Content area
Full text
Dr. Amitai Etzioni, the first University Professor of The George Washington University, recently drafted a position paper on immigration entitled Diversity Within Unity. Preparatory work for the draft included a meeting with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a panel of scholars in the fields of immigration and diversity. The paper has been widely circulated to scholars and public intellectuals in Europe, Canada and the United States. Through the Communitarian Network, an organization with which Dr. Etzioni is closely associated, the paper has now been endorsed by several hundred opinion leaders. It is proposed to present the paper to public leaders at a meeting in Strasbourg later this year. A slightly abbreviated version is presented here. The full text and further information may be found at www.gwu.edu/-ccps.
OUR BASIC ORIENTATION
We note with growing concern that very large segments of the people of free societies sense that they are threatened by massive immigration and by the growing minorities within their borders that hail from different cultures, follow different practices, and have separate institutions and loyalties. We are troubled by street violence, verbal outbursts of hate, and growing support for various extremist parties. These are unwholesome reactions to threats people feel to their sense of identity, self-determination, and culture, which come on top of concerns evoked by globalization, new communications technologies, and a gradual loss of national sovereignty. To throw the feelings of many millions of people in their faces, calling them "discriminatory," "exclusionary," "hypocritical," and worse, is an easy politics, but not one truly committed to resolution. People's anxieties and concerns should not be dismissed out of hand, nor can they be effectively treated by labeling them racist or xenophobic. Furthermore, telling people that they "need" immigrants because of economic reasons or demographic shortfalls makes a valid and useful argument, but does not address their profoundest misgivings. The challenge before us is to find legitimate and empirically sound ways to constructively address these concerns. At the same time, we should ensure that these sentiments do not find antisocial, hateful, let alone violent expressions.
Two approaches are to be avoided: promoting assimilation and unbounded multiculturalism. Assimilation - which entails requiring minorities to abandon all of their distinct institutions, cultures, values, habits, and connections to...