Mergers & Assimilations

The Hansonites of Australia have any number of issues that motivate them. A biggie amongst them is ‘assimilation’.

They say that they aren’t against immigration, they are against immigrants that don’t assimilate. Such as the Muslims. Well, the ones that don’t assimilate.

The Hansonites want all immigrants to become like ‘us’, or don’t bother coming here. 

Which is an incredibly conservative position; they want us to remain as we are. For how long? Maybe forever.

These are people that hate change and, because of their insecurities, they are scared of anything or anyone that is different.

The history of immigration in Australia is one of a merging of cultures, not assimilation. Well, except for the first effort which was neither.

The Greeks and Italians, for example, they changed Australia oh so much for the better. And the Asians are very busy modifying us right as we speak, all the way to the Down syndrome farewell handshake.

I don’t think many Australians want to see enclaves of culturally isolated immigrants. But the argument against this would have greater support if debated in the context of a merger rather than assimilation.

But it does beg the question; what exactly is so scary about cultural enclaves? 

I suspect that there’s a confirmation bias going on here. Many disputes around the world are between different cultural groups with entwined borders. Hence it is easy to assume that all such groupings lead to disputes.

But maybe there’s many more that we don’t hear about, simply because they are all happily getting on with each other. This isn’t very newsworthy.

Some data on the subject word be useful. And then a little insight into why some mixed cultural enclaves have disputes whereas other don’t.

Who knows, it might not be that scary after all.

I think of immigration like a salad dressing. Oil and water with a bit of balsamic vinegar. Mix it and it merges. Or so you think. Wait a while and it separates again, highlighting your first generation delusions. 

Add some mustard and honey, surfactants for the chemically minded amongst you, shake again and, presto, you have a second generation merging. And it tastes that much better. 

But there’s still globs and blobs of this or that in there. Unmerged bits that don’t really spoil the salad. 

Its worth remembering that childlike souls won’t touch anything green anyway. So you can’t please them all anyway. Just ignore them, I say.