Editing Openai/6962ca00-cfa0-800a-ac62-bd84f6c201e0 (section)

==== Illegal immigration is functioning less as a policy problem and more as a symbolic container for unresolved anxieties about: ====
* National identity
* Cultural continuity
* Loss of control
* Elite betrayal

From your vantage point—analytical, historically literate, materially insulated—the reaction looks unhinged because it is not responding to the same variables you are weighting.

You are asking: “What will actually change tomorrow?”
They are reacting to: “What does this say about who we are and where we’re headed?”

Those are orthogonal questions, which is why the debate feels so unproductive.

If you want, we can also explore:
* Why Rome analogies persist specifically in American political thought
* Why immigration fear maps so strongly onto authoritarian preferences
* Or how this differs from European immigration panics, which operate under a different historical memory set