Over at The Monkey Cage, John Sides posts some charts comparing European and American attitudes towards diversity. "Our results suggest that Americans do not stand apart from Europeans in terms of the perceived consequences of immigration, the desired qualities of immigrants, and the preferred level of immigration," writes Sides. "There is, however, one difference: attitudes toward cultural diversity more generally." And on this metric, America is far in the lead. The following charts show whether respondents believe it's better to share customs and traditions, and better to share a religion:
Presumably, Tom Tancredo's house wasn't called by the pollsters. But who knows? Even he might feel the need to profess a preference for pluralism if asked. But this is what makes the rising tide of nativism so depressing. Not only has immigration strengthened us over the years, but it's been such a widely-agreed boon that a tolerance for its most disruptive characteristics -- the influx of people who believe different in different Gods and hew to different customs -- has been entrenched as a national value. And yet, every so often, we go into another paroxysm of fear as to the dire consequences of this or that group coming into the country, only to wonder, thirty or forty years later, why we ever felt that way, when those immigrants were clearly prepared to melt in our pot, unlike these other immigrants who are coming over now...
Presumably, Tom Tancredo's house wasn't called by the pollsters. But who knows? Even he might feel the need to profess a preference for pluralism if asked. But this is what makes the rising tide of nativism so depressing. Not only has immigration strengthened us over the years, but it's been such a widely-agreed boon that a tolerance for its most disruptive characteristics -- the influx of people who believe different in different Gods and hew to different customs -- has been entrenched as a national value. And yet, every so often, we go into another paroxysm of fear as to the dire consequences of this or that group coming into the country, only to wonder, thirty or forty years later, why we ever felt that way, when those immigrants were clearly prepared to melt in our pot, unlike these other immigrants who are coming over now... 
