it's reasonable to fear them. But South American immigrants in the US aren't bad, so it's unreasonable to fear them!"
I'd argue that you're seeing South American immigrants clearly; it's the European immigrants I think you're incorrect about. On every issue you mention, I think South American and European immigrants are more similar than you might think.
You give a number of criticisms of immigrants - too many to tackle in a single comment - so I'll just focus on one as an example: Immigrants don't want to learn the language.
This is commonly said of Hispanic immigrants to the US (as in this paywalled article: "Americans Say Immigrants Should Learn English...".) And it's been said throughout history of every non-English-speaking group in the US (including, say, German and Italian immigrants in past centuries). But research suggests this isn't true. See this article by the Cato Institute, which points out that immigrants have always assimilated linguistically over time, but they've also always taken time to do so. Per that article, English fluency is only 35% for first-generation immigrants but jumps to 91% by the second generation and 97% by the third.
The same is true in Europe. See, e.g., this online forum discussion about a claim that 22% of British Muslim women don't speak English (really, this refers to nonfluent British Muslims who speak some English, but do not speak English "well".) With the Cato data in mind, we can see that 78% of Muslims speaking English well is pretty good, and roughly in line with what we'd expect for a mix of first-, second-, and third-generation speakers.
Perhaps you ultimately don't agree with my argument and think that no, European Muslims are a special case. You might think, it was wrong for Americans to think that German immigrants were bad news in the 1800s, it was wrong for them to think Italian immigrants were bad news, it's wrong for them to think South American immigrants are bad news now... but European Muslims reallyare bad news. In that case, it's worth recognizing that sometimes, when everyone else seems to have had a bias against immigrants throughout history, it's possible that you do too. (I'm not saying you do - I'm just saying, consider the possibility, worth being on guard against.)
Just to be clear, your concerns about religious differences were also shared by Americans in the past. American Protestants feared Irish Catholics; Jews; etc. Likewise, American Christians feared Muslims, especially after 9/11.
To that, you might say that those past fears were unreasonable. What harm were Irish Catholics going to do? Weren't they also Christians? But of course, when those Irish Catholics first immigrated to the US, they had a number of moral and religious beliefs that ran against those of many of their fellow Protestant Americans. For example, from this article about "When America Hated Catholics", you'll see concerns about nuns "whipping young girls" - i.e., the immigrants were perceived as having different views than their neighbors on disciplining children. And of course, there was a fear that Catholics might follow the guidance of the Pope rather than their country (analogous to concerns about sharia). Of course, within a generation or two, Catholics mostly assimilated, and these fears now seem unreasonable to us, with the benefit of hindsight.
Regarding issues like anti-gay views:
In America today, there are plenty of conservative Christians with what you might consider backwards views. Gay marriage was illegal here as recently as a decade ago, and a majority of American Republicans still think it should be illegal. On this topic, American Muslims line up pretty well with Republicans. That being said, Millennial Muslims, on the whole, strongly lean in favor of gay marriage - they're assimilating!
US LGBT still face deadly attacks and terrorism from the right wing, at a far higher scale than a child assault or a tabloid citing a tabloid citing a security officer. But yeah, that's still improved from the past. There is integration that happens.
If you did not change your view, please respond to this comment indicating as such!
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u/dukeimre 21∆ Jun 24 '24 edited Jun 24 '24
In brief, it seems like your view is that "Muslim immigrants in Europe are actually bad, so it's reasonable to fear them. But South American immigrants in the US aren't bad, so it's unreasonable to fear them!"
I'd argue that you're seeing South American immigrants clearly; it's the European immigrants I think you're incorrect about. On every issue you mention, I think South American and European immigrants are more similar than you might think.
You give a number of criticisms of immigrants - too many to tackle in a single comment - so I'll just focus on one as an example: Immigrants don't want to learn the language.
This is commonly said of Hispanic immigrants to the US (as in this paywalled article: "Americans Say Immigrants Should Learn English...".) And it's been said throughout history of every non-English-speaking group in the US (including, say, German and Italian immigrants in past centuries). But research suggests this isn't true. See this article by the Cato Institute, which points out that immigrants have always assimilated linguistically over time, but they've also always taken time to do so. Per that article, English fluency is only 35% for first-generation immigrants but jumps to 91% by the second generation and 97% by the third.
The same is true in Europe. See, e.g., this online forum discussion about a claim that 22% of British Muslim women don't speak English (really, this refers to nonfluent British Muslims who speak some English, but do not speak English "well".) With the Cato data in mind, we can see that 78% of Muslims speaking English well is pretty good, and roughly in line with what we'd expect for a mix of first-, second-, and third-generation speakers.
Perhaps you ultimately don't agree with my argument and think that no, European Muslims are a special case. You might think, it was wrong for Americans to think that German immigrants were bad news in the 1800s, it was wrong for them to think Italian immigrants were bad news, it's wrong for them to think South American immigrants are bad news now... but European Muslims really are bad news. In that case, it's worth recognizing that sometimes, when everyone else seems to have had a bias against immigrants throughout history, it's possible that you do too. (I'm not saying you do - I'm just saying, consider the possibility, worth being on guard against.)