I also **love** Mark Levin, and to some extent, like Pat Buchanan......but what specific part(s) of Bill Whittle's current (or previous) videos on immigration do you disagree with?
85% of the people living in America were born here. They are not immigrants but native born citizens. The recently departed Larry Auster put it this way on "We are a nation of immigrants" cliche:
This—the veritable “king” of open-borders clichés—seems at first glance to be an indisputable statement, in the sense that all Americans, even including the American Indians, are either immigrants themselves or descendants of people who came here from other places. Given the above, it would be more accurate to say that we are “a nation of people descended from immigrants.” But such a mundane statement would fail to convey the thrilling idea conjured up by the phrase “nation of immigrants”—the idea that all of us, whether or not we are literally immigrants, are somehow “spiritually” immigrants, in the sense that the immigrant experience defines our character as Americans.
This friendly-sounding, inclusive sentiment—like so many others of its kind—turns out to be profoundly exclusive. For one thing, it implies that anyone who is not an immigrant, or who does not identify with immigration as a key aspect of his own being, is not a “real” American. It also suggests that newly arrived immigrants are more American than people whose ancestors have been here for generations. The public television essayist Richard Rodriguez spelled out these assumptions when he declared, in his enervated, ominous tone: “Those of us who live in this country are not the point of America. The newcomers are the point of America.”
In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America “a nation of immigrants” is to suggest that America, prior to the late nineteenth century wave of European immigration, was not America. It is to imply that George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant (descended from the original colonists) were not “real” Americans, but that Richard Rodriguez and Julian Simon (descended from 19th and 20th century immigrants) are.
Apart from its politically correct function of diminishing the Americans of the pre-Ellis Island period and their descendants, the “nation of immigrants” motto is meaningless in practical terms. Except for open-borders ideologues, everyone knows we must have some limits on immigration. The statement, “we are a nation of immigrants,” gives us no guidance on what those limits should be. Two hundred thousand immigrants per year? Two million? Why not twenty million—since we’re a nation of immigrants? The slogan also doesn’t tell us, once we have decided on overall numbers, what the criterion of selection shall be among the people who want to come here. Do we choose on the basis of family ties to recent immigrants? Language? Income? Nationality? Race? Victim status? First come first served? The “nation of immigrants” slogan cannot help us choose among these criteria because it doesn’t state any good that is to be achieved by immigration. It simply produces a blind emotional bias in favor of more immigration rather than less, making rational discussion of the issue impossible.
To see the uselessness of the “national of immigrants” formula as a source of political guidance, imagine what the British would have said if they had adopted it in 1940 when they were facing an imminent invasion by Hitler’s Germany. “Look, old man, we’re a nation of immigrant/invaders. First the Celts took the land from the Neolithic peoples, then the Anglo-Saxons conquered and drove out the Celts, then the Normans invaded and subjugated the Anglo-Saxons. In between there were Danish invaders and settlers and Viking marauders as well. Since we ourselves are descended from invaders, who are we to oppose yet another invasion of this island? Being invaded by Germanic barbarians is our national tradition!”
Since every nation could be called a nation of immigrants (or a nation of invaders) if you go back far enough, consistent application of the principle that a nation of immigrants must be open to all future immigrants would require every country on earth to open its borders to whoever wanted to come. But only the United States and, to a lesser extent, a handful of other Western nations, are said to have this obligation. The rule of openness to immigrants turns out to be a double standard, aimed solely at America and the West.
It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that “we are all descended from immigrants” our sole guide to national policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about America that could also serve as guides. For example, throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian, in race (until the post-1965 immigration) overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn’t those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we’re all “descended from immigrants?” But immigrant advocates are incapable of debating such questions, because there is no rational benefit for America that they seek through open immigration. Their aim is not to strengthen and preserve America, but to transform it into something else.
I will respond in another post on some of the other Whittle fallacies. To be continued...
Legal immigrants the best Americans there are: I provided you some tables in a previous post showing the percentage of legal and illegal immigrants on welfare compared to the native born, their voting preferences, and the fact that we are bringing in over a million legal immigrants a year during a period when 23 million Americans and other legal residents of this country are looking for full-time employment. And to make matters worse, 25% of adult legal immigrants lack even a high school degree. We are importing hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts annually.
Immigrants come here to escape repression in their own countries: The reality is that many immigrants come here and want to create a culture that mirrors the one they left. Many believe in big government, which is why immigrants vote two to one Democrat. It is also why immigrants use welfare disproportionately than native born Americans. Milton Friedman said that, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.
Guest worker programs: Whittle is all in favor of guest worker programs, which don't work and result in depressing US wages. If this country has such a shortage of labor, why aren't wages rising instead of declining? In fact, they have been in a state of decline for over 40 years. I can provide the data.
The latest data show 22.1 million immigrants holding jobs in the U.S. with an estimated 7 million being illegal aliens. By increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent. Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent. The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status.
Supports Dreamer Amnesty: Whittle uses an extreme example, which could be handled on a case by case basis. But why should the children of illegal aliens who benefited from an American education and social environment be considered a victim. They are really winners of a lottery. What about the 4 million intending legal immigrants, many of them children, waiting to enter the US for years living in many cases in hellholes, not be given similar consideration? What kind of message does this send to intending immigrants, legal and illegal? Bring your children and they will be able to stay regardless?
We want all the immigrants we can get Really? We already take in more immigrants annually than the rest of the world combined.
The U.S. adds one international migrant (net) every 36 seconds. Immigrants account for one in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in more than 90 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. In a decade, it will be one in 7, the highest it has been in our history. And by 2050, one in 5 residents of the U.S. will be foreign-born.
Currently, 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year; 350,000 immigrants leave each year, resulting in a net immigration of 1.25 million. Since 1970, the U.S. population has increased from 203 million to 310 million, i.e., over 100 million. In the next 40 years, the population will increase by an additional 130 million to 440 million. Three-quarters of the increase in our population since 1970 and the projected increase will be the result of immigration. The U.S., the world’s third most populous nation, has the highest annual rate of population growth of any developed country in the world, i.e., 0.9% (2012 estimate,) principally due to immigration.
Bring all those French businesses to the US Yes, we have a kinship based immigration system rather than a merit based one. However, we do have various visas that allow businessmen and investors to come to this country and become part of the social fabric. There are at any one time about 2 million people in this country on temporary work or student visas. There are 900,000 here on student visas.
Immigration is rapidly changing this country demographically. Since the 1965 Immigration Act, our pro-population growth immigration policies have fueled major demographic changes in a very short period of time. In 1970, non-Hispanic whites comprised 89 percent of the population; today they are 66 percent; and by 2042, they will be 50 percent. The Democrats, under the banner of multiculturalism and diversity, have forged a political coalition that depends on individuals coalescing around racial and ethnic identities rather than the issues. The continuing and increasing flow of minority immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated, provides a natural constituency for the Democrats, which see them as their principal source of political power.
87 percent of the 1.2 million legal immigrants entering annually are minorities as defined by the U.S. Government and almost all of the illegal aliens are minorities. By 2019 half of the children 18 and under in the U.S. will be classified as minorities and by 2042, half of the residents of this country will be minorities. Generally, immigrants and minorities vote predominantly for the Democrat Party. Hence, Democrats view immigration as a never-ending source of voters that will make them the permanent majority party.
So Whittle can spout all the politically correct stuff he wants about legal immigrants, but the fact is that it is our legal immigration policy that has done the most harm. Every ten years of legal immigration is the equivalent of an amnesty in terms of its negative impact on this country.