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America's Immigration Daydream Is Coming To An End: The country is Balkanizing, and politics have become radical and violent...
American Greatness ^ | 11/04/2023 | Matthew Boose

Posted on 11/04/2023 9:04:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

The Atlantic, one of the most prestigious and reliably liberal publications in America, has a new article semi-frankly acknowledging the downsides of the last half century of unrestricted immigration.

Author David Leonhardt, a regular columnist for the New York Times, confronts – or rather, politely circumambulates – the “unintended” consequences of the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which fundamentally remade America’s immigration process by opening the floodgates to the Third World.

Leonhardt focuses chiefly on the economic impact of mass immigration on working class wages and rising inequality between the poor and the middle class. There is nothing groundbreaking here, as any disciple of Patrick Buchanan (or anyone with a working understanding of supply and demand) could tell you. But it is always a little surprising to see common sense in the pages of a magazine like The Atlantic, even if it comes in the usual milquetoast packaging. Leonhardt even takes apart the quietly elitist “jobs Americans won’t do” talking point that liberals love: “Immigrants typically work in jobs that native-born Americans do not want at the wages that employers are offering. One reason that employers can offer such wages….is the availability of so many immigrant workers.”

But one can only expect a respectable liberal writer to take things so far. Leonhardt tempers “the hard truth about immigration” with the usual sentimental mush about its intangible benefits. To quote Mary Poppins, a “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”

According to Leonhardt, the 1965 Act was flawed but nevertheless a “monumental achievement.” For who? For millions of newcomers, it undoubtedly changed life for the better.

What about the American people? For them, it was a swindle of historic proportions.

The 1965 immigration revolution was sold to the American people as a modest shift, as Leonhardt points out. But he omits a striking quote from famous liberal Ted Kennedy, who pledged the bill “will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.”

In the end, the reform was a strike at the heart of democracy. The people were misled on the most political of questions – who gets to be part of our community? America entered the late 20th century as a prospering, majority-white country. In the span of a few generations, whites would become an untouchable minority. They now face the prospect of spending the remainder of their natural lives under hostile, one-party rule. The majority party, the Democrats, grows stronger, and more hostile to the nation’s historic majority, with each wave of foreigners. Under President Biden, this process of demographic replacement and marginalization has accelerated like never before.

It was Kennedy’s brother John Kennedy who stamped the nation’s conscience with pablum about America being a “nation of immigrants.” President Johnson made that sappy vision into a reality. If the America of 1965 could see the effects that mass immigration would have in the ensuing decades, it is doubtful Johnson’s reform would have passed at all. At the time, a bare majority favored scrapping country quotas, and only 7 percent wanted immigration to increase, a preference that remains to this day (not that it appears to have influenced policymakers).

Many Americans who grew up during the Kennedy years look back on the post-war boom as an idyllic dream. Their yearnings can’t be written off as mere nostalgia bias. Compared to the present, the early ‘60s must have been like paradise: the single breadwinner was the standard, the country had a real sense of identity, and people trusted their neighbors enough to leave doors unlocked. That’s all gone now. As a result of the monumental demographic change unleashed over the past half century, America is more divided than it has ever been since its greatest crisis in 1865. The country is Balkanizing, and politics have become radical and violent.

Leonhardt is more concerned with how diversity can be exploited by the right than its actual disintegrating effects on society. To liberals, immigration can only be conceived as a problem (if ever) when framed in terms of class. But immigration is not only an economic question, as current events have shown. With the war in Israel, reality has come crashing into the daydream of multiracial utopia. America’s rapidly browning youth is sympathetic to Hamas. It is likely that some Atlantic readers are having doubts about immigration for the first time in their lives. The issue can be avoided for a while longer, but not forever.


TOPICS: Government; Society
KEYWORDS: balkanization; division; illegals; immigration

1 posted on 11/04/2023 9:04:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Many Americans who grew up during the Kennedy years look back on the post-war boom as an idyllic dream. Their yearnings can’t be written off as mere nostalgia bias. Compared to the present, the early ‘60s must have been like paradise: the single breadwinner was the standard, the country had a real sense of identity, and people trusted their neighbors enough to leave doors unlocked. That’s all gone now. As a result of the monumental demographic change unleashed over the past half century …

Last decade, when I was working, my company was always pushing diversity, like it was a great thing. I always’pooped in the punch bowl’ during those meetings.

Look at where we are now …

2 posted on 11/04/2023 9:09:11 PM PDT by 11th_VA (<><)
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To: SeekAndFind

Gee...Laurene must be getting nervous about all those H1-B families surrounding her compund in Atherton.


3 posted on 11/04/2023 9:28:48 PM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: Regulator

You need better education in math. Illegal immigrants out-number H1-B workers by 9200%


4 posted on 11/04/2023 10:32:47 PM PDT by entropy12 (Career politicians like Desantis build wealth. Trump sacrificed his wealth to serve people. GO TRUMP)
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To: 11th_VA
I had to attend dozens of those mindlessly annoying affairs when I worked in hospitals and nursing homes.

Just before the “Covid Con’’ started I had too sit through one of these snooze fests and this black woman(they're always black) ans she's going on for nearly two hours of solid tedium telling us how “We're all equal and diversity is our strength!''. I looked at her, point blank and said "Madame. if we're all equal then how is diversity our strength?'' She looked at me with a blank expression for a few seconds and then just kept yapping away.

5 posted on 11/04/2023 10:36:32 PM PDT by jmacusa (Liberals. Too stupid to be idiots.)
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To: SeekAndFind

This also in my opinion underscores what an abject myth and a lie that is civic nationalism, which is practically a religion to Bushleague idiot RINOs.

Even though this has been underway since 1965, perhaps due to my age and nearly exclusive travels in mostly red states I didn’t really see this coming until the early 2,000’s. When Bush proactively chose to do nothing about the border I could see we were on the verge of becoming the next post- Rhodesia Zimbabwe from a white person’s perspective and became a prepper(2A,supplies to the rafters, etc., etc.).


6 posted on 11/05/2023 1:10:43 AM PDT by MachIV
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To: SeekAndFind

Diversity is Discord. Multiculturalism is Mayhem.


7 posted on 11/05/2023 2:07:31 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they control you. )
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To: SeekAndFind

“Immigrants typically work in jobs that native-born Americans do not want at the wages that employers are offering. “

Take away welfare, food stamps, free rent, etc. and see how many americans will suddenly want to do those jobs


8 posted on 11/05/2023 2:14:22 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they control you. )
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To: SeekAndFind

When you open the floodgates to the throngs of third world trash even their own countries don’t want, you open America up to the massive political, financial and sociological problems they bring. It’s too late now.

We will never do what needs to be done - deport anyone here illegally, whether Biden et al helped them or turned their heads to their entry or not.


9 posted on 11/05/2023 2:30:27 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: SeekAndFind

Something for the “immigrants” to ponder while standing in line to purchase food with their SNAP cards. You are going to be asked to vote for Democrats. Democrats support Hamas. Hamas wants you dead too. Vote for Democrats means supporting your own murder.


10 posted on 11/05/2023 3:56:09 AM PST by Enterprise
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To: SeekAndFind

A country without borders ceases to be a country.


11 posted on 11/05/2023 4:14:58 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Two Words: Banana Republic)
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To: entropy12
Not in Atherton. The illegals are all across 101 in East Palo Alto.

PS, this is a page from the Menlo-Atherton High School yearbook in 1963:

Oddly I don't see anyone from the Sacred City of Mumbai in this group. Clearly an oversight since everyone knows that America is a creation of the Great Indian Nation. Right?

12 posted on 11/05/2023 6:38:15 AM PST by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: SeekAndFind

Uncontrolled immigration is a perfect tool to dismantle a country Biden and party has proved that point.

Communists know what tools and when to use them for their end goal.

Bonus round: No bail feed the chaos.


13 posted on 11/05/2023 7:03:38 AM PST by Vaduz (....)
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To: Enterprise
Democrats support Hamas. Hamas wants you dead too. Vote for Democrats means supporting your own murder.

Yet the Ivy League universities continue to pump backward ignorance into otherwise salvageable people while ripping them off for a half million dollars, give or take. Until these previously respected institutions are recognized as the corrupter of souls they've become our nation will suffer their befouled graduates harming the bottom line of every place they land.

Employers: screen for political leanings with subtle questioning to weed out the lunatics. It's not easy but the reward is a profitable company where everyone does well.

14 posted on 11/05/2023 1:32:36 PM PST by MikelTackNailer (Justice for the gulaged J-6ers. Rope for their persecutors.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“America’s Immigration Daydream Is Coming To An End: The country is Balkanizing, and politics have become radical and violent...”

colonizing the U.S. with radical muslims and criminals from every south america country to balkanize the U.S. with warring ethnic groups was a deliberate goal of obama from day one as one of the primary means of destroying world U.S. power by destroying its cohesive culture ... the process is now irreversible and the fall of the U.S. is now inevitable, which was obama’s goal all along ... obama hated the U.S. and hated that we were an exceptional country and sought to assure that the U.S. would no longer be exceptional ..


15 posted on 11/05/2023 2:23:26 PM PST by catnipman (A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil)
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