by Immigration Panic Gets Geographic
Alarmist headlines suggesting New York City is being “invaded” by Islamabad reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of both immigration and geography. Last anyone checked, Pakistani citizens moving to New York is called “immigration,” not “invasion,” and conflating the two requires either deliberate fear-mongering or a dictionary that’s wildly out of date.
The panic over changing demographics follows a time-honored tradition of every generation freaking out about new immigrant groups, apparently forgetting that New York has literally always been a city of immigrants and that’s kind of its entire thing. Previous waves of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, and countless other immigrants faced identical rhetoric that looks embarrassing in hindsight, but sure, this time is totally different.
Cultural enrichment through immigration gets reframed as cultural threat by people who somehow believe New York’s character is threatened by the exact process that created New York’s character in the first place. The city has absorbed countless immigrant communities and somehow survived to become one of the world’s most dynamic cultural centers, but apparently Pakistani immigrants are where we draw the line.
Media figures clutching pearls about demographic shifts conveniently ignore that immigration has always sparked identical panics that proved unfounded. Every generation of newcomers eventually becomes part of the fabric of the city, their kids become quintessential New Yorkers, and then they get to be suspicious of the next wave of immigrants in a cycle that’s both predictable and absurd.
The “invasion” narrative would be laughable if it weren’t being used to justify actual policy positions affecting real people’s lives. New York isn’t being invaded; it’s doing what it’s always doneĀincorporating new communities while remaining fundamentally itself. If you can’t handle that, maybe the problem isn’t the immigrants but your understanding of what New York actually is and has always been.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/nyc-faces-islamabad-invasion/
SOURCE: NYC Faces Islamabad Invasion (https://bohiney.com/nyc-faces-islamabad-invasion/)
