Today President Obama accelerated his Anschluss of illegal aliens into the country whose Constitution he has sworn to uphold, but which he has shredded at every chance. Assuming America even survives, he perpetually will be held in obloquy by the people he has so harmed.

But his brazen edict finally drew the lines clearly. Republicans, who mostly have been useless or worse on immigration, have a chance to stop the madness. They can cut off funding for any bureaucratic actions aiding the amnesty. They can pull the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts over state immigration matters, thus putting Arizona’s SB 1070 and similar laws in other states back into play. And they can nominate a tough, anti-immigration candidate for president in 2016, who then must act.

But given this opportunity to heighten the issue, let’s go further. Let’s not only oppose this amnesty, or any amnesty; let’s not only stop illegal immigration. Let’s also pass a 40-year moratorium on even legal immigration, as we did between 1924 and 1965.

Tom Piatak made just that proposal in the December Chronicles in his article, “We Need a Time Out”:

“The last time America was faced with such an immigration boom we ended it, with the Immigration Act of 1924.  President Coolidge, who signed the act, declared that ‘America must be kept American.’ The effect of that legislation was to aid the assimilation of the millions who had come through Ellis Island (including six of my great-grandparents).”

And three of my grandparents. Nobody in my family thought we were discriminated against because no one else could come here from “the old country.” Indeed, in World War II, my father, four uncles, a great-uncle and a cousin fought in the U.S. military against Germany or its Axis partner, Japan. They didn’t think themselves “Germans” any more than did Eisenhower or Nimitz. They were happy to be assimilated – to be Americans.

My mother sometimes even used to joke with my father, “Did you just get off the boat?” Because both his parents were immigrants, but only one of hers; on her father’s side, they were Michigan German farmers who came here around 1800.

And Tom is right to bring up the “A” word – assimilation, which lately has been verboten because it violates “multiculturalism.” But assimilation meant you got to keep your religion because of the First Amendment; and your ethnic foods and celebrations. Otherwise, you blended into the “melting pot.”

At this late point, it’s a good question if assimilation even is possible. If not, then America is headed the way of the Balkans or Syria, with wars of religion and ethnicity lasting centuries. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But to prevent it, an immigration moratorium is essential – now.

Tom continued:

“There is even more need for such an assimilation-aiding immigration moratorium today. The current immigrants come from countries far more different from the United States than the lands of Eastern and Southern Europe that fueled our last immigration boom. And America today is far less self-confident and far less willing to impose her traditions on newcomers than was the America of Calvin Coolidge.”

This is it, folks. Either Obama’s illegal-alien Anschluss is stopped, followed by a 40-year immigration pause, or there isn’t going to be a country.