Culture clash
Immigration policy has been among the most rancorous of U.S. political issues in recent years. What has been fueling America’s contentious debates over the topic? Security, according to many people: In the time since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, keeping borders secure has been a main justification for tightly controlled immigration. But underneath those concerns lies a simmering cultural clash, according to one MIT scholar who has been studying the topic in depth recently. “It’s about some larger loss of U.S. identity,” says John Tirman, executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies. Opponents of immigration, he adds, “say they’re not concerned about culture, use of language, and changing norms, but I think it really does come down to those kinds of issues.” And in the last two decades, Tirman thinks, that has specifically meant a fight about the relationship between U.S. identity and Latin American culture, in light of the...