follow-up of families. In the 1990 census illegal aliens willnbe counted for the purpose of apportioning seats innCongress. Verb. sap. In the words of Congressman LamarnSmith (R-TX), “Unprincipled generosity lacks value.”nI came to America under the old McCarran-Walter Actnon a Liberty transport called the Marine Tiger (hammockholdnaccommodation, a £25 ride). On my quota visa I hadnto serve a five-year probationary period during which I hadnregularly to report my address, be fingerprinted in a PrecinctnHouse, clear my taxes and obtain a Re-Entry permit eachntime I left the U.S.A., and not return to my country ofnorigin for any extended period — this to discourage peoplentreating citizenship like a driving license (a passport is nonguarantee of patriotism). I then had to make a Declarationnof Intention within two more years, appear with witnessesnand be examined in English and what is today calledn”civics” (now opposed as irrelevant by civil libertarianngroups). I then took the oath in a moving ceremony. Incannot say I found these requirements onerous. They werenmuch less so than for French citizenship, and INS officialsnwere unfailingly courteous.nThe McCarran-Walter Act was considered repressivensince it allotted quotas to countries. England’s was thenlargest, on the basis of its being the parent country, and itnwas never filled, while postwar Italians had to wait in line fornyears for a quota visa. I simply walked across GrosvenornSquare to the only embassy the U.S. doesn’t own freeholdn(it belongs to the Duke of Westminster), was medicallynexamined, and filled in some papers. I had no idea what tonwrite in the box for race, was told to put Caucasian, and feltnrather grand. The quotas were not intentionally racist; theynwere based on the U.S. population as a whole where and asnpossible (immigration of American Indians obviously wasnnot).nNow it is assumed that quotas are automatically evil, andnperhaps they are in certain areas, such as employmentnand education. Immigration quotas, however, were designednto preserve the unifying ideal of American society, asnpopularly discerned. The “huddled masses” woman, EmmanLazarus, who gave so much impetus to the melting-potnnotion, was an indifferent poetess, not an elected official, asnwere both McCarran and Walter. By now it is quite clearnthat the introduction of hundreds of subgroups, with specificnclaims far in excess of their numbers, fractures the basicncoherence of society, as the language problem has shown.nBilingual education and civic signs in various tongues reallynsay that your culture is better than ours. For where loyalty isnconcerned it is difficult to be patriotic to a multiculture, andnthe culture of origin becomes dominant. Take the case ofnEngland, my own country of origin.nBritish society was founded pari passu by people withnwhite skins. It was hardly England’s fault that she was settlednby Saxons, Normans, Icelandic traders and the like, all ofnwhom pushed back the Celtic fringe of Europe. She wasnenslaved under the Roman Empire, her queen, Boadicea,nkilling herself after the indignity of being publicly scourged,na fact that has never persuaded me to boycott Italiannrestaurants. There was no significant immigration intonEngland by either blacks or Asiatics until after the SecondnWorid War and, in particular, the 1960’s. No Labournpolitician dared stem the influx, preferring to spend the timenof day opposing the playing of Elgar’s Land of Hope andnGlory and the like. Today England is so attractive fornsettlement-immigration that a third of such visas goes to thenIndian Subcontinent, and the larger part of that to Pakistan,nwhich exports immigrants with by far the highest birthrate ofnany alien group in England (well beyond even the WestnIndians). As a result of beneficent laxity in legislation, then,nEngland seems headed for the imposition of color quotas.nIn 1986 the U.S. government paid morenthan $17 million in Social Security benefitsnto illegal aliens.nLast year the U.S. took in one-tenth of one percent of thenentire population of Mexico, which was, incidentally, thenfirst country in the Western hemisphere to recognize thenBolsheviks (in 1924) and which sheltered Castro andnassisted the Ortegas, as well as being the only OAS membernto decline to break ties with Cuba in 1964. In the same yearnthe U.S. admitted under a hundred Irish. Immigrationnquotas into America are called racist although Asian countriesnlike Japan discourage immigration, while Malaysia,nIndonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines all carry quotansystems on their books eliminating or restricting Chinesenimmigration. So McCarran-Walter stands accused under anneologism called “nativism” of trying to preserve, not onlynthe natural beauty of America from overpopulation, but alsona cultural mix that has been the patrimony of America forngenerations. The Balkanizing or splintering of this mix onnbehalf of increasing numbers of special needs is cruciallyndivisive of the general coherence of our society.nAs an ex-limey I am not advocating an excessive numbernof British immigrants. On the contrary, it is worth notingnthat in his Emigration and Disenchantment: Portraits ofnEnglishmen Repatriated from the United States Wilbur S.nShepperson suggests that we British have been the worstnimmigrants to America in the sense that a large proportionndecline to take up the Declaration of Intention and returnnhome (especially true of the Scots). It does not surprise me.nHalf a century ago an Englishman coming to Americanheard roughly the same tongue and was put off by notnfinding a closer approximation to his own culture. Semanticsnare at the heart of upper-class British anti-Americanism evenntoday, for variation in language comes over, at first, as error.nA different language is another matter. Changing hisntongue, a Creek or Pole invests more psychological capital innthe new land and will assimilate better, in the sense ofnassenting to and supporting national ideals. To such wenprovoke disloyalty by financing departures from the languagenand customs of the host community; for instance, innEngland today, despite the illegality of brutal halal slaughtering,nschools with Moslem pupils have been cowed intonsponsoring such meat in their dinners. Far from enrichingnthe national body with fresh currents of plurality, we arenpublicly financing national disintegration. After all, it isncalculated that by the end of the century nearfy one-third ofnnnJULY 1990/25n