Not just the ban on Burquas, but the limits on the number of foreign students.
Integrate, assimilate, or Get the Fuck Out.
I am all for immigration: I am the descendent of immigrants, and I have worked for several people who were immigrants to the US. All great assets to their new country.
But none of them were INVADERS. If you aren’t gonna learn the language and culture of the country you emigrate to, you are not an immigrant, you are an invader, a colonist, and a pestilence upon the host country.
You nailed it. I recognized it in the 80’s. Where I lived we started having, and respecting the term “Puerto-Rican American’s”, “Mexican-American’s”, “African-American’s”. When I was younger, everyone was just an American, who had a heritage. My Mom was a green-card holding American from Germany, Dad met her over there in the service, got married, brought her home and raised a family. She wasn’t a German-American living here in the States?
When we ceased being American first, and an adjective-American, we lost our collectiveness. There is no melting-pot, but a mixture of various cultures that are not integrating (and despite our own best efforts, the fedgov is hell-bent on forcing homogenization for some reason). Now it’s way worse, and as predicted, everything is observably tribal.
I could argue the first government-form printed in Spanish was the start. I recall the debate about welfare-forms being bi-lingual. That would be what I would call the triggering event.