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Does Mass Migration Always and Everywhere Lead to Populist Backlash?
No. It does not. I grew up in Texas during the era when the great replacement was just a factual thing that was happening, in circles which were not generally politically correct. Everyone knew we were going to have a Mexican plurality and be bilingual and the like soon. People grumbled a bit, but Trump still underperformed in 2016.
I remember my father ranting about how the Mexicans were more like the orientals(specific to vietnam war refugees) and chinamen(could also be koreans) of his childhood than like the blacks, who he thought shouldn't have full liberty of movement for crime control reasons. I recall blue collar workers talking about the need to learn Spanish to get on in their workplaces. I remember in school having to translate Spanish advertisements because that'll be the world we live in. And everyone was, if not happy about this, at least OK with it.
Of course there was grumbling about Hispanic customs like "having five names", but also praise of them for "being willing to work- you(young hydro) should take after that part". I remember people who now had to learn to speak Spanish, but also talking about how they go to church(which we should do more of, you are to understand from that part) and work hard and respect their bosses and the police. I recall lots of favorable comparison to local blacks, and griping that we(whites) brought it on ourselves by being too good to kill chickens for a living. And I remember even fairly low on the totem poll, people would say things like 'most of them are good people, I don't know about kicking them out'.
The current round of Texas border security is mostly after Haitians started arriving at the border en masse- and the core red tribe can check a map and note that walking to the border from Haiti has significant levels of geographic impossibility, so this is obviously a plot by the UN/Biden admin to hurt Texas by making us care for millions of non-contributing and criminally inclined blacks and centracos from who knows where. 'Somebody's paying for these people to come here and we can't even figure out what language they speak'. In my childhood, when it was all Mexicans? Nobody cared. The decent thing to do, up until after covid, when you found out someone was here illegally, was to not have heard it. Pre-fentanyl, pre-news headlines about people from 'not Mexico but countries south of there' busting through the border in organized groups.
Some people assimilate better than others. Canada turned racist because their newcomers were subcontinental; Britain turned racist because their newcomers, uh, set up rape gangs that the authorities allowed to operate with impunity on explicitly racial lines. In Texas? The Mexican restaurants where you can't order in English serve brisket and barbecue places offer Mexican street corn(which is, in fairness, delicious). White teenagers flirt in Spanish and switch to English when they hit the extent of their knowledge. Mexicans vote republican now. If Canada had opened their borders to Mexico and Vietnam instead of India, Trudeau would still have a job.
I don't know what my point is, it's an inebriated rant against a budding consensus on the Motte. I guess it's that there is no instinctive racism bone in Anglosphere countries that kicks in when things get extreme enough?
No, your points are obvious, even if there's a layer of frustration around how the consensus here seems to be shifting more and more towards Immigration Bad.
To be fair, there are three basic, fundamental points that are obvious to anyone with eyes but completely and utterly incomprehensible to a plurality of governments.... which were then punished soundly in elections:
"Immigrants change a location's culture." Further from this, there is a sliding scale that is not properly defined; there is a tendency for immigrant enclaves to form, with their own communities, rules, and culture often independent of the local culture. Assimilation does happen, but it leaves everyone changed; the spice bag is a Chinese invention but distinctly Irish.
"Some people, or rather, cultures assimilate better than others." As mentioned, this is obvious to anyone with eyes, but two of the largest pillars in the liberal consensus are equality of opportunity and blank slatism. The state refuses to distinguish these groups, because that would cause these pillars to creak, the fiction would break down, and then we go straight to the politics of naked racial spoils, something they are hesitant to do without talking out of both sides of their mouth. (For people who think the politics of naked racial spoils is where we are already, it might be instructive to look at Indian caste politics, or the current state of South Africa. Remember, it can always get worse!)
"Illegal immigration is illegal." People see that the laws are not enforced, and they lose respect for all the other laws as well. People see uneven enforcement of laws, and they correctly deduce they are living under anarcho-tyranny. Making it worse is that the argument is lost; Trump will try his best/do his worst but there are so many illegal immigrants in America that this would be a herculean undertaking, requiring a gift of logistics and planning that I believe is beyond America's current state capacity.
The consensus around immigration is unfortunately set by America, and not just America - the monied, culturally dominant PMC America, which prides itself on being a nation of immigrants as they see large economic and personal benefits from having access to internationally fungible imported labor. The top % of American earners don't have to engage or interact with the changing culture due to the way money can move faster and cheaper than people, and can afford to live in gated communities with private security.
Assimilation is part of the issue, but so are the structural concerns of the location taking on those immigrants. To OP's point, we can't just allow large groups to ignore the laws of the land. Part of what went wrong in Canada is that Indian subcultures are basically carrying out hits against each other for beef back in India, and the government just kind of let it happen
Surely it was lentils, perhaps mutton at most
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