> Have you and your European friends tried actually addressing some of the racist beliefs you casually take for granted which lead you to discriminate against immigrants when it comes to integration into society?
I don't think this is fair at all. I'm of Middle Eastern stock (now living in the US) and even I was kind of shocked when I stayed near Gare du Nord in Paris (especially) and in some other parts of the city. I did not feel as if I was in Europe. It felt like a souk in Qatar. I date a French North African woman and so am acutely aware of the integration problems many (not all of course) immigrants have in France. Many old time French North Africans, who fought for normality in the French society over decades, are now finding themselves on the side of "the other" again because of unnecessary mass immigration of people who are certainly not french and secular enough like the North Africans who migrated in the 60s and 70s. New Islamic immigration is preying on 2nd and 3rd generation somewhat normalized immigrants and destroying a population that was integrated and also creating a divide among the different ethnic groups within the country.
You may consider this perspective to be racist. But I don't see how allowing racist Middle Easterners (like most people I grew up with) with homophobic tendencies (almost a given) to mass immigrate to a country is not racist itself.
> Whereas in Europe it seems that you are constantly defined by your ancestry, even after multiple generations.
Why is this an issue? It is an exception to have countries like America and Canada (both of which I adore) which are based on ideals [1]. Most nations are created after bloody ethnic wars (especially in Europe). It would be wrong to force them to give up their ancestral lands. A crude proxy for seeing this is to have a look at the birthright citizenship map [2]. Only a handful of nations have jus soil (US and Canada being among them). Majority are jus sanguinis. And the trend is for ethnic countries like Germany and Ireland to go more towards jus sanguinis. Ethnic countries like Ireland and India in fact used to be jus soil and have recently moved away from that to preserve the ethnicity. So for countries built on ethnicity, why would you expect it not to be the case that one is defined by their ancestry?
[1] And yes, there are significant problems with the history of America especially with respect to the Native Americans.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli#/media/File:Jus_soli_...
