If you had asked me about immigration 30 years ago, I would have shrugged and said it was a good thing for the country. My family, like most everyone I knew, came over from the old country. It was not until I reached adulthood, living in New England, that I became aware of people who traced their roots to the colonial times. Even so, I was trained in the American mythology about a nation of immigrants, so I just assumed immigration was mostly a good thing, when I bothered to think about it, which was not often.
It was only after I came to know recent migrants that I started changing my mind about the topic. The people, who had recently gone through the system, had very different ideas about it than Americans born here. More important, they had no illusions about the state of the population in the old country. Talk to recent migrants and they will be happy to tell you that most of the people they left behind should stay over there. The recent migrants left the old country for a reason.
This came to mind the other day when I sat listening to a Turk and an Indian discuss immigration. Both were Trump people exclusively on the immigration issue. Both had come to America the old fashioned way – legally. The Turk was a Coptic Christian. He left for America thirty years ago as a young man, figuring there was no future for Christians in Turkey. The Indian had come here on a student visa, got a job, fell in love with America and decided to stay. In both cases, it took ten years to gain citizenship.
One of the things you learn from immigrants, when it comes to the immigration issue, is they place a high value on citizenship. That’s because they spent a lot to get it. Acquiring citizenship was a transaction for them, not an accident of birth. The Turk in this story left his home, and all that he knew, because he correctly saw where things were heading in Turkey. He was a guy that sold all his stuff, bought as many black chips as he could afford, and pushed them into the middle of the table.
The other thing immigrants know is that America is a lonely place. Europe, for example, is full of old cities and villages where people grow up in the shadow of ancestors. There’s no fresh start in a place like that. Every man is just a dot on the timeline started by people long ago. In other parts of the world, there’s the shadow of history and the entanglements of tribe and clan. In a place like India, the obligations to family and custom are more limiting than anything government can conjure.
In America, immigrants are free to start their own timeline. The past is no longer a set of boundaries on them. Just as important, they are free of the family and tribal restrictions. The Turk in this story married a Greek woman, who was also an immigrant. The Indian went into a career that does not exist in India and even if it did, his family would not have approved. You can do those things where it is just you, striking out on your own. That’s the attraction of America. It’s a blank canvass for immigrants.
None of this means we should fling open our borders and let the world move to America. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Borders and barriers are a filtering mechanism that helps tamp down the number of bad migrants a country gets. If the Germans had been more scrupulous, for example, they would not have murderous Muslims rampaging through their streets right now. Europe is headed for a very dark time solely due to their rulers forgot that good borders make for good citizens.
America should be learning from this. We have no shortage of workers and we no longer have vast tracks of unexploited land. We could have zero immigration and no jobs would go unfilled. There’s also the cultural aspect. We have had high levels of immigration for half a century, but low levels of assimilation. Even if there is an economic argument for more migrants, and there isn’t, it is far outweighed by the cultural arguments. It will take many generations to absorb the current migrants.
Even so, low levels of legal immigration are probably a good thing. The people willing to go through all the steps it takes to migrate legally are going to be people who scrupulously observe the law. They are not coming here just to screw it all up for everyone including themselves. Recent legal immigrants tend to be hyper-patriotic for that reason. They take nothing for granted because they had to earn their citizenship. Their presence is a healthy reminder that citizenship has value.
That’s ultimately the truth about the open borders crowd. They place no value on citizenship. That’s because they put no value on people. To the open borders enthusiasts, humans are just undifferentiated raw material, inputs they can manipulate. Whether the material comes from home or abroad is irrelevant because everything normal people associate with being human is of no concern to the managerial types. They see people the way normal people look at furniture.
I tell my kids that if they let all these people come here who don’t get along well with others that have a different religion.Or the many illegal aliens who don’t really love or cherish our country. It will cause so many problems in the future that all the people who want these folks just seem to stupid to see. With all the money in the middle east these folks can’t even get along and help each other out. God help us all.
About 30 years ago, I worked with a lot of guys and gals from Ireland in Boston, you might remember the influx of Irish into construction, restaurants and such back then if you were up here. My Irish citizen co-worker and I lived in the nation’s 2nd largest Irish ghetto, Charlestown. There was no St Patrick’s day parade there at that time, so we went to the largest Irish ghetto in the US, Southie for the parade. Being in our 20’s and alcohol being involved he naturally thought it wise to remind the revelers that their “ancestors left Ireland because it sucks!” Zany hijinks ensued and luckily we made it to the Red line to get out of dodge. The South Asians that I’ve been working with for the past 15 years or so rarely share his or your acquaintances sentiments. I’m not yet ready to tell them to go back to the third wold hell hole from whence they came, but as a fellow broken down Honky, my patience is wearing thin.
Good article. One possible flaw in your thesis is that you are depending on the same state to fix the immigration problem, that is in the process of bringing the overflow of immigrants. Perhaps those in the ruling class have different motivations than the rest of us do.
Another flaw is revealed by asking the question, “why do they come here?” Outside of the more desirable immigrants that you talk about, many probably come to have an easy life and get free shit. Clearly, welfare needs to be a part of any discussion of immigration. You will never succeed in keeping immigration to a low roar until you stop taxing the productive and transferring their wealth to undeserving others – whether those others are immigrant or home-grown. Any attempt to stem the tide, without getting rid of socialism and welfare, ends up looking like a call for “socialism for me, but not for thee”.
As to culture, any, such as our own, that is so submerged in socialism and fascism – well, maybe that culture is not quite so wonderful after all. Socialism and fascism are western inventions, not an African or Chinese or Middle Eastern one. We need to clean our own cultural house, it seems. A culture based entirely on liberty would only attract desirable immigrants.
Perhaps the ruling class is running more than one set of books. Once a nation has automated and outsourced honest labor, that nation would import previously cut out drug runners, gun runners, and sex traffickers in order to weaken the middlemen and increase ROI. All that central banking money is not going to print itself.
All of that sweet gang profit staying within the borders instead of being shipped elsewhere.
Skim it bottom up and top down. Everyone wins. Except for those seeking an honest living without a buy-in.
I think sometimes the spreadsheets spell out these situations as dystopian emerging markets.
My thoughts as well, Z. But I think we need an immigration moratorium for a long spell. It is vital that we completely assimilate the immigrants we now have before accepting any more. This will take at least a generation. Also, all use of foreign language instruction in schools must cease. Ditto for its use on government forms such as driver instruction and licenses. Shut down Telemundo unless they switch to English.
The following was written by the brilliant BB, and explains immigration to America far better than anything I have yet been exposed to.
This is what America does. it uses unprecedented and unsustainable prosperity to import illegals to slaughter animals and fry their meat so that we can stuff it down niggers’ throats until they’re too fat to walk
it literally trains people in the cutting edge of math, science, finance and management to erect offshore platforms to suck up the carbonized remains of extinct species in order to provide the necessary fuel for the spic-nig cycle
i guess i never really grasped the goal of civilization before. why did newton discover calculus? what are maxwell’s equations for? why did mendeleev deduce the periodic properties of elements? the answer to these and to all questions: to stuff nigs with fried meat until they become crippled from overeating, then to provide them with heroic medical care until they gracelessly expire
Immigration is a racket, a transfer of money from labor to capital. The only people that benefit are those who hire immigrants and the immigrants themselves. The open border globalists pocket any profits and pass on all the true costs, the social,economic and environmental to our poor communities. We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of citizens lied to and betrayed by both parties and the media on immigration for decades.
Once again I think there is a You Tube video that many here would find informative and worth the time to view. It compliments this post by “Z” and many comments that have already been posted.
Check out “James Bissett on Canadian Immigration, 31 March 2016” Mr. Bissett was the Canadian Immigration Service Director from 1985 – 1990 and in addition to that held many high level posts in the Canadian government. His credentials are fairly awesome.
Word of caution. The tube is 39:35 and is dry and humorless. Nevertheless, I do sincerely believe you won’t be disappointed with the man’s knowledge, experience and perspectives which he applies to today’s immigration fiasco(s) in Canada and in general.
Z, you summarized it nicely when you say they value their citizenship because they have “skin in the game.” Liberals, who seem to like “free stuff” like giving away other people’s stuff as well. And of course, it is for the votes, for the continued power the immigrants provide them.
When people invest their time and substantial money getting their citizenship, it has value. As children know intuitively, if it is free, it doesn’t have much value and hence, isn’t taken seriously. Liberals never seem to acknowledge this truth. But of course it is all manipulation for their own gain, their own purposes. And as always, it is about the money. Always the money.
“Recent legal immigrants tend to be hyper-patriotic for that reason. They take nothing for granted because they had to earn their citizenship. Their presence is a healthy reminder that citizenship has value.”
Being an engineer, I know quite a few of these legal immigrants. Don’t kid yourself. Their loyalty is limited to the dollars they make. That’s the only reason they’re here.
They retain their culture, and when clusters of them accumulate in organizations they tend to favor their own.
I’ve also seen them take more than a few jobs that could easily have gone to American engineers who were just as well qualified, especially at the entry level.
Until real wages in engineering and the other STEM fields reverse their downward trend significantly, we need to put the brakes on bringing these people in.
Because the real reason the legal professionals are here is the same as the reason the illegals are – to drive down wages for the native born population.
I work in tech with some of the biggest, cutting edge technology companies in the world. My work brings me into contact with hundreds of hardware and software engineers every year. I can probably count on one hand the number of US-born, white engineers I met in 2016. From what I can see the field is now almost entirely Indian and Asian.
Nothing against Indians or Asians–I like them a lot. But it was not like this 10 years ago. The HB1 programs have destroyed the field for native-born engineers.
I can’t tell if this is because white people no longer want to be engineers or employers will only hire Asian and South Asians or both. Most of the older American engineers seemed to have had few children, and those they had don’t want to go into tech. In engineering school, there were few Americans. Millennials are not really employable with some exceptions.
The biggest companies seem to be the worst H1B offenders, but it seems the American talent pool is drying up also. The trades seem to be the same way: it’s rare to find Americans who aren’t too proud to learn a trade.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Traditionally, it was the somewhat square privileged white man who studied engineering in the universities. The public schools and the universities started pushing grrrlpower and diverrrsity hard in engineering and the sciences some time ago to remedy this blatantly racist situation. I well remember the incompetents this brought into the field, even back when I was in school. I imagine the situation has degenerated even further now, so it’s hardly surprising that there are fewer domestic engineering graduates worth hiring.
I wouldn’t recommend that a kid go into engineering now anyway. Too much of this diversity and grrrlpower stuff going on, and you can make more money and be more independent in your business in the trades.
Since I have three young sons, I am highly interested in your advice.
I think we will be competing with immigrants in all jobs. I can’t think of a single job or profession that isn’t trying to hire illegals or H1Bs – even in medicine. You have to do something with your life, so you might as well pick a job or profession and get good at it. If we could get our teenagers back into the workforce, we could at least get Americans used to the idea of hiring Americans again for low-end jobs. This would also undermine the wages of illegals. Once you learn how to work, it’s not hard to see how to climb the wage scale.
I’m an engineer and have long thought of starting my own company, but working out the financing and the ideas is tough. I’d appreciate any advice/biz lit about financing and running and starting a business.
My wife, long an engineer (as well as an immigrant!), has been in the position of trying her best to find positions for the few American engineers who graduate American universities. However it is an uphill slog, as there are institutional advantages for the big Indian “body shops”. I suspect there are even kickbacks going into the pockets of the corporation bigwigs who look to these Indian provider companies for their employees, or just send all the work offshore. As usual, the federal and state governments also make life difficult for Americans. There is nothing like a free market in employment any more; we could compete just fine if there was.
Academic fraud is rampant in East and South Asia. I know they’re hiring whole graduating classes from India and housing them in big dorms in the US, but are they getting anything out of them? You get what you pay for. It seems the next iteration of tech can be built based on the ideas of the white men retiring and leaving the profession, but after that, they’re on their own. These corporations are making a huge bet that running off all the native talent, what little may remain, and relying on possibly-fraudulent and low-effort foreign labor will achieve the same quality and pace of innovation. I have my doubts.
Less tech may be better for all of us though.
I have to say that the US should accept immigrants from all the countries it invades, overthrows and enforces democracy upon. We in Europe are suffering mass immigration from the US wars of liberation in Africa and the Arab world.
If our elected officials were stronger, they would stop joining in the constant regime change led by the US that causes the mass movement of peoples throughout the world.
See Karl. This is the kind of crap I am referring to when I say Europe does not carry it’s share of the load regarding defending freedom in your own lands. Sure Simon, go ahead … blame America. What a putz!
The 3 HorseWomyn of the Progressive Apocalypse, Hillary,Susan Rice,Samantha Power,are the architects of this North African debacle. I can understand some of Simon’s bitterness,but don’t pretend there isn’t plenty of blame in the global partnership. We Are The World,right? What we are witnessing are the consequences of bad decisions made by talentless,hyper-educated,clueless people. Interesting times we live in.
“3 Horsewomyn” he he, pretty funny. But they are not that smart. And they sure as hell are not that powerful. The entire mass immigration movement from the ME terrorist zone was a well orchestrated move by globalist/socialists to apply the Cloward-Piven strategy to bring Europe to its knees. How do all those European governments not react to defend themselves but rather act in concert to “welcome” with open arms all of the riff-raff from lands that are oil to their water.
Where did all the water craft come from? How were all those people coordinated? Where did the money come from? How was entry guaranteed with benefits, etc. under the guise of Lady Liberty welcoming the poor, the tired, the homeless without any vetting whatsoever.
No. It is easy to blame America. But the blame falls at the doorstep of each and every country now besieged with problems from letting this cancer cross their threshold. Islam. In the name of tolerance, diversity, acceptance and co-existence. Right! As if bringing a den of snakes into your home is going to turn out so nicely for everyone.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense to me is using Mooslums to do their bidding. Because the Mooslums want their Caliphate and Globalists and their goals can be damned when it comes to that. There is no negotiating with that kind of enemy … one who poses as a ROP but has no intention of embracing the idea of “live and let live.”
@ LetsPlay – I have to agree with Simon to a point. Had the US put together a working plan in the Middle East that included long term occupation as you did here in Germany, it would be a very different situation than what we are seeing today. The destruction of the Libyan government opened a flood gate as Qaddafi did manage to control most of northern Africa and prevented the mass migration we are experiencing now. I must hold the Americans responsible for what seems to be completely irresponsible and misguided foreign policy. Once again, the damage they do has little effect on the US directly, but the wake left by it effects everyone anywhere near it.
To be fair, a few thousand European troops would have little if any benefit other than token force presence. And don’t forget, we did send German troops in some years ago. You may remember a story where a German commander blew up a convoy of fuel trucks which ISIS had captured. The destruction of those fuel trucks resulted in the deaths of many civilians, and the German commander was demonized by the media and as you say “thrown under the bus” by the local American commander. So you can’t have it both ways.
Trump is right. We need to get out of NATO and let the Europeans fend for themselves.
“We in Europe are suffering mass immigration from the US wars of liberation in Africa and the Arab world.”
Where did the American ruling class learn that behavior? From the European ruling class. There is a reason the French are now having problems with Algerians. Maybe those colonies weren’t such a good idea after all. Oh, and I think the Europeans are still at it, at least in a support role to American-led imperialism.
The British ignored Enoch Powell. They got what they deserve.
American ruling class was European! As I mentioned above, most of your famous Robber Barons were immigrant Europeans, not native born Americans.
Simon it sounds as if Europeans need some puppies, coloring books and a safe place. Who would have thoutght the children of Charles Martel would degenerate into such a simpering mass of snowflakes.
The United States has more than doubled in population since I was born. You may think that’s a wonderful thing; I think it’s generally bad for the quality of life. I am old enough to remember when everything wasn’t so damned crowded. We also have a dearth of fulfilling jobs (other than full-filling cups of coffee for yuppies at Starbucks), and it’s only going to get worse as automation and robotization proceed.
Sure, there are good people who would like to emigrate to the United States. No doubt a few would genuinely like to assimilate. We need to say to them: sorry, nothing personal Carlos and Maria, but we are booked up. You need to make a life for yourself where you are or somewhere else that will take you. U.S. citizens can’t move to Tahiti just because they like the climate and scenery. You can’t move here just because you’re ambitious. Good luck, and come as tourists after you’ve made it somewhere else.
The west needs to close all its borders – period. The idea we somehow need illiterate, uneducated and culturally backwards immigrants to fill the jobs of the future is total nonsense and everyone with an IQ higher than a french fry knows it.
America, and certainly Europe, is not full of wide open spaces as they once were and there are no fortunes to be made by honest work. No great forests, no vast farms, no great harbors. The early settlers and entrepreneurs have all ready settled and are now running everything and employing everyone. We even joke here in Germany that the last thing we need here is another kebab stand or shoe repair shop.
The skills, if you can call them that, these people bring are so low as to be of no value at all. Anyone who has traveled to Morocco or Egypt and visited the souks (markets) knows how unskilled these people really are. Running a lathe with your bare feet and a bow might have been cutting-edge in it’s day, but we’re about 2,000 years past that point. If they can’t even read their own language, what hope do they have of learning the language of their host country? Especially a difficult language like German. We still have Turks that have been here 30-years that can barely speak or read German, and certainly not at university level.
When you import people from countries that are still stuck in the 1st century on every level of their cultural and mental existence, it should be clear bad things are going to happen when they are confronted with the reality of our modern world. India, Pakistan and others like them need to keep what little brain trust they keep exporting west and fix their own problems instead of exporting the idiots, who make up the majority of their populace, around the rest of the globe.
Say what you want about Christianity, but the immigrants who came to America from old Europe came from Christian backgrounds. And the fundamental values they brought with them were shared among all Christians. Poles, Russians, Czechs, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans who came to the US and western Europe were able to fit into our respective cultures because they shared a common religion. The Bible, no matter in what language it’s printed, is still about peace, forgiveness and love. Unlike the hate mongering Islamic bastards who only preach hatred, intollerance and death out of the Koran.
No country needs these people. Period. We need to pull up the drawbridge and put out the “no vacancy” sign and take care of our own first.
Karl;
Do you think Merkel will win re-election?
Do regular German folks know that their “news” outlets hide any mention (when possible) of muslim-immigrant crime which seems to be rampant? (though if you look at some UK news outlets, they do not hide this info).
It seems to me that any political party that opposes from the right the standard left wing/social democrats is immediately branded as extreme right wing/neo-nazi, etc. For instance, in France, Marine Le Pen ‘s party is basically identified by the Euro mainstream media as “far right.” Am I wrong on this? Her party appears to be pro-French .
What do normal, everyday Germans think about Merkel’s open border concept?
Has anyone figured out in Germany WHY Merkel and the useful idiots in her party desire to have open borders? Is Merkel trying to, for all intents and purposes, eliminate from the earth German culture?
Thanks for your response
It was interesting that for the first time in so many months, the AfD was actually given time to speak about the Berlin attack. A recent interview gave them about 10-minutes of air time. A year ago, they would never have been given any air time at all. They make it clear that they hold Chancellor Merkel personally responsible, and rightly so. As you say, “the buck stops here” and “here” is at her desk.
To your points. “Yes” anyone hard right gets the Nazi label, but it is being used so frequently as to have lost any serious meaning. “Yes” we are seeing a stronger nationalistic sense across much of Europe. Where Americans are known for flag waving, many still see it as a bit polemic. Only because Germans and most Europeans are very modest and are not known for bragging about their countries. So it doesn’t come over well. But it’s been going on for so long, I think people are changing back to realizing they do have somethign to be proud of and that there is nothing wrong with being proud of one’s country.
The “open border” problem sn’t about Frau Merkel as much as it is about the EU laws.The original intention of “open borders” was to eliminate the old Europeans borders to all EU members. Much in the way you can travel from California to Oregon, but not California to Mexico. The initial offer to immigrants, specifically those from the middle east, was only for refugees in Syria and I think people tend to forget that was her original invitation of humanitarian assistance.
However because of incredibly poor mismanagement on the part of the German government, and the EU, everyone from the middle east saw it as an opportunity to get out of their respective hell holes and head to somewhere that was much better. Germany simply was not prepared for 1,000,000 people to suddenly show up as they did. If you know anything about Germany, we are organized and highly bureaucratic, so there was a huge embarrassment that the government couldn’t manage the flood of people since they had no idea what they were actually getting themselves into.
As to what everyday Germans think. I believe many, like myself, saw it as a humanitarian act to help people in a horrible situation. Just as you send relief to Haiti, this was a way for Germany to step up and offer assistance. However, because of the mismanagement and subsequent abuse by these people against those who welcomed them, there is a backlash starting to gain momentum. Initially it was against Chancellor Merkle and her party (thus the popularity of the AfD) but now it’s starting to pick up against the people who came here. How much the average German will put up with is anyone’s guess.
I don’t really believe Frau Merkel is trying to de-Germanize our country any more than Hollande is trying to make France less French. It’s just when you have people in charge with very liberal views and who enact policies that don’t affect them personally, it’s just too easy for them to tell everyone to just go with it and stop complaining. This latest attack in Berlin hit close to home in a way, so perhaps things may start to turn around especially since it’s an election year in 2017.
Mr. Horst, it is good to hear your righteous anger, especially in light of what just happened in Berlin.
I agree with your post, except for the second paragraph. And by that I mean that America still has vast lands but most of it is “owned” by the federal government (for our own good, you know!); and their are fortunes still to be made.
What I find odd is that no one questions the paradigm the world currently operates under. The basic premise of the economy is “growth.” However, the drive for endless growth, the corporate prerogative for endless, increasing quarterly earnings has led to the need for global markets, cheaper labor, cheaper products, and mass production for lower costs. A big part of that is plastics. Quality and mass production go hand-in-hand through the use of plastic. Gone are the days of skill and craftsmanship. Gone are the days of people buying products for longevity of usefulness. Products with 6-9 month life cycles are constantly thrown on the market to the drumbeat of Wall Street.
For other product areas and innovation, the big scam is on. Big Pharma, FIRE (Finance, Insurance & Real Estate), are scamming people in what used to be business that provided real solutions to real problems. Now all they do is look to amortize the revenue stream and slough off an risk and liabilities onto the taxpayer with the aid of politicians and lawyers (largely one and the same) and their lobbyists.
Countries like Germany, still value quality and produce high value products. Certainly there are product categories that cater to the rich & famous, the 10% aspiring to the 1%, but for most consumers, products are simply garbage. The mental gymnastics to get people to subscribe to “cheaper” products goes together with the flat lining of real wages since the 1970’s. It only seems like people have “more” but it is simply just stuff … junk. The appreciation for quality, aesthetics, usability, reliability have been supplanted by “cheap stuff.”
Cheap labor being imported to the US adds no value. In fact, it is a negative contribution to the overall economy and society. Rather than giving people an “opportunity”, they are being given a way to exist at someone else’s expense.
I remember being about 15 when I said to myself “There has to be more to life than just existing.” Maybe I am an anomaly. It seems so many people are satisfied being taken care of and having lots of “cheap stuff.” And global corporations, keep looking for the golden BB, ways to boost the next quarterly statement without regard for the people that are their customers or the world they live in. I believe that a change in paradigm is in order. As someone else said “What cannot go on, will not go on.”
@ LetsPlay – What I meant by no fortunes left to be made was on the scale of the industrial giants of the late 1800’s (Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc.) I agree, tech can still make a few people rich, but today companies like Google and eBay despite their value, hire very few people in comparison to the millions who worked for steel, railroads and other industries of the last century.
You are correct, Germany does take a great deal of technical pride and we are well known for excellent engineering and innovation. We also have very good working relationships with our unions and the companies, as they were never set up to be adversarial as they are in France, the UK or the US.
The difference between Germans and the rest of Europe is we are not consumer driven people. We are not lured into massive credit debts or financial schemes to have everything now. For the most part, the average German lives within his means and lives a modest life. We put a high value on education, and our schools are designed to reflect that value.
The majority of German manufacturing companies (around 98%) are less than 100 employees, so they tend to function like a true family business. We do not embrace the American “team” concept. One does not treat family like team members of the local football club! So it is not uncommon for workers to remain with their first company until they retire there. But they are also given the opportunity to move up from apprentice to manager during the course of their careers.
Whether or not this can continue is another question. We do have our cheap Chinese “crap” stores, but generally we can buy European or German products in all stores from hardware to the grocery store. Plus, we have a large market in the south, since countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and others are not industrial, so they are a good market for us.
Karl;
Agree completely. What anyone in the West should be asking their elites is, “So, how many of our fellow citizens should die so that you can continue to feel yourself superior to us_?”.
To the open-borders crowd, people are a resource. Flood the country with foreign workers without citizenship. These workers thus have no rights – they are in the country at the bequest of their employers. The more of these immigrants enter the country, the smaller the percentage of people with citizenship and thus voting rights.
In this way a democracy can eventually become subverted to a Feudal state without ever having formally changed the government structure. At the top will be the political class and underneath the foreign workers, or “global citizens” as the Left want to call them. Welcome to Saudi Arabia.
The open borders folks are motivated by contempt and hatred for the USA; it is no accident they are mostly all liberal progressives, who, by definition, would re-write the US Constitution and have it resemble that of the USSR or, as that distinguished, leftist, communist Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have it, that of South Africa.
Open border folks = liberal progressive/socialist/communists; and we know how they feel about American history, form of government , policies and last, but certainly not least, about the average white American.
And given the opportunity, they would literally destroy the USA .
Open borders is just another tool they use to achieve this.
Anyone else remember the anti-Soviet miniseries from circa 1986, “Amerika”? For reasons that were extremely dimly plausible if America had really gone off the rails in the 1970s, late 80s America was occupied by a USSR/UN ‘peacekeeping force’ and divided up into administrative areas that per Soviet practice were slowly being given faux national identities and prepared for supervised ‘independence’.
The Midwest was being prepared for this condition as the people’s republic of “Heartland”. The [somewhat unsure of all this] party leader was played by Robert Urich. A surprisingly sympathetic character. One sees how the collaborationist regimes emerge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(miniseries)
Of course, it was a Russian occupation of 80s America, and it was set mostly outside bigger centres so it was pretty white. The current new order will be different,
At one point, all the youth organizations are folded into the new “Lincoln Youth Brigade” on the Komsomol/Young Pioneer model. At a ceremony, one of the main characters’ sons recites a new pledge:
“We are the voice of the new generation. We are the voice of the new people. The destructive ways of the past are gone. We will replace them with our vision of the future. The Party will lead us to the new age. There have been those who have tried to stop the new age. They are the corrupt reminder of the past. They have tried to confuse us with the idea that the old America was a good country. We know that lie. History teaches us that lie. We are grateful to our Soviet brothers who saved the world from destruction, and we can now join them in a world of socialist brotherhood. Everyone will go to school, everyone will have a job, everyone will be equal. No one will exploit or be exploited, and all those who oppose this wonderful vision will be crushed.”
OTOH, the anthem is catchy. The only wrong note is the reference to “every soul on earth” in a Soviet-inspired anthem. But the Soviets were flexible about things for countries in the ‘national democratic stage’ and only starting the path to Socialism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAjlvwVGZKk “Heartland, my Heartland”. It’s quite lovely.
That is one excellent piece you wrote Z.
Outstanding. Every single person in America needs to read this.
Bravo!
” Every single person in America needs to read this.”
Even the LoFo, LoIQs?
Waste of time.
Sixty years ago a fellow pointed out succinctly that it’s perfectly obvious that you can’t have open immigration and a welfare state at the same time. But it is no longer perfectly obvious to people raised in occupied America. Before the Great War Europe had no passports. If people traveled to other countries and into alien customs and language, they had a good reason, because there was no welfare state waiting to pick up for their bad decisions. The welfare state is an advertisement for the lowest quality immigrant.
Exactly. I keep hoping that massive immigration, whatever else its effects, might at least kill the welfare state through over-subscription. I may be dreaming though – it might just kill the productive classes first.
We shouldn’t be surprised though, that handing out free shit tends to attract people wishing to harvest it. So, what’s the solution to the problem? It should be obvious…
I think Robert A. Heinlein’s solution is elegant and workable; one is simply a resident, legal or illegal, but only citizens get to vote or hold office, and that requires an Honorable Discharge.
Brilliant man, wasn’t he, Heinein?
re: “Brilliant man, wasn’t he, Heinein?” C D
Heinlein lost it in his later novels.
Dan Kurt
Yeah, but he had a series of strokes, so I’ll forgive him. Even in his later lunacy his genius shone out.
The trouble with that is what the French learned around 1792. Prior to the revolution, there was not nation, strictly speaking so there could be so citizens. The king was the king of the French people and they were his subjects. The first pass of reform created the French nation and the king was the first citizen, but not everyone was a citizen. You had active and passive citizens. That got out of hand quickly as the active citizens had skin in the game, but the passive citizens had no stake in the system. It did not take long before it was adversarial.
Heinlein’s idea is fine if you think a military dictatorship is a good idea. Anyone familiar with the military knows they have loads of morons, misfits and dangerous nutters. It’s not a great filter for picking the bets citizens.
A much more simple approach is to lock voting to place of birth. You vote where you were. That means all of those Massholes moving to the South have no voting rights in their new state. They can, if Mass permits it, vote absentee in Massachusetts. This completely solves the illegal alien vote problem. It also solves the migrant voting problem. If you are born here to parents that are citizens, you vote here in the state you were born. Otherwise, you don’t get to vote.
Z Man;
Don’t think you’d have to worry about a military dictatorship if only veterans could vote. Most of us would recall the (sometimes necessary) waste and stupidity we saw in our time of service. Prior military service as a condition for voting privileges is just another sort of the ‘skin-in-the-game’ you are right to advocate for as a precondition for citizenship.
Given that Heinlein was writing for the WWII generation when universal conscription was in force (just not in effect),* and there were 15 + million that would have qualified, that idea no doubt seemed more normal and democratic to him than the property criteria of the late 1700’s, for example. Also, then as now, military service screens out low IQ individuals, hence low IQ voters. Even during Vietnam, the bottom quintile in the ASVAB (armed services vocational aptitude battery)** were barred from serving: Not worth the trouble of trying to train them, even for the ground forces 😉
* During peacetime there was no way all eligible 18 year olds could be ‘accommodated’, so numerous exemptions were granted. One of the hidden issues during Vietnam was how easy it was to skate if one had connections.
** Standard IQ test type + spacial orientation + mechanical aptitude questions. Given the obvious incentive structure, the ASVAB was set up so that if you answered at random, you’d pass. So it took genuine ‘inaptitude’ to flunk. Air Force and Navy had higher cut-off’s.
Yes, if the US had stuck with the pre-1965 low levels of Europeans only immigration, things would have been OK. That horse left the stable 50 years ago, and now we have at least 65 million people from the 3d world. Most of whom vote democratic, disproportionately take welfare and free medical services, and are of little use in a modern economy, which currently has huge numbers of people not in the work force.And they don’t assimilate, as a group, and never will….Now we are in danger of losing our country to groups who are incapable of maintaining western civilization, and drastic action is absolutely required.
Kick out the bottom 1% every year, and let in that many people who are good quality
We couldn’t “kick them out”, they would have to be “eliminated”. The USA already imprisons about 1% of the population, so does that work for you? I propose that we cut annual legal immigration to 50,000 maximum, with NO FAMILY REUNIFICATION. A year of prison for employers who hire (knowingly or unknowingly) illegally-present persons for repeating work. We want hard working single young adults who are the smartest of their kind, with IQ over 110, willing to renounce their country-of-origin citizenship and every kind of Islam on video while stepping on pig feces then the Saudi and ISIS flag. These will be our “ex-Muslims” who will be assigned to a team of handlers to monitor. I’m looking forward to the next Bracken novel featuring even more fun solutions to our trouble.
Where to begin …
1. The problem isn’t so much the internal borders in Europe or internal migration. I don’t think most Brits have a problem with Polish people relocating to London. The problem is the there is no “Coast Guard” guarding the perimeter of Europe protecting it against “others”.
2. “In America, immigrants are free to start their own timeline.” Excellent point, however there was another way of accomplishing the same thing. My paternal grandfather became the local wealthy land baron through money he saved up by working at Bethlehem Steel. In fact, he made the whole clan wealthy because he shared his wealth with his brothers. My dad’s cousins are government officials and you know what that means: They live pretty well. Probably through a little graft.
3. “The Turk in this story married a Greek woman”. Non sequitur. Greeks don’t have a problem with Christian Turks. In fact, a third of the population of the portion of Macedonia that Greek seized in 1913 comes from Greek Christians who were kicked out of Turkey. They took the place of the native Macedonians who were either ethnically cleansed or butchered there. It’s the Muslims they have a problem with.
4. Hyper patriotism – Absolutely. During the wars in Yugoslavia I was joking around with my uncle about whether he was going to send my cousins over to help fight. My uncle started ranting and raving about how everything he has is because of America and how that place never gave him a thing. He said, “If my kids are going to fight for anybody it’s going to be for America!!”
5. Lack of assimilation. I don’t know if I agree with you here. It takes time, but people do assimilate. I would say it takes about 30 to 50 years to reach 80% to 90% assimilation based on my own experience. (I will never surrender my traditional Orthodox Christian morality or what passes for sexual morality In America, which is actually Secular Jewish/Cultural Marxist moraltity where women spread their legs on the first date). I was sitting at a local McDonalds doing paperwork one afternoon and listening in to the conversation of some high school kids sitting in back of me. Nice kids, polite and well-spoken. The girl sounded a little bit like a valley girl. They were the children of Somalian parents. There is hope.
It’s still, always has been, about money and power.
“Illegal immigration is to legal immigration as shoplifting is to shopping.”
Great post Z, and I think you really hit on a crucial aspect of immigration. In my mind, in the old days, immigrants came to America to remake themselves and create new identities. You see that in the bios of so many old entertainers like Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz who millions of Americans came to love as Danny Thomas of “Make Room for Daddy”. While Thomas was born here, he was a 2nd generation American who fully embraced the possibilities this country could offer him.
I’d love to think that the post-1965 wave of immigrants and their children embrace the concept of assimilation as a means to create a new life and destiny for themselves but the evidence is slim.
I think names are important. Asians consistently adopt anglicized names, and I don’t think its a coincidence that they’re our most successful immigrants. But if that changes we will know we’ve reached a tipping point. As for our Latino and Muslim immigrants it’s a different story.
We haven’t yet reached the point where Jose and Mohammed are topping the most popular baby names charts, but we’re not too far off.
Progressives have fallen hook, line, sinker for this bizarre notion that everybody is just the same, all cultures are relative and borders don’t matter. Somehow confusing a song (Imagine) with reality. Two events shaped my view. First growing up with the first generation of Cuban children born to refugees in South Florida. They were still Cuban, but intensely American in a way that is hard to describe. Hillary poked that hornets nest without realizing it a month ago. The second was working with a large cohort of Brezhnev era Russian emigres (we use a lot of quants in my business). Same burning intensity to be Americans. All I know voted for Trump and think the Democrats have lost their fucking minds.
I think this misses the point somewhat, which is that everybody is the same isn’t the big thing but instead white people are bad.
Think the “white people are bad” got tacked on ex post when the “kumbaya” crap didn’t work. Remember the 1965 Act + subsequent illegal immigration basically gave the Progressives what they wished for…but when Nirvana didn’t happen it was time for a new theory….all white people are bad and are sabotaging the creation of Progressive Man(Woman, It, etc). I remember the Liberty City riots back in 1980. The first people the rioters went after were the Cubans not the caucasians.
Two sides of this:
1. This isn’t about changing demographics for votes or power, it’s changing demographics because of (self-)hatred of white people and western civilization.
2. Free trade globalism is a mix of radical ideologues who actually believe and opportunists who would sell out their own country for more profit. Not sure about the ratio, but both exist and neither care about the unintended consequences.
But it’s not mere immigration, it’s voelkerwanderung of biblical proportions!
I’m from Melania land, a country of just 2 million souls, image how this seems to us, watching just California taking in several European nation states worth of people from central America, yet it’s somehow not enough, that’s nuts!
I also like the “majority minority” description of your new majority, it’s white Hispanic level of good.
I’m also from Melania land, or at least my parents are, but just a little bit southeast. The white Hispanics are not the problem in managed numbers. They aren’t too far off from what “we” are, or Greeks, or Italians. In fact, a lot of those white Hispanics come from places like Italy, Greece or Melania land, so they aren’t as Hispanic as they might seem.
Just before I retired a Muslim patient of mine told me that he had voted for Trump in the primary. Another one told me that the difference between a Sunni and a Shia is biggest than the difference between a Christian and a Muslim (I find this hard to believe but what I think he was saying is that it is easier for a Christian and a Muslim to live in the same city than it is for a Shia and a Sunni — in that case quite believable).
What I just described above are complexities that cannot be programmed into an immigration policy regardless of how seemingly rational it is. No matter how enightened our lefty brothers think they are they aren’t capable of designing a sociological supercomputer that can match wits with human understanding and folk pathways. And these are many of the same people who study them for a living (the guy that told me about the Shia Sunni thing was also a liberal folklore professor).
The big pushers of diversity are also the same people who make a big deal about how simple minded we people on the right are and treat us with sickening patronization. Then explain to me how it is that they think that they can preprogram human relations while we say that it’s more complicated than that?
I think this goes back to the ratio/intellectus dichotomy. They are subconsciously aware of this and assume that because they have this fetish for analytical thinking that they are able to recognize and deal with complexities at a higher level than the non-analytical thinker. However, their mode of thinking blinds them to the comprehensive nature of intellectus thinking, the ability to understand in the whole. People who live, breathe, work and experience the world don’t have to reduce it to manageable abstractions in order to understand it. We just ducking see it for what it is, and they never will because they have a predisposition to be blind to what is in front of them and the world they have built around themselves bars them from visualizing their own lacunae.
Any political benefit from immigration will soon be wiped out by those who immigrate. if a political party wants more low-IQ, browner-than-the-natives voters they will benefit for a short while, especially if they tell the hordes that all the freebies require voting for the border-openers. But even low-IQs begin to figure out that if they start their own party then they can cut out ‘the middle man’ and start to have access to it all. Expect then to see the emergence of lots of small, very ethnic and maybe non-English-speaking political parties trying to grab the keys to the treasury.
In the U.S. we call that political party “The Democrats”.
I call them something else
The spreadsheet mentality is why libertarians are, at bottom, no different from liberals — they’re both all-in on Marx’s dictum about one’s social being determining one’s consciousness. Jiggle this law, toggle that tax, put just the right amount of propaganda in the Friday night tv lineup and bam!, there’s no difference between Portland and Pretoria, Austin and Allahbad. I have to wonder if these guys have ever traveled much inside.the US, much less overseas. My people are Irish — like, Granddad-was-born-on-the-boat-to-Ellis-Island Irish. And yet, having spent some time in the non-tourist parts of the Emerald Isle, I can tell you that the Irish are just barmy. We speak the same language (kinda), but we’re worlds apart. And that’s about as close an affinity as you can get. Then I went to India…. Magic Dirt theory is without doubt the stupidest, most reality-avoidant idea I’ve ever heard, and I once took a graduate-level seminar in Women’s Studies.
There is certainly not unanimous support for open borders among libertarians. Read the comments of any Reason immigration article and you will see massive disagreement on the topic.
There is a chant at British soccer matches, aimed at the referee for any bad decisions, which goes: “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
I think this could safely be chanted at a lot of liberal politicians and enthusiasts.
There has to be a motive for a crime. I believe the Cult wants open borders to 1. tip the political and cultural scales in their favor as they believe that most third world immigrants will vote Democrat, and 2. to poke a burning stick in the eye of the monstrous cyclops they call conservatism but which is really traditional America. #2 is especially the case regarding Muslim immigrants. With open borders the Cult gets to set the entire political and cultural agenda and to punish traditional Americans at the same time. Nirvana for them. Trump won because of this issue. Normal Americans know that the final battle for their country is at hand.
Yes, agree. Traditional Americans hold much strength so flooding the country with people from incompatible cultures who never assimilate will destroy that tradition, that power the people hold. It is destroying the fabric and heritage of our country and weakening the American public in addition to weakening American workers with low wages and scarcity of jobs due to too many immigrants doing the work for a lot less than the natives.
I recently came across this information on the refugee resettlement program in the U.S. It is insane that we’re doing this. It’s a money-making scheme, financed by the taxpayer, to provide public benefits to so-called refugees, who then take the remaining jobs because they’ll work for less. It’s diabolical that we are financing our own demise. If Americans want their country back, we need to capture the Congressional legislative process that gives agency to this madness. The people who really run this country know that so they worked to capture the U.S.’s legislative process and money system. They have succeeded and have us right where they want us: powerless creatures providing cheap labor.
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/refugee-resettlement-fact-sheets/
I agree, too. It’s amazing how many SJWs have gotten on board with completely open borders over the past 18 months. Bernie did a Vox interview early in his campaign where he told Ezra Klein that open borders are a Kock bothers plot that would make all Americans poorer. I’ve repeatedly shown this interview to Bernie supporters that I know, while explaining that by embracing open borders, they’re siding with billionaire oligarchs who they’re supposed to hate. If you want to make it so that the “powers that be” can never be challenged, you couldn’t do better than open borders, especially while pushing their toxic brand of identity politics. None of it gets through to them. Their hatred for the wrong kind of white people is too intense and it completely blinds them.
*Koch . . . and I’ll add that de facto oligarchy is a human universal, i.e., it’s existed in every society throughout history that people are aware of. Watering the seeds of liberty with the blood of tyrants every few generations sounds ugly and messy, and who the hell would want to do that if we could simply vote the people who rise to the top out of power once they inevitably start abusing it? Multiculturalism/diversity/open borders, etc. makes this all much harder. Most of us are looking at a squirrel while the oligarchs do their thing.
There’s that, but the lower level morons – my mother and her social circle in a university town comprise one such aggregation – subscribe with all their blessed little hearts to a Koombayah We Are The World, We Are The Children, We Are All One theory – or rather gushing sentiment.
The open borders crowd are an odd mix of do-gooders and those who want cheap workers and neither of them have any idea of or concern for unforeseen consequences.
If the present unrestricted immigration cannot be changed, I hope they all have their personal lives destroyed by way of an unforeseen consequence, for why should only the victims suffer, and not the perpetrators?
Perhaps a “migrant” driven truck killing several members of the Clinton or Soros families. Schadenwuensch, a new word I think, even to the Germans.
Unfortunately the do-gooders can’t seem to grasp that “becuz, feelingz” is not a strategy.
Were in only ‘feelings’, I might forgive them, as I try to forgive all stupid people.
But the greed, the sheer greed, the desire for cheap labor and complaisant voters, and the malevolence against their own kind, their own families, neighbors and fellow citizens, for those things I cannot forgive them.
The majority of the lower level Koombayah morons in the electorate that supports this stuff falls into this class:
Pelosi Says Treat Illegal Immigrant Children Like Baby Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffG7jxrGtyM
As I recall, the public authorities of Judea were treating baby Jesus exactly like an illegal immigrant, even though he had birthright citizenship and a citizen mother.
Of course, they had some intel from three unspecified ‘Eastern’ informants. But they were kings or wise men after all, so reasonably credible. Clearly Judean Homeland Security had to act on intel of a threat to overthrow the government.
I assume these are the events to which Pelosi is referring.