The debate over illegal immigration has become more about entertaining people than solving problems, as both the right and the left tee up tired, old arguments that miss the point.
2295 search results for: Immigration
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Nations of Immigrants
The irrepressible Silvio Berlusconi is in hot water again with all left-thinking people, this time for his remarks on illegal immigrants. After praising Libya for taking back 500 illegals from Italy, the Italian PM observed,
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A Threat to Integrity
Like Satan in Dante’s Inferno, the forces threatening the integrity of the American nation and its culture have three faces. The “global economy” and political one-world.ism jeopardize the historic character, independence, and the very sovereignty of the United States. The third threat, the mass immigration that this country has endured for the last fifteen years...
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They Are Coming, Father Abraham
Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush says that immigration “is not a problem to be solved. It is the sign of a successful nation. New Americans are to be welcomed as neighbors and not to be feared as strangers.” In 1996, the Republican platform advocated an end to granting automatic citizenship to children born to...
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California Crash
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-a, wipeout.” —The Surfaris Maybe we just had it too great out here in California. Perfect weather. World-class universities. High-paying middle-class jobs. Reasonably priced housing. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The Beach Boys. California girls. Hollywood. Disneyland. Now the state is crumbling fast into the ocean. Still can’t beat the weather—until unemployment forces you to move to...
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Maybe Forever
Is the current wave of immigration to America, mainly from the Third World, an invasion? Wayne Lutton and John Tanton maintain that it is. The authors effectively argue that our unprecedented level of immigration, forced on the country by selfish interests, is remaking America in many negative ways, especially by eroding our national culture. But...
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The Sentimentalist Conspiracy
“Actum est de republica.” —Latin saying The Bourgeois Age is finished, but a principal feature of Victorianism—the fullest and most developed expression of that era—still flourishes. Postmoderns consider themselves a hardheaded and realistic people, yet the average American today is probably as much a sentimentalist as the typical Dickens reader of a century ago. Sentimentality—not...
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Jobs, Politics, and Immigration
Unemployment and underemployment are trends becoming more noticeable as the 20th century draws to a close. Eighteen million new jobs were created in the United States during the expansionary 1980’s, but, ominously, structural unemployment—the seeming base level in our economy—was still redefined upward from 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent of the work force. Worse, new...
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“Peaceful” Immigrants
The Catholic Church as a whole does not support illegal immigration, at least in principle. However, an increasing number of clergy and prelates, especially in Italy, do grant de facto support to illegal immigration. For example, the bishop of Caserta, Msgr. Raffaele Nogaro, was one of the first high-ranking prelates to support a protest by...
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Benjamin Franklin’s American Dream
Today’s preferred way to think about immigration and the nation-state is exemplified in the title of a 1964 pamphlet that the Anti-Defamation League published posthumously under the name of John F. Kennedy: A Nation of Immigrants. The next year, the martyred President’s brother Teddy had his name put on the 1965 immigration act of such...
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Legal Immigration
Legal immigration, in the opinion of Senator Spencer Abraham (Republican-Michigan), is something we shouldn’t do anything “more” about “until we have a fuller debate on the benefits of immigration.” The new chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee insists that he is “not trying to badmouth the other side, but they’ve had the chance to make...
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Immigration and Citizenship: Ancient Lessons for the American People
Americans have been debating immigration since the Founding era. Congress passed the first Naturalization Law in 1790, which it amended and fine-tuned in 1795, 1798, and 1802. These acts experimented with different residency requirements before naturalization. From the start, children of U.S. citizens were citizens, even if born abroad. For the Founders, where citizenship was...
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Mass Immigration Bad for America Bad for the Church
This Labor Day, elite opinion is pushing a piece of legislation that poses a clear threat to the interests of working Americans, the immigration bill supported by President Obama and passed by the Senate. By massively increasing legal immigration and regularizing illegal immigration, this bill promises to further depress wages and to throw more Americans...
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Of Sam and Siddiqui
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have let your family in, either.” Standing in a conference room at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago, Sam held my gaze in that sideways glance of his, waiting to gauge my reaction. “I understand,” I said. “And I agree. You shouldn’t have. But I’m here now, so let’s...
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The Politics of Illegitimacy Rates
Since the early 1960’s, compiling statistics on illegitimacy rates in the United States has been the official responsibility of the National Center for Health Statistics. However, the methodology employed by that federal agency to determine illegitimacy rates according to race has been inaccurate, classifying virtually all illegitimate Hispanic births as illegitimate “white” births. The result...
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De-Americanization
Although the summer of 1994 produced no entertainments to rival the fun of last year’s Jurassic Park, let alone the previous summer’s Los Angeles riots, it did yield up the brief but amusing manhunt for O.J. Simpson and the edifying spectacle of the wanted killer of his ex-wife and her pretty young companion cruising up...
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Epicene Europa
“Roll up the map of Europe; it will not be wanted these ten years.” —William Pitt (1806) “Nothing,” goes the Johnsonian cliché, “concentrates a man’s mind more wonderfully than the prospect of being hanged.” This very natural reaction may explain why a whole raft of intellectuals, journalists, and even politicians, none of whom was previously...
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Philanthropy Is Bunk
Importing Revolution tells the sad and tragic tale of how the Ford Foundation has funded practically every pro-immigration group in America for the last 30 years. It is hard to read this book without concluding that the Ford Foundation has misused and abused its original purpose, as well as its tax-exempt status, by advancing the...
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No One Has the Right To Come to America
For much of American history, it was understood that no one had a right to immigrate to America, that Americans had the unfettered right to decide who should come to America, and that immigration should be judged on whether it benefited America and Americans, not on whether it was good for immigrants. Applying these principles,...
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Immigration: A History Lesson
“The United States is a nation of immigrants” is a meaningless statement, but that is not to say that it has no meaning. It is one of the lead lines for the Democratic/liberal/progressive agenda, and has been ever since Israel Zangwill used the mythic term “melting pot” as the title of his thankfully forgotten play...
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Time for an Immigration Moratorium
The Center for Immigration Studies reports this morning that the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the United States is now 41.3 million, the highest it has ever been. Even as the American economy continues to sputter and many Americans face unemployment or underemployment, an additional 1.4 million immigrants entered the country between...
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Obama’s Manufactured Border Crisis
This summer’s border crisis—the near total collapse of any controls or security at our southern border, especially in South Texas—was manufactured by the Obama administration as a means of forcing through a mass amnesty, either via Congress or by executive fiat. Legalizing millions of illegal aliens now resident in these United States is the immediate...
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The States Fight Back
What if the states started to fight back against federal refusal to protect American borders? What if they started challenging, even nullifying, federal actions that promote illegal aliens coming and staying here? Despite the centralization of America since at least 1865, the 50 states retain a surprising amount of autonomy. And oddly enough, the flood...
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The Great Clarifier
Not even President Trump’s most ardent admirers would claim that he is a “Great Communicator,” the title bestowed on the last resident of the White House who could plausibly be seen as governing, at least in some respects, as a conservative. But Donald Trump might just be a great clarifier: His words and actions cause...
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On Hispanics and the GOP
Samuel Francis (Principalities & Powers, April 2000) is correct in much of his analysis of the weaknesses of Gov. George W. Bush’s political strategy for attracting Hispanic votes. He is also correct in debunking the endlessly repeated canard that Bush won 49 percent (rather than 39 percent) of the Texas Hispanic vote in his successful...
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Lobbyist Alleges Cato Institute ‘Mercenaries’ Are Paid to Push Pro-Immigration Studies
Pro-immigration research papers published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, are not independent, but designed to meet the needs of lobbying clients, according to allegations in a Telegram message obtained by Chronicles. Aman Kapoor, president of the advocacy group Immigration Voice (IV), alleged that Cato Research fellow David Bier was paid by IV...
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On Stopping the Flow
Having read Steven Greenhut’s editorial in the June issue (American Proscenium), I must ask: Why is Mr. Greenhut not against all immigration? In order to be consistent with the general tenor of his article, he should be totally against any kind of immigration right now, as am I. I often hear people say that they...
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California, Here We Come
It has happened. Whites have been reduced to a minority in California. By whites, I mean, of course, “non-Hispanic whites,” because most of the illegal aliens who have poured across the border from Mexico during the last 30 years to change dramatically the composition of California’s population are mestizo, a mixture of Spanish and American...
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Life in a Border Town
The archetypical middle-sized town in the middle of the Middle West, Rockford seems about as far removed from the border as you can get, unless we count the border with Wisconsin, a few miles to the north. And yet, Rockford has been subject to successive waves of immigration that have brought with them (if in...
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Our Immigration Problems
Our immigration problems briefly received national attention last year when boatloads of illegal Chinese migrants landed on American shores. Yet, because many of these illegals made bogus claims of political asylum, some political leaders spoke as if asylum abuse were the only real problem. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) set the record straight when he observed...
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Tucker Carlson’s “Change of Heart”: The Chronicles Interview
From his perch at FOX News, Tucker Carlson was beating back criticism from liberals and neoconservatives at the same time. The subject was immigration. “The point of our immigration policy, the point of all of our policies is to help Americans,” he told viewers. “Watching out for our citizens is the only reason we have...
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Breeze Over the Border With Me
Let’s conduct a thought experiment. Imagine that you have just landed at New York’s JFK International Airport after a 15-hour flight from Mumbai. Although you splurged for a business-class ticket, the extra-large seat, constant parade of food, and infinite selection of video entertainment didn’t help you forget you were trapped in a steel tube 35,000...
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A Terrible Twilight
George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England was published in 1935. It is an exceptionally well-written book and became a cult classic, its haunting title suggesting a mysterious crime, as in a thriller. Dangerfield’s theme was the decay of the civilization created by the British Liberal movement in the years that led up to...
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The Executive Branch Is Deliberately Failing Americans
America cannot afford another four years of an open-borders Democrat administration.
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The Left’s Convenient Epiphany on Border Security
The anti-borders left will never truly abandon its plan to bring America to its knees through unsustainable levels of illegal immigration. It will only change its spots temporarily, repackaging itself as the solution to the problem it created.
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A Few Comments on A Strange Liberty
In his new book, former Mises Institute President Jeff Deist writes incisively about the evils associated with the modern administrative state, including an important discussion of the late Murray Rothbard’s views on immigration.
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The Siege of Sweden
In an era of political correctness, “safe spaces,” and “trigger warnings” for the constitutionally feeble, there are plenty of things we are not supposed to talk about. Increasingly in recent months, this seems to include crime and immigration in the Kingdom of Sweden. From across the political spectrum and on both sides of the Atlantic,...
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The Chinese Exclusion Act
In 1882 Congress took steps to control Chinese immigration with the passage of “An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese.” The act later became known misleadingly as the Chinese Exclusion Act. In high schools and colleges it’s taught that the act was simply another example of American racism. The real story is more...
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Tally and Record
The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced last June that to “regain control of the border” the INS will now begin to deport and possibly jail aliens and smugglers entering our country illegally. If you’re wondering whether this hasn’t been INS policy all along, think again. In the Southwest, repeat offenders have traditionally been released just...
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Social Conservatism Isn’t Enough. Culture Matters, Too.
No one’s coming to save us—certainly not illegal immigrants. It’s up to Americans to right the ship.
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Immigration Restriction Then and Now
A new book offers some important insights on the enduring and legitimate reasons for immigration restriction even as it proposes some less compelling ones.
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Kayfabe U.S.A.
Donald Trump continues an American political tradition that appears tough and adversarial, but is strictly theatrical. Wrestlers call it "kayfabe."
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Creating a “New Economy”
Al Gore, in a recent address to the National Council of La Raza, the militant Hispanic organization, credited Latinos for creating “a new economy in America” and said “not enough Latinos are participating [in its benefits]. We have a lot of work to do, and we will not rest until everyone in the community shares...
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The Dialectic of Suicide
“A nation never falls but by suicide.” —R.W. Emerson The ambush was prepared and actually triggered several months before Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We? appeared in print. When Mr. Huntington, the author of The Clash of Civilizations and a leading political scientist at Harvard, published last winter an excerpt from his new book dealing with...
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Politics Against Nature
As I write, the lame-duck Congress is revving up for one last chance to do really lasting damage to the country, in the form of the cloyingly titled DREAM Act, which would grant an open-ended amnesty to illegal aliens who were brought here as children by their parents. As Roy Beck of NumbersUSA warns, this...
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The Populist Politics of Austria
In this small nation’s elegant capital in November 1992, newspaper headlines bannering the Clinton presidential victory temporarily displaced the local story of the moment: a decisive political coup by Jörg Haider, leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Although it is quite clear that Austria’s status quo, socialist-conservative, “Red-Black” alliance has functioned effectively as...
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The Stupid Party Rides Again
A CBS poll taken in early November showed that only 43 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s performance as President. Obama’s approval rating was even lower on the economy, with 34 percent of Americans approving and 60 percent disapproving. An overwhelming 86 percent said that the economy was in bad shape, and 32 percent...
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The Angry Summer
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
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No Rust Belt Revivalists Need Apply
Earlier this week, Michael Gerson, formerly a speechwriter for George W. Bush, now a scribbler for The Washington Post, trained his sights on those he termed “Rust Belt revivalists.” These are the Republicans who have noticed that “the GOP has been dominated by corporate interests and needs to identify more directly with the economic frustrations...
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Equality Takes a Beating
Several weeks ago I was watching a program on the BBC called Would You Risk Your Own Life to Save a Complete Stranger? In Britain, few people apparently would. Far more common is the story of a young girl who was beaten severely in a London subway by several “youths.” The attack took place on...