Roy Beck’s brief against immigration abounds in useful but also familiar statistics: e.g., since the Immigration Act of 1965, 30 million immigrants, mostly from Third World countries, have entered the United States; at least half of our births in the last 30 years are traceable to these immigrants; without them, the current population of the...
In debate, it is always possible to be right for the wrong reason. For instance, in supporting the proposition that cannibalism is immoral, I might argue that, historically, cannibalism encouraged the killing of human beings who might otherwise have been kidnapped by Arabs or rival African tribesmen and sold ...
Ann Coulter credits Peter Brimelow’s famous essay published in National Review in 1992 with delivering the blinding revelation that opened her eyes to the social and political crisis precipitated by the Establishment’s immigration policies since 1965. Having been rudely knocked off her horse, Miss Coulter has been hurling thunderbolts of her own all the way...
One of many reasons conservatives are so often at a disadvantage in political discussions is that we do not see why there should be any discussion, since we do not recognize a problem open to discussion at all. Take, for instance, assimilation. If you do not believe the United States should be accepting immigrants in...
The most significant event of President George W. Bush’s second term (thus far) has been the defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S.1348). This bill was initiated by President Bush in collaboration with the Democratic congressional majority, over the opposition of the Republicans and a few rebellious Democrats. The real winners of...
Until recently everybody thought that the threat of the Soviet Union lay in its strength; today everybody wisely claims it lies in its weakness. For almost a century the sheer weight and size of the communist monolith made us shudder with fear. Nowadays the monolith is breaking up into parts that, like comets, threaten to...
In debate, it is always possible to be right for the wrong reason. For instance, in supporting the proposition that cannibalism is immoral, I might argue that, historically, cannibalism encouraged the killing of human beings who might otherwise have been kidnapped by Arabs or rival African tribesmen and sold into slavery in the southern United...
The modern temper shows a fatal tendency to break large moral and historical questions into smaller technocratic ones and to tinker with each of these as a separated “policy problem.” Unfortunately for advocates of this approach, the immigration debate presents us with what is essentially a moral problem, requiring the use of the moral—even of...
“It is surely arguable that during the third century of American existence the main problem of this nation will be—it already is—that of immigration and migration, mostly from the so-called Third World.” —John Lukacs Last year the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) apprehended 1.8 million illegal aliens along our southern border—less than half the number...
“Pope Francis: Caring for the Poor Doesn’t Make You a Communist,” screamed the headline the day before Halloween. Perhaps not, I thought when I read the story, but why is it that caring for the world’s poor always seems to involve massive national and international programs of wealth transfer that might have been copied directly...
American leftists today yearn for a more receptive proletariat. They have virtually given up on the white working class, which they feel has been subverted by bourgeois values and the consumer society. Instead they have turned towards people of non-European stock to build a new base. The anti-Western “multiculturalism” that has become so controversial at...
Communist poet Bertolt Brecht, after the 1953 risings in East Germany, suggested that the Communist government should just dissolve the people and elect a new one. That is essentially what is happening in the United States. The American government is dissolving the people and electing a new one—in the name of shoring up and “growing”...
By the time Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed the shift in policy, it was hardly a surprise. In an August 18 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 21 other Democratic senators, Napolitano acknowledged that removing people from the country simply for being illegal immigrants was no longer an “enforcement priority” of the...
By the time Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed the shift in policy, it was hardly a surprise. In an August 18 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 21 other Democratic senators, Napolitano acknowledged that removing people from the country simply for being illegal immigrants was no longer ...
This remarkable editorial by Chronicles’ longest-serving editor offered one of the first and best analyses of America’s immigration problem.
Two mainstream think tanks have published new studies on immigration and race in America that come to the typical, safe conclusions. But a look at the data inside shows something more interesting. A new Cato Institute report defending immigration begins by contending that immigrants are unlikely to negatively affect states’ fiscal health. But within the study’s findings,...
This remarkable editorial by Chronicles’ longest-serving editor offered one of the first and best analyses of America’s immigration problem.
Proposition 187, California’s famous (or infamous) proposition to deny public services to illegal immigrants and their offspring, encouraged at least one member of Virginia’s General Assembly to propose similar legislation in this year’s session. The stout-hearted fellow’s name is Warren E. Barry, and he represents Fairfax County in Virginia’s Senate. For some time now, the...
The defense of academic freedom offered by those who wish to position themselves as centrists on the question is no help at all.
Caribbean immigrants in New York City are feeling the effects of several new immigration reform laws. Although New York’s immigration problems are acute—as the rage seen in the Abner Louima torture scandal attests—reform had to come from the federal level, since Mayor Giuliani continues to welcome massive immigration as a boon to the local economy....
Conservatives who saw through the fraud of the “temporary worker visa” program that President Bush unveiled in January and recognized it for the mass amnesty of illegal aliens it is might want to consider muting their fulminations against the concept of amnesty. If current demographic trends continue, they may find that they are in need...
Roper’s February polling of Americans reveals a clear consensus against high levels of immigration. Eighty-three percent favor a lower level of immigration than the current average of over a million a year, and some 70 percent support a level of immigration below 300.000 per year. This view is held by 52 percent of Hispanics, 73...
Ten years ago, it appeared that immigration restrictionists were poised to win some real political victories. In 1992, Pat Buchanan had raised the previously untouchable issue in his presidential primary challenge to George H.W. Bush. That same year, National Review, under the editorship of John O’Sullivan, joined Chronicles in calling for deep cuts in legal...
Within a few hours of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September, it had become commonplace for even high-ranking government officials and elected leaders to say publicly that Americans would just have to get used to fewer constitutional liberties and personal freedoms than they have traditionally enjoyed. Of course,...
In August, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published a report documenting a startling increase in immigration over the past year. The study indicated that America’s immigrant population had grown by 1.7 million and that 44 percent of the new immigrants were from Mexico, with illegal immigration increasing during a “protracted period of legal immigration...
Several months ago I spoke briefly at the Baltimore Bar Library against passage of the Maryland Dream Act, the state version of the federal initiative that has been hanging around the capitol for a dozen years now. My remarks were countered by two supporters of the act, a pair of earnest young men: both Catholic,...
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has come under ferocious attack for his alleged relationships with several women, including a teenage girl. These stories are surfacing exactly when one aspect of his policy—the fight against illegal immigration, which was part of the government program endorsed by the majority of voters in the last general election—is starting...
Trump and the movement he started have suffered from inconsistent objectives and dubious accomplishments. It is increasingly hard to believe that his comeback campaign can succeed.
“If anyone wish to migrate to another village, and if one or more who live in that village do notwish to receive him, if there he only one who objects he shall not move there.” —The Salic Law, c. 490 In this commentary on the American experiment, Michael Barone declares that...
Every evening, thousands of people line up just south of California’s border with Mexico. They wait for darkness to fall so they can slip across the border and illegally enter our country. The Border Patrol succeeds in catching as many as half of these people, but thousands more still succeed at illegally entering our country...
Homosexuality is either genetically or environmentally determined. Environmental influences are either intrauterine or postnatal. Behold the universe of possibilities! Sexual orientation probably results from the interaction of environment and genetic predisposition, but science, so far, explains only a little. Voluntarily choosing homosexuality cannot be discounted, although the more deeply embedded in genetics or early experience...
Pat Buchanan’s threnody on The Death of the West has upset Mr. Buchanan’s conservative enemies, who cannot forgive him for violating the GOP’s famous 11th Commandment—not “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans,” but “Thou shalt not bite the hand that feeds us.” No one can actually dispute Buchanan’s main thesis: that European America...
In the past, Republican primaries in Texas were won and lost on a wide variety of issues—taxes, ties to the community, money, education, abortion, agriculture. Usually, candidates who can unite a handful of major GOP donors (most of whom own large businesses in the state) have a major advantage in the primaries. Then, in 2006,...
Today the United States takes in annually more than twice as many immigrants as all other countries in the world put together. Many Asian countries permit no immigration at all, and openly despise foreigners. The top U.S.immigrant exporter last year, Mexico (with 95,039), is also a vigorous deporter, sending back an average of 150 Central...
What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” —Lord Melbourne In this highly informative book, Chilton Williamson, Jr., walks us through the tortuous history of American immigration policy. Along the way he draws attention to critical milestones, such as the 1924...
The Sydney Carton Party by Patrick J. Buchanan • March 23, 2010 • Printer-friendly “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” From “A Tale of Two Cities,” Sydney Carton’s words, as...
America has not been a nation for well over a century. She is more like an Indian stew: Never taken off the fire, the mess of wild carrots and fish is gradually transformed by the daily addition of squirrels and squash, birds and deer, and the odd bit of human body. By the end of...
Listening to the news media, you’d think that Americans simply don’t understand marriage. One in two marriages fails. Public schools peddle theories about “alternative families” with such textbooks as Heather Has Two Mommies. Single women run hither and yon looking for Mr. Goodbar, who turns out to be a white-frocked fertility guru equipped with a...
(The following remarks were delivered in a panel discussion, “The New Shape of Politics,” at the International Conservative Congress in Washington, D.C., on September 27, 1997) First of all, I want to thank John O’Sullivan for asking me to take part in this panel, and secondly I want to issue a fair warning to my...
“You can take a man out of a country, but you can’t take a country out of a man.” —Anonymous In Ed Wood’s notoriously bad 1950’s science-fiction movie, Plan Nine From Outer Space, there is a scene in which the film’s star, the decrepit Bela Lugosi, is shown walking into a...
50,000 Haitian immigrants gathered in the streets of New York the other month, angry at an FDA hint that they consider not giving blood. With the appalling AIDS rate among Haitians, and the ease with which some infected blood can pass the screening tests, it seemed an unobjectionable idea. But not in Manhattan, 1990. You...
“To us your good Samaritan was a fool to risk the security of his family to help a stranger.” —Joey Tai in Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon It has been more than a year since we put out the March 1989 number of Chronicles, “A Nation of Immigrants,” in which it was suggested that...
The horrors of immigrant violence and the reaction of the UK government to the outrage of its citizens ought to be a lesson for Americans.
Dear Dinah: Sounds like your solo in the Boston church was a triumph. Your grandma and I wish we could have been there to hear it. We’ll make it some time. Now to defend myself against your charge that I’m just an old Scrooge when it comes to immigration. To Cain’s question “Am I my...
Why should “a magazine of American culture” take so keen an interest in the question of immigration? That question has been posed all too frequently by journalists who can only think of one answer: bigotry. Sometimes the word is xenophobia or nativism or even anti-Semitism (apparently on the grounds that the bottom-line of all discriminations...
“A steady Patriot of the World alone, The friend of every country — but his own.” -George Canning John Crewdson: The Tarnished Door: The New Immigrants and the Transformation of America; Times Books; New York. Victor Ripp: Moscow to Main Street: Among the Russian Emigres; Little, Brown; Boston. Lewis A. Coser:...
In less than two generations, America has evolved from a nation of proud, courageous, freedom-loving citizens into a fragmented group of pandering, cowardly supplicants who spend their days pleading with ethnic “political piranhas” and their advocates in the media to forgive them for taking up space in their own country, speaking their own language, cherishing...
Immigration is like so many other political issues in modern America: The official debate is quashed by political correctness, so the real issues fester under the surface while politicians deal in platitudes. Currently, Americans trip over themselves saying how wonderful all immigrants are, whether they are here legally or not, and opinionmakers argue about whether...
Thomas Piatak: You contrast our approach to Israel’s immigration policy. Israel has built a fence to keep out illegal immigrants and deported those who managed to get in before the fence. Israel did that because changing the ethnicity of Israel changes the idea of Israel. And you also note that “changing America’s ethnicity changes the...
I was fortunate to grow up before the Immigration Act of 1965 began an incremental and insidious change in the ethnic composition of America. I had friends whose parents were immigrants. I thought nothing much of it because the parents had all come from countries in Northern or Western Europe and almost immediately became indistinguishable...