Yeonmi Park is a North Korean immigrant to the United States, who deeply loves America and frequently warns of the dangers of neo-communist and anti-Western indoctrination that she experienced at Columbia University and elsewhere in our country. Hers is one of the most poignant stories of courage, suffering, and resilience in an extraordinary journey to freedom. On the occasion of becoming a U.S. citizen, she wrote:
I read the Constitution for the first time when I finally made it from North Korea to South Korea. I was studying English and collecting letters of recommendation in the hopes that I would win a visa and be able to travel across the ocean to America. Even with my broken English, I teared up reading the sentences. I didn’t know then what the word dignity meant, but that was what I felt for the first time in my life.My mother and I didn’t risk our lives trekking across the Gobi Desert so we could buy a nice car or live in a nice home. We did it to get an I.D. from a government that recognized us as human beings—not as slaves. To us, to become American was like winning a thousand lotteries.I officially became an American [in 2022]. It was January in Chicago, the judge was late, we were all in masks, and there were no guests allowed. In my heart, though, I became an American when I first read the Constitution. That day in Chicago, I was given a copy of that document, plus my naturalization certificate, and instructions for registering to vote after I took my oath. Then, I celebrated by going out for steak at the Ralph Lauren Cafe in downtown Chicago….It was important to me to eat steak that night because back in North Korea, my mom witnessed the public execution of a man in his twenties who had killed and eaten a cow from a collective farm. He was dying of starvation and he had tuberculosis, but the cow was the government’s property, so he was put to death. The regime there gives more rights to cows than to human beings.Now that I’m an American, I get to eat steak as much as I want. And Kim Jong Un can’t do anything about it.
As a naturalized U.S. citizen, I often think about the different kinds of immigration and their respective impacts. I arrived in America nearly 30 years ago and instantly fell in love with its liberty and meritocracy, after spending my childhood and early youth in a communist country. I was fortunate to win a competition-based U.S. Government scholarship, which allowed me to complete a doctoral program. I felt honored to subsequently receive an “O” visa, awarded to people whose abilities are considered rare and beneficial to American interests. I did not feel entitled but was most appreciative and inspired to be part of American society. I later got married, created a family, and became a forever-grateful and proud American citizen.
Many of my friends in Bulgaria love the United States with fervent passion and strong conviction. I have also met numerous Americans who came from Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, and elsewhere, who are deeply patriotic about the United States. Yet, I have encountered countless U.S.-born people, especially in academia, who are pathologically ashamed of their country and wish to see traditional American society razed to the ground and replaced by some socialist utopia.
The recent immigration problem in the United States has justifiably become one of the most significant policy issues for the new administration. There is no question that the large numbers of illegal immigrants, encouraged by leftist governments to enter the USA and wreak havoc, have caused disastrous consequences, which will take years to remedy.
So, the first criterion in determining whether immigration may be beneficial or harmful is whether it is legal or illegal. Illegal immigration cannot be controlled and causes an increase in crime, drug trafficking, and a host of other problems.
The second criterion concerns the various categories of legal immigration. Certain legal immigrants, including refugees from murderous regimes such as Nazism or Communism, have proved rather valuable additions to American society due to their skills and dedication. Political immigration by people who love America and wholeheartedly contribute to its well-being is largely a positive phenomenon. It revitalizes American patriotism and reminds us to count our blessings, since it is human nature to forget “how good we have it” and only appreciate something after we lose it.
Here, it is important to address the issue of assimilation. If political immigrants come to America individually or in small groups, they are more likely to readily assimilate. If they come in large groups, then they will probably retain their culture, customs, and language as ethnic enclaves. This is not a net negative as long as such immigrants, and especially their offspring, choose to become fully integrated within American society, learn English well, and develop national consciousness as U.S. citizens.
Many Americans live and function successfully as patriotic citizens who are also bearers of their legacy cultures. If these cultures are compatible with American values, then integration is easy and seamless. If, however, the immigrants’ legacy cultures are difficult to reconcile with U.S. core principles, then their bearers ought to reject the incompatible elements of their worldview and espouse the American value system. If they choose not to integrate, learn English, and adopt American values, then this kind of immigration is potentially harmful since it can irreversibly alter our social fabric and facilitate the unchecked influence of destructive ideologies.
Economic immigration by people who possess certain abilities that benefit the United States could be a positive or a negative factor. If economic immigrants are willing to live by American values, be integrated into American society, and contribute their skills and hard work, then such immigration is beneficial. If they treat the United States simply as a means to achieve economic prosperity but reject the core principles and ideas of America, then they may inflict more harm than good.
Given the tremendous problems experienced by Western countries on account of mass immigration by people with criminal behavior or hostile value systems, future immigration policies need to be extremely well thought out. They need to strictly enforce the prohibition of illegal immigration and allow legal immigration by individuals or small groups of people whose abilities benefit the United States and who are fully committed to embracing American values and consciousness. As Dennis Prager points out:
The left constantly repeats “we are a nation of immigrants” without citing the other half of that fact—“who assimilate into America.” The left mocks the once-universally held American belief in the melting pot. But the melting pot is the only way for a country composed of immigrants to build a cohesive society.America was never just “a nation of immigrants.” America was always a nation of immigrants who sought to become—or at least were taught by American public schools and by the general American culture to become—Americans.If America becomes a nation of non-assimilating immigrants, or a nation consisting of non-assimilating ethnic, racial and national groups who are already here, it will cease being a glorious idea and become just another nation torn by conflicting interest groups. These various groups will fight one another—first verbally and then, perhaps, violently (and America will see more and more violence)—just as France, Sweden and Germany have seen since they began taking in millions of immigrants, many of whom have no intention of becoming Frenchmen, Swedes or Germans.Contrary to one of the left’s more mendacious claims, diversity has not been America’s great strength. America’s great strength has been forging an American identity out of diversity.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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