It’s not the illegals, as this younger restrictionist has good cause to recognize. It is the legal immigrants, and the fact that there have been far too many of them from too different cultures:
Most people are stunned when I say I’m for lower legal immigration. I know with most it would paint me as a bigot and I don’t give a damn. It’s not that I fear what I don’t know. It’s that I speak several foreign languages, have been extensively south of the border in different countries, and see what is going to happen to us.
Just as actual proximity to diversity and vibrancy tends to reduce positive social contact, actual familiarity with other societies tends to reduce enthusiasm for immigration from them. In general, the more enthusiastic about diversity and immigration a white American is these days, the more parochial they are. If they so much as mention food with regards to the issue, you can be certain that their experience of other cultures is essentially limited to restaurants.
It’s not the culinary spices that are the issue here. I speak three languages and have a basic smattering of two others. I’m not recognizably American anymore; on our recent trip to Rome, I discovered that “American” isn’t even the second guess of people I meet these days. And it is my experience of transitioning from one society to another, and of witnessing others do so and fail to do so, that informs my opinion. It is that experience that makes me certain that the large scale immigration of the last fifty years from the Third World is going to have dreadful consequences in Europe and America alike.