In the US, anti-immigrant sentiment is often the highest in regions with relatively few immigrants, far away from the border. The less that immigrants are part of peoples daily lives, the more people seem to fear for their "culture".
Presuming to have any real agency over the evolution of human culture also seems misguided. Culture is like a river, in that "no man ever steps into the same one twice". It's constantly changing in unpredictable ways, from generation to generation or even within generations, with or without immigration. That goes for the cultures of immigrants also.
The more people stand to lose, the more they fear losing it? shocking. (I don't even think that's true. Southern border states are a lot more concerned with illegal crossings than anywhere else. People who have to live near ethnic ghettos have a bigger problem with them than the coastal elites pushing for it. Etc)
Pretending that importing millions of foreigners will not affect the culture whatsoever is just a dumb or disingenuous argument, sorry. We already see a microcosm of it with Indian tech workers, having constant scandals about only hiring other Indians of their caste, and with the southern border states having dual spanish language signs everywhere. UK has issues with Islamic tension today already.
It is so fundamentally obvious that mass immigration from non-western cultures will produce non-westernized cultural changes, that otherwise wouldn't happen, that I have to just assume you are intentionally pretending not to understand that.
> The more people stand to lose, the more they fear losing it? shocking.
No - the less real exposure a person has to immigrants and their communities, the more dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric has a chance to substitute for real experience.
> Southern border states are a lot more concerned with illegal crossings than anywhere else
Southern border states are also generally filled with a lot of people who actually know, from experience, that illegal border crossings and immigration are not the same thing.
> the southern border states having dual spanish language signs everywhere
The humanity! There will always be cultural diffusion along borders, no immigration policy is ever going to change that reality. The lives of people on either side are integrated in real tangible ways despite the lines on maps.
And the reverse is also true, of course. Mexico is filled with English speakers and it's quite easy to get around there without speaking a lick of Spanish. It's a great place to visit.
> Pretending that importing millions of foreigners will not affect the culture whatsoever is just a dumb or disingenuous argument
The argument is more that any predictions about the future of culture or efforts to steer it one way or another are mostly futile, and likely more inspired by ones prejudices and irrational fears.
Whatever it is that you are afraid of losing - you probably won't - or if you do, the immigrants probably weren't the ones who took it from you.
(It's actually way more likely that some piece of technology, maybe built by some people on this very site, will be the thing that kills your culture)
Presuming to have any real agency over the evolution of human culture also seems misguided. Culture is like a river, in that "no man ever steps into the same one twice". It's constantly changing in unpredictable ways, from generation to generation or even within generations, with or without immigration. That goes for the cultures of immigrants also.