The sub-categories, legal, illegal, and refugee, most certainly do matter.
Of course they matter. The just don't matter in the context of that piece, which was about whether countries embrace the melting pot like the US or demand Frenchness. If a country isolates immigrants like the French do, then they're going to get pretty cranky regardless of how they came to be there. If a country has illegal immigrants, as does the US, and if we deal with them in a way that makes the legal immigrants from their group think we're isolating that group, they will get cranky.
You an I may be able to distinguish clearly between illegal and legal immigrants but related group members don't necessarily perceive it that way. When people feel estranged or insulted and react emotionally, they don't do nuance well. It's no different from, for example, when I comment on flat-earthers and Christians come out of the woodwork complaining that I'm dissing Christians, in general, when I'm not. Mexican Americans, for example, can't always differentiate between those who oppose illegal immigrants and people who oppose Mexican immigration. Fostering that polarization is not smart if we're to maintain a healthy melting pot. |
