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By Root 968 0

goodwill or at least the acquiescence of the foreign populations it dominates. If anything, America is more dependent on the goodwill of foreign populations than the hyperpowers of the past because the global economy is now so extensively interconnected (billions around the world today are America's consumers, suppliers, investors, and laborers), the right of other countries to govern themselves is so well established (so that even a hyperpower cannot impose its will by direct rule), and weapons of mass destruction can now be transported in a backpack.

Thus the crucial question for the years and decades to come will be whether America can address what I've called the problem of “glue.” Given that America cannot generally extend citizenship to foreign populations, are there other mechanisms through which the United States can, without losing its sovereignty, create a sense of shared purpose or even a kind of common identity with the billions of people around the world it dominates, giving others more of a stake in America's success and leadership?

This challenge underlies and has implications for some of the most contentious issues in American politics today. I will briefly discuss three of these issues below.

Immigration. Perhaps the most obvious place to start is U.S. immigration policy. Despite its legacy as a nation of immigrants, America today harbors deep anxieties about the porousness of its borders. These anxieties are driven by both the threat of terrorism and a wider backlash against the influx of immigrants from Latin America. In his provocative book Who Are We?, Samuel Huntington argues that continued immigration, particularly from Mexico, endangers America's unity as well as its core identity as “a deeply religious and primarily Christian country” rooted in “Anglo-Protestant” values. Many, including recent presidential candidates and television hosts, have followed Huntington's lead. CNN's highly popular Lou Dobbs, for example, has warned against the “army of invaders” from Mexico, stealing America's jobs, infecting the country with leprosy, and plotting to reannex the American Southwest.21

It goes without saying that the United States has a right and a need to restrict immigration. No sensible immigration policy would open the floodgates to unlimited foreigners or sacrifice national security. Nevertheless, the recent fear-mongering ground-swell to shut down America's borders is triply wrongheaded.

First, if the history of hyperpowers has shown anything, it is the danger of xenophobic backlash. Time and again, past world-dominant powers have fallen precisely when their core groups turned intolerant, reasserting their “true” or “pure” identity and adopting exclusionary policies toward “unassimilable” groups. From this point of view, attempts to demonize immigrants or to attribute America's success to “Anglo-Protestant” virtues is not only misleading (neither the atomic bomb nor Silicon Valley was particularly “Anglo-Protestant” in origin) but dangerous.

Second, a relatively open immigration policy is one of the most effective mechanisms available for creating goodwill and close ties between the United States and non-Americans. It signals America's receptivity to individuals of all backgrounds. It grants almost a million foreigners annually a right to participate directly in American society, with full citizenship the potential reward for their contributions. It allows many millions more to think of America as a home to their relatives and as a place where they themselves might someday live. Even those “left behind” can benefit tangibly from open American immigration policies. In 2005, foreign-born workers in America sent nearly $40 billion back home; the most popular day of the year for these remittances was Mother's Day.22

Programs that bring younger foreigners to the United States only temporarily, like the F-visa program for students, can also foster important connections. They offer a glimpse of American society up close and, in many cases, a lifelong identification with an American institution. Above