The Abnormal Cannot Be Normal

The abnormal is not the normal just because it is prevalent. For example, the mutilation of children is not “gender-affirming care.” Anti-white racism is not “anti-racism.” Illegal migrants are not “undocumented ‘new neighbors.’” A bisected cow in a tank of formaldehyde is not an important work of art.

Restoring American Culture

Roger Kimball, Imprimis 2/25, Hillsdale College

The Lack of Common Sense in Today's Culture

Is it common sense to open the borders of your country and then to spend truckloads of taxpayer dollars to feed, house, and nurture the millions of illegal migrants who have poured in? Is it common sense to sacrifice competence on the altar of so-called diversity? To allow politicians to bankrupt the country by incontinent overspending? That’s the start of a list one could easily enlarge.

In the cultural realm, is it common sense to celebrate art that is indistinguishable from pornography or some other form of psychopathology? Is it common sense to rewrite history in an effort to soothe the wounded feelings of people who crave victimhood? Is it common sense to transform higher education from an institution dedicated to the preservation and transmission of the highest values of our civilization into a wrecking ball aimed at destroying that civilization?

Restoring American Culture

Roger Kimball, Imprimis 2/25, Hillsdale College

Rewarding Illegal Immigration?

If we incentivize illegal immigration by rewarding those who ignore our laws and fail to ensure that those to whom we grant citizenship understand and respect the founding ideals that made this nation great, the United States will soon look little different from the countries these immigrants are fleeing. We will no longer have anything good to share.

Megan Basham, Shepherds For Sale, pg.50

Allowing Illegal Immigration Is STUPID

 

Citizenship Is A RIGHT

"Illegal" Means "Illegal"!

I strongly object to the word “immigrant” as applied to aliens who are here illegally. An immigrant is a person who files the requisite applications, receives the requisite approvals after being properly vetted, and then waits his turn to be admitted based on US priorities. It may take time, even several years, but those who are here legally waited their turn and so must (should) everyone. An illegal alien is not a migrant or an immigrant, period.

Thomas J. Bruno, The New Leftist Argument: Illegal Aliens Are Actually Here Legally

The Open Border is a Trojan Horse.

 To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country, as recommended in the Message, would be nothing less, than to admit the Grecian Horse into the Citadel of our Liberty and Sovereignty.

Alexander Hamilton (1802)

What Happens When You Don't Study History

 

Upside Down Politics

Getting back to the southern border, it perfectly symbolizes the bifurcation of our society. We’re told there’s a health emergency. We’re told we can’t open our businesses or attend weddings or funerals. Yet at the same time, every day, thousands of people pour across the southern border, test positive for COVID, and are then driven to a nice hotel and put up there at taxpayers’ expense.

Mark Steyn, Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization

Immigration Can Be a Trojan Horse

The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits. ... The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass....it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. ... To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country...would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.

Alexander Hamilton, Message to Congress, 7 December 1801. Cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.182-183.

Illegal Immigrants Cost Taxpayers Dearly

Don’t be fooled by those who say that illegal aliens contribute billions to our economy and take little from it.  They’re wrong.  Many work off books, earn low wages, pay little to no taxes, send millions of dollars in remittances to their home country, and use social services at a higher rate than American citizens.  The truth is that, yes, illegal aliens are important to our economy—but only if you’re talking about the destruction of it.

Illegal immigrants tend to be less skilled and less educated than those who got off the ships at Ellis Island. While new immigrants used to earn just 14 percent less than native-born Americans, that gap had widened to an average of 34 percent less by 1998.

Before the New Deal, if you came to America and couldn’t make it, you went home.  Now, our growing welfare state is feeding off those who fall short of the eduction and skills necessary to achieve the American Dream. Illegal immigrants are 50 percent more likely to use welfare than citizens. They get free education, Medicaid, cash assistance for kids (WIC), and sometimes food stamps.  While children of illegal immigrants make up only six percent of the population, they account for almost 12 percent of our nation’s poor.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.138-139

An Excellent View on Immigration

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

Bad Economy is a Result of Illegal Immigration

The economy we’re living in today is in no small part a result of the [Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965], which opened the door to mass immigration of unskilled and low-skilled workers, primarily through unlimited family chain migration. And that’s not an economy anyone should be satisfied with.

Today, we have about a million immigrants per year. That’s like adding the population of Montana every year—or the population of Arkansas every three years. But only one in 15—one in 15 of those millions of immigrants—comes here for employment-based reasons. The vast majority come here simply because they happen to be related to someone already here. That’s why, for example, we have more Somalia-born residents than Australia-born residents, even though Australia is nearly twice the size of Somalia and Australians are better prepared, as a general matter, to integrate and assimilate into the American way of life.

In sum, over 36 million immigrants, or 94 percent of the total, have come to America over the last 50 years for reasons having nothing to do with employment. And that’s to say nothing of the over 24 million illegal immigrants who have come here. Put them together and you have 60 million immigrants, legal and illegal, who did not come to this country because of a job offer or because of their skills. That’s like adding almost the entire population of the United Kingdom. And this is still leaving aside the millions of temporary guest workers who we import every year into our country.

Unlike many open-border zealots, I don’t believe the law of supply and demand is magically repealed for the labor markets. That means that our immigration system has been depressing wages for people who work with their hands and on their feet. Wages for Americans with high school diplomas are down two percent since the late 1970s. For Americans who didn’t finish high school, they’re down by a staggering 17 percent. Although immigration has a minimal effect overall on the wages of Americans, it has a severe negative effect on low-skilled workers, minorities, and even recent immigrants. . . . 

But the harmful impact on blue-collar workers isn’t the only problem with the current system. Because we give two-thirds of our green cards to relatives of people here, there are huge backlogs in the system. This forces highly talented immigrants to wait in line for years behind applicants whose only claim to naturalization is a random family connection to someone who happened to get here years ago. We therefore lose out on the very best talent coming into our country—the ultra-high-skilled immigrants who can come to America, stand on their own two feet, pay taxes, and through their entrepreneurial spirit and innovation create more and higher-paying jobs for our citizens.

To put it simply, we have an immigration system that is badly failing Madison’s test of increasing the wealth and strength of the community. It might work to the advantage of a favored few, but not for the common good, and especially not the good of working-class Americans.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest

The Real History of Immigration in America

The history of immigration in America is not one of ever-growing tides of huddled masses from the Pilgrims to today. On the contrary, throughout our history, American immigration has followed a surge-and-pause pattern. The first big wave was the Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. Then immigration tapered off during the Civil War. The second big wave was the central and southern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That wave ended with the [Johnson-Reed Act of 1924] and the years of lower immigration that followed. And now we’re in the longest wave yet, the surge of immigration from Latin America and East and South Asia, which has followed from the [Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965].

In this actual history—not the fairy tale history—the 1924 Act is not an aberration, but an ebb in the regular ebb and flow of immigration to America. After decades of unskilled mass immigration, that law responded by controlling future immigration flows. One result of lower levels of immigration was that it allowed those earlier immigrants to assimilate, learn new skills, and move up the economic ladder, creating the conditions for mass affluence in the post-war era.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest

The Purpose of Allowing Immigration

While we wish our fellow man well, it’s only our fellow citizens to whom we have a duty and whose rights our government was created to protect. And among the highest obligations we owe to each other is to ensure that every working American can lead a dignified life. If you look across our history, I’d argue that’s always been the purpose of our immigration system: to create conditions in which normal, hard-working Americans can thrive.

Look no further than what James Madison said on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1790, when the very first Congress was debating our very first naturalization law. He said, “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours.”  “The worthy part,” not the entire world. Madison continued, “But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community.”

“To increase the wealth and strength of the community.” That’s quite a contrast to today’s elite consensus. Our immigration system shouldn’t exist to serve the interests of foreigners or wealthy Americans. No, it ought to benefit working Americans and serve the national interest—that’s the purpose of immigration and the theme of the story of American immigration.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest

The Need for Uniform Naturalization Laws

The Constitution affirms [the] concept of American citizenship. It includes only one reference to immigration, where it empowers Congress to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization.” It’s worth pondering a couple points here.

First, what’s that word uniform doing? The Constitution uses the word only three times, when requiring uniform rules for naturalization, bankruptcies, and taxation. These are things that could either knit our Union together or blow it apart—taxation by the central government, the system of credit upon which the free enterprise system depends, and the meaning of citizenship. On these, the Framers insisted upon a uniform, nationwide standard. Diverse habits and laws are suitable for many things in our continental republic, but not for all things. In particular, we can only have “one people” united by a common understanding of citizenship.

Second, the word naturalization implies a process by which foreigners can renounce their former allegiances and become citizens of the United States. They can cast off what accident and force have thrust upon them—race, class, ethnicity—and take on, by reflection and choice, a new title: American. That is a wonderful and beautiful thing, and one of which we are all justly proud. Few Americans love our land so much as the immigrants who’ve escaped the yoke of tyranny.

But our cosmopolitan elites take this to an extreme. They think because anyone can become an American, we’re morally obligated to treat everyone like an American. If you disagree, you’re considered hard-hearted, bigoted, intolerant, xenophobic. So the only policies that aren’t inherently un-American are those that effectively erase our borders and erase the distinction between citizen and foreigner: don’t erect barriers on the border; give sanctuary cities a pass; spare illegal immigrants from deportation; allow American businesses to import as much cheap labor as they want. Anything less, the elites say, is a betrayal of our ideals.

But that’s wrong. Just because you can become an American doesn’t mean you are an American. And it certainly doesn’t mean we must treat you as an American, especially if you don’t play by our rules. After all, in our unique brand of nationalism, which connects our people through our ideas, repudiating our law is kind of like renouncing your blood ties in the monarchical lands of old. And what law is more fundamental to a political community than who gets to become a citizen, under what conditions, and when?

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest

America’s Founders: Nationalism, Not Globalism

Prior to those stirring passages [in the Declaration of Independence] about “unalienable Rights” and “Nature’s God,” in the Declaration’s very first sentence in fact, the Founders say it has become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands” that tie them to another—one people, not all people, not citizens of the world, but actual people who make up actual colonies. The Founders frequently use the words we and us throughout the Declaration to describe that people.

Furthermore, on several occasions, the Declaration speaks of “these Colonies” or “these States.” The Founders were concerned about their own circumstances; they owed a duty to their own people who had sent them as representatives to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They weren’t trying to free South America from Spanish or Portuguese dominion, much as they might have opposed that dominion.

Perhaps most notably, the Founders explain towards the end of the Declaration that they had appealed not only to King George for redress, but also to their fellow British citizens, yet those fellow citizens had been “deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.” Consanguinity!—blood ties! That’s pretty much the opposite of being a citizen of the world.

So while the Declaration is of course a universal document, it’s also a particular document about one nation and one people. Its signers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to each other, in English, right here in America—not in Esperanto to mankind in the abstract.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest