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HOW THE GRANDSON OF JEWISH IMMIGRANTS BECAME AN ANGLO-SAXON, NATIVIST, XENOPHOBE IN THREE EASY LESSONS
A speech by Don Feder to the Federation for American Immigration Reform
October 15, 1999
This speech is titled "How the Grandson of Jewish Immigrants became an Anglo-Saxon, Nativist, Xenophobe, in Three Easy Lessons."
Let me read something really silly that was published in a political column on Aug. 30, 1990: "What is said about the new immigrant (Hispanics, Asians, Caribbean blacks) today, was said yesterday of the Irish, Jews, Slavs, and Italians. It was false then; it's equally false now...Immigrants do not come here looking for handouts...Immigrants have a positive impact; on employment: taking jobs Americans don't want..." I could go on at length but you get the drift.
The article is, cliched, utopian, disconnected from reality. What kind of a numbskull, lame-brained, nut-wit could write such drivel?
Now, here's something from a column by the same writer three years later (on June 14, 1993): "In the past, I confess, my thoughts on immigration were clouded by emotion and tinged with nostalgia." The author goes on to observe that today's immigrants are, by and large, "impoverished, unskilled, poorly educated and far less capable of assimilation than were their predecessors."
The columnist asks rhetorically: "Is it racist or xenophobic not to want to see one's country become the Balkans of the Western Hemisphere? A nation is more than a geographic entity or a conglomeration of disparate, disputatious groups that happen to share two rooms and a bath."
I am the author of both columns.
I'm sure you've heard the old joke: "When I was 18, I thought my father was an idiot. By the time I was 28, he seemed pretty smart. It's amazing how much the old man learned in 10 years." By the same token, it is astounding how much America learned about immigration between 1990 and 1993.
But, seriously, the facts were always there. All it took to achieve enlightenment was a willingness to allow reality to overcome sentimentality. Among other things, I discovered that: While America has 4.5 percent of the world's population, we take in more than half of its permanent immigrants.
In the 1990s, our foreign-born population grew 4 times as fast as our native-born population. Today, 10 percent of our people were born outside the United States, compared to 7.9 percent in 1990. In the past 30 years, America's Hispanic population doubled. Latinos will soon be our largest minority.
The poverty rate for immigrants is roughly twice that of white Americans. In Texas, immigrants comprise 8 percent of households, but receive 22 percent of public assistance. Twenty years after the great influx of legal immigrants form South East Asia, 30 percent of their households were still on welfare.
In 1993, California spent $1.4 billion to incarcerate illegal aliens and educate their children. That year, illegals accounted for two-thirds of the births in LA public hospitals and half of the kids in its juvenile justice system. Almost half of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School System are classified "English-limited."
There are an estimated 300,000 non-citizens in prison, on probation or on parole in this country. Of the first 6,000 rioters arrested in Los Angeles in 1992, when South Central exploded after the first Rodney King verdict, roughly one-third were illegals.
We all know the proverbial immigrant success stories, the Vietnamese girl who comes here as a young child and winds up the high-school valedictorian, the computer programmer born in India, the Chinese physicist, the Korean grocer, the Cuban-American congresswoman. They are inspiring - and they are very much the exception.
Unfortunately, too many Americans generalize on the basis of personal experience. To wit: "I know immigrants who are hard-working, well-educated, willing to assimilate, therefore all immigrants are Frank Capra, Albert Einstein or the Vietnamese valedictorian."
What concerns me far more than the economic aspects of immigration is its effect on cultural cohesion and national identity. In South Florida, Southern California, Texas, the Southwest, and sections of almost every major American city, there are people who want to live here, but don't care to know where "here" is, in a historical, philosophical sense.
They are changing America in alarming ways. Islam is now our fastest growing religion. You can't say the word "Christmas' in most public schools today. But in New York City, they're accommodating Ramadan.
In March, 1998, a little-publicized federal law went into effect criminalizing the practice of genital mutilation of women under 18, a delightful custom prevalent in 28 African nations. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are 150,000 women and girls of African descent in this country who have been or are in danger of being so maimed.
More than 50,000 members of the Caribbean Santeria cult have settled in South Florida, where they are enhancing the state's diversity by sacrificing chickens, goats and other small animals in voodoo rituals.
In Lincoln, Neb., in 1997, two Iraqis were arrested for marrying sisters, ages 13 and 14. Such unions are common is Arab lands. Since America must now adapt to immigrants (rather than the reverse) perhaps we should abolish our culturally insensitive laws against statutory rape.
Equating today's immigrants, overwhelmingly from the Third World, with the Irish, Italians, Slavs and Jews of 100 years ago is a soothing but strained comparison. The old immigrants actually had things in common with the American majority of their day.
All of the aforementioned groups were European. Three were Christian and the fourth practice the religion from which Christianity sprang. All came from societies that respected law and had common concepts of justice, liberty and personal responsibility.
The afore-cited facts helped me to overcome an emotional handicap - the tendency to see all immigrants as my maternal grandfather. I loved my grandfather and I admired him. He came to this country penniless. He was grateful to be an American and so proud of his adopted land. He loved America fiercely, worked hard and raised his children to be good citizens of this great republic.
All he asked of America was the rights he was denied in the Old Country - to earn a living without anyone's leave, to raise a family unmolested, to practice his ancient faith free of fear. It's easy for the children and grandchildren of such immigrants to get caught up in a huddled-masses thing, to see immigration of the 1990s as their family's experience writ large. And yet, there really are significant differences between the immigration of 1880-1920 and today's immigrants. For one thing, the times are radically different. When my grandfather, Israel Whitman, came here, there was no welfare, no SSI, no food stamps, no subsidized housing, no Medicaid.
Equally important, there was no bilingual education, no bilingual ballots, no dumbed-down citizenship tests, no quotas, no multiculturalism, no militant racial interest groups, no chip-on-the-shoulder minorities clamoring for what they perceive to be due.
When my grandfather arrived on these shores, immigrants were required to fit in. The country was not expected to change to accommodate them. Today, we ask next to nothing of newcomers. You don't want to learn English? Fine don't learn English. You don't want to work? Here's a welfare check. You don't want to assimilate? That's OK too. You have no interest in learning of our history and heritage? You don't identify with our past? Why should you? After all, America is now a multicultural boarding house. Why should the boarders be expected to identify with the tables and chairs in their furnished rooms?
The Jews gave the world the Bible. Irish monks preserved Western civilization during the Dark Ages. Italy was the embodiment of the Renaissance. Over 90 percent of our new immigrants are non-white. Many come from caudillo cultures where corruption is rampant and a mañana work ethic prevails.
I hasten to add that this doesn't make it impossible for them to assimilate after all, Americanism has always been about belief, not blood - it just makes it harder. In an ideal world, race and ethnicity would be largely irrelevant. Unfortunately, liberals have given us a country where they are increasingly relevant, where more and more we are at each other's throats over quotas, preferences, whether or not victim-group history will be taught in our schools and who did what to whom 150 years ago.
Our own racial problems we must deal with. But why augment an increasingly ugly situation? Why, oh why, must we import division, conflict and hostility? As I said earlier, cases constructed entirely of anecdotes are suspect. Still, let me relate three stories to give you some idea of the fraying of national identity under unrestrained immigration.
In his monograph "Huddled Cliches," Lawrence Auster tells the story of a "very bright Bengali-American student who told her college English class that the word 'American' is 'Orwellian' because it imposes an identity on her that she doesn't feel. "I am not an American. I'm Bengali." Well, good golly, Miss Bengali.
At a 1995 symposium on American identity, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a young man who called himself a "Latino activist" testified: " I am not an American. There is nothing about me that is American. I do not want to be American, and I have just as much right to be here as you." To which The Wall Street Journal's open-border boys would respond, "Ole!"
Where formerly we had Memorial Day essay contests, today, many California schools have compositions for Mexican Independence Day (Cinco de Mayo). Here are some excerpts from an award-winning essay of a few years back. The student declares himself a "Mexican and an American," not a Mexican-American which would be bad enough- and note the order of precedence.
Of this Mexican national holiday, the teen writes: "My impulses and desires are linked to this day. (Not to the 4th of July or Thanksgiving, which probably have no emotional significance for the him). The young man insists "Cinco de Mayo represents my birth, who I am and will become," the young man insists. This isn't nostalgia for the old country, but ethnic separatism that constitutes social dynamite, which would blow this country apart.
A New York Times story of June 29, 1993, titled "A Fervent 'No' to Assimilation in New America," reported on a survey of 5,000 8th and 9th graders with a foreign-born parent. Of the Mexican-American kids, 56 percent said they preferred their parents' native tongue to English, as did 49 percent of Vietnamese. Only 35 percent of Haitians consider America the best country to live in.
Therein lies a tragedy in the making. The old immigrants were grateful to be here and touching in their eagerness to adapt to their adopted land. As a whole, the new immigrants are decidedly ambivalent. They want the economic/political advantages of living here while maintaining their old loyalties. They demand that their children be educated in Spanish, Chinese, Russian or Lao and instructed in the swellness of the countries they couldn't wait to leave.
All of this is a major problemo. A nation without common ground cannot long endure. America has a language that has bound generations of our people. (It happens to be the language of when-in-the-course-of-human-events, we-the-people and one-nation-indivisible.) Americans have a history dating from the Jamestown settlement and spanning almost four centuries. And we have a national ethos, shaped by our historical experience and political institutions - our triumphs and our tragedies.
All are under assault by unrestrained immigration, by immigration based not on national interest but guided by libertarian, free-market dogma and informed by a mushy altruism. America has quite enough unemployment, welfare, illiteracy, crime, disease, racial/ethnic animosity and social decay. There is no logical reason to import these maladies.
Nothing will have a greater impact on our nation's future than the decisions we make on immigration today. What kind of America will our children and grandchildren inherit - the multiculturalists' fantasy of Diversity Disneyland, where a rainbow of smiling faces celebrates their differences or Rwanda with high-tech machetes, Kosovo without the kindness, Bosnia from sea to shining sea?
My grandfather may have come here from the Pale of Settlement, and yours from the sunny shores of Napoli, or a
village in the Auld Sod, or Old Mexico, but we are Americans now. Our first thought must be to the preservation
of our national patrimony. I think my grandfather would have understood.
"Where formerly we had Memorial Day essay contests, today, many California schools have compositions for Mexican Independence Day (Cinco de Mayo)." (Don Feder)
Graham Middle School in Graham, North Carolina - a state with virtually zero nontransient Mexican aliens five years ago - last year ran a celebrate-Cinco-De-Mayo message on its outdoor signboard.
Feder is correct. Today's immigrants don't want to be Americans - just to get the benefits. It doesn't matter if they are Mexicans in Los Angeles or elderly Chinese on SSI in the college town of Clarion, Pennsylvania.
IMMIGRATION resource library - with public-health facts of immigration
There is a difference between a migrant and an immigrant. A migrant wanders from place to place, seeking the best benefits and hoping to score some cash. An immigrant wants to be part of the society he moves to. The negative consequences of immigration could be completely eliminated by cutting back welfare.
I seriously believe it is part of a plan. Traditional middle class Americans tend to fuss too much over rights and the Constitution. They keep using religious concepts in politics: Rights talk, the freedom of humanity, liberty.
What the insiders really want is a people who have forgotten all that. They want a people who are just interested in making some money. Such a people can be lead around and manipulated by fear and greed, but they would have no foundation to tell them that they are unfree.
So long as these disconnected immigrants continue to vote Democrat, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
The problem is the WELFARE STATE.
We are under a two pronged attack; immigrants seeking our freebies and home grown ILLEGTIMATE products growing up on the welfare rolls
So long as these disconnected immigrants continue to vote Democrat, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
Ahem. You see the GOP congress doing anything to stop it
?
You see Bush speaking out about it ?????????????
Don Feder is the most talented writer the religious right has IMHO.
Excellently reasoned books such as Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation helped change many people's minds on the immigration contreversy.
Albert Einstein, an immigrant. Warner Brothers Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, started by immigrants. Wozniak, Apple computers, immigrant. He still has a home in Budapest. Tesla, father of alternating current, immigrant. This country was founded by immigrants. I wish some people would start studying history and gain a dose of reality. We are a country of immigrants. By attacking a certain group of people, some arrogant politicians are trying to unite and gain some votes It seems like Gingrich learned his lesson the hard way, and the Republican party, because of their stupidity, may lose Congress, and if they pursue their attacks on immigrants, they will become irrelevant.
Thank God for Bush's stance on immigration.
Look around, the winds of change are blowing.
GO BUSH GO!!!
Tesla didn't come here with the intention of collecting benefits. Those immigrants and today's migrants are not the same. The immigrants of the past had a love of liberty. Today's migrants are very collectivistic and despise America and the institutions of freedom.
Are you an American citizen?
Some of them will collect benefits, some of them, like the founder of Apple computers, will increase our wealth, and make America greater.
Yes, I am an American citizen, and I am collecting educational benefits for families whose ancestors played a part in founding the government of this country.
Read about George Ross. He signed the Declaration of Independence.
I am sick and tired of the mindless attacks on a relatively small group of people. America has bigger problems to worry about than immigration, at this point in time. Morality is one of them. The 2nd Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and etc, etc.
You don't even have a clue about why Newt was tossed. He was sucking up to the radical Mexican groups, was for mass illegal/immigration, wanted fast track, and had a fat head. There are more reasons but I don't think you cold understand.......HE IS A RINO,that whored around on his wives.
At the time when Newt made his first speech attacking immigrants, my father was driving in a car with a man who owned 20% of the land Chicago stands on. The man said one thing, "I don't care what Clinton does, but that is the end of Gingrich and the dumb Republicans."
Then he added, "My grandfather was an immigrant."
The year was 1994. We all know what happened after that.
I will not discuss this anymore, it doesn't really make much sense. But, watch out. Many Americans feel offended by mindless attacks on immigrants. If the Republicans want to lose, nothing will make them lose faster than mindless attacks on a small group of people that cannot defend themselves.
In the past, immigrants had to prove they were in good health, no criminal record and had a job WAITING for them, and were sponsored by an American citizen. Now, it would seem the socialists want us to allow anyone to move in whether they have aids, whether their "work" is running drugs, whether their plan is to simply go on welfare. A nation that does not protect its borders has no control at all. The statement on the Statue of Liberty re "send me your needy, etc" refers to people who want a chance to work and make something of their lives......it is not an invitation to live off hard-working American citizens. I've learned that most Hispanic immigrants do NOT approve of illegal immigrants......and I now agree with them.
The leftys would deny every bit of fact and logic in this piece and dismiss the author as a bigot, one of their most overused words.
This flyer was found here in SoCal recently:
What are we coming to?
The one thing in common with all the people on your list is that they were all legal immigrants. How many illegal aliens that snuck accross the border or overstayed their visa can you name for doing great things for my country?
I am, like many law abiding citizens, against illegal immigration. The word 'illegal' means that it should not be happening, and I admit it is a problem that must be solved. But instead of blaming the immigrants, maybe we should be looking at the people who hire them, or the unacceptable living conditions in Mexico. Where there is a will, there is a way, and I believe the illegal immigration problem will be solved by the Bush Administration.
The Gingrich Republicans have not been trying to solve the illegal immigration problem, they have been attacking immigrants as a whole to gain sympathy votes, and for many Americans, including myself, that made it personal. I, like many other Americans, want them out of office.
Bush is putting a human face back on the Republican party. God bless him for that.
Watch out for what? I will say what I think....Go to www.ccir.net....Newt was a speaker at a MALDEF meeting . Look up Mario Obledo...yes he would like for all Americans to shut up.
You are right about that....most will tell you if you ask.
I will explain to you what to watch out for, if you didn't already learn by watching history. By attacking immigrants, many people, mostly Latinos, will not vote for the Republican candidate. (The Latinos hold the key to the White House.) If that happens, the extreme left will gain power and after that, good-bye freedom of speech, good-bye right to bear arms, good-bye to the 4th Amendment, welcome to the police state. After that, I am not so sure you will be able to freely speak your mind. It has been done before, the past showed that, and it could be done again. History likes to repeat itself.
That is what I had in mind when I said Watch out.
All are under assault by unrestrained immigration, by immigration based not on national interest but guided by libertarian, free-market dogma and informed by a mushy altruism.
He had me going until this part.
Don't blame the free market. The destruction of American civilization by immigration is due to the usual suspects, the liberal elitists.
If we didn't give welfare to immigrants, the lazy kind wouldn't be coming here. If we didn't teach bilingual education in our public schools, their kids would learn english. If we didn't teach multiculturalism, they'd love this country.
I have to diagree with you.
1. You want to look at the people who hire illegals? With I.D. cards being easy to counterfit and sold freely in areas where illegals congregate, how can an employer really know he is hiring an illegal alien.
2. The living conditions in Mexico are not are problem, they are the problem of Mexican nationals. As long as we let the Mexicans flood across our border and act as an escape valve for the Mexican government, nothing down there will change.
3. From what I remember, the Republicans were for allowing more skilled immigrants into the country to work in the high tech fields.
I agree with most of what you said. We have made too many mistakes and instead of looking at ourselves we are blaming people who are taking advantage of a system we created. We are the only ones to blame. Hopefully, we will learn from the past and we will not repeat the same mistakes in the future.
Firstly, hiring illegal immigrants is against the law, and is punishable by a $10,000 fine. But again, no one enforces the law. If the law was enforced, many employees would not hire illegal aliens. It is not that hard to spot them out.
Secondly, the living conditions in Mexico are completely unacceptable. The wages are $0.50 a day. There are no unions, Mexicans are working for almost nothing. There is huge corruption in the Mexican government, mostly created by us. The drug problem. Some Latinos will say that if we, the Americans, did not consume, there would be no drug problem. Mexico is one huge mess. We are not a part of the solution, we are part of the problem. It does not seem like we are doing anything to get to the root of the problem and solve it; instead we are attacking people who are the least guilty of creating the problem. Change starts with us. Without realizing this, we will never be capable of solving it.
Anyway, my time is running out, thank you very much for the nice conversation.
Hiring an illegal alien may be punishable by a 10,000 dollar fine and spotting illegals you may think is easy, but, if you make a mistake and refuse to hire someone because you think he is illegal although he really isn't, the government alphabet soup agencies and the ACLU will come down on you like a long wall mining ceiling and totaly crush you and your business.
The fact that there are no unions is their problem. If the Mexicans want a union they can create one just like we did.
The fact that there is corruption due to drug dealing is also their problem. If their people were forced to stay in Mexico instead of invading the US pretty soon their people would have to say enough is enough and pressure would be brought down on the Mexican government.
Hey, I am an American Republican...I will say what I want...I am not attacking anyone....except law breakers. Have you seen that TV Ad..Duo yu want mi mony???? Who in the hell will they give it to if they live in the US???? Send it back to Mexico? I would rather they go back to Mexico and live if they are breaking our laws by being here.
That looks like some CIA disseminated thing..
I am sick and tired of the mindless attacks on a relatively small group of people.
And I'm afraid I'm tired of mindless attacks on the great majority of the American population, and their laws, by a relatively small group of people who seek to serve only themselves, and could care less about me, my country and my culture. And who, at the same time, object mightily to any impuning of their culture. The one they're on the run from. The one they want to superimpose over mine, lock, stock and custom, and want financing to do it.
The problem is elementary. This nation was conceived in Liberty. Then about 100 years ago somehow we decided that what made us great wasn't Liberty, but Democracy. So for 100 years we have been trying to export Democracy throughout the world. People are coming here because Democracy doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work. They come here because we still have some vestiges of Liberty left. It is these vestiges (such as the 2nd Amendment) that the democrats (sic) are trying to rids us of so we can be just like all the other countries in the world and no one will want to come here any more. So there.
That looks like some CIA disseminated thing..
Well, actually, it looks like someone from L.A. unified school district put it out, cause everyone knows they can't spell.
APPLE COMPUTER OWES ME MONEY. I DON"T THINK THE CHECK CAME IN THE MAIL YET? I think the amount was about $2,000....I mailed the part to Jobs, I know he got it but never paid me a refund or replaced the part. BTW, who does Jim Peterson work for? hat fat but friend of Clinton...Who are Liz and Craig Horton?
bttt
So long as these disconnected immigrants continue to vote Democrat, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
Ahem. You see the GOP congress doing anything to stop it ? You see Bush speaking out about it ?????????????
The Immigration Reform Act which was passed in 1967 with Bobby Kennedy in the lead was designed to bring into the United States Third World immigrants who could be counted on to vote Democrat. The Democrat Party sensed early on that their support of the Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action would drive White Southerners to the GOP, despite the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed with GOP support and Democrat Party opposition.
The influx of Mexicans, Hatians, West Africans, Central Americans, et. al. is welcomed by the dominant media and by Democrats because they know full well that their traditional constituencies are leaving them.
The Democrats practise race warfare and gender warfare specifically to energize Blacks and women so they will show up at the polls. The Democrats encourage the Balkanization of America specifically to energize these Third World immigrants.
The GOP remains mostly silent because to speak up would only invite the dominant media to brand them as racists which would further energize these Third World immigrants to show up at the polls and vote.
The ONLY solution is an opposition press and there is none. America is lost.
>>That looks like some CIA disseminated thing.. >Well, actually, it looks like someone from L.A. unified >school district put it out, cause everyone knows they >can't spell. And they can't spell because their school district is overrun with aliens, both legal and illegal, who do not and/or refuse to speak english. I'm a California refugee - I've seen this sort of thing first hand. That state is well on it's way to being completely divorced from Western civilization. If you'd like a cogent report on what's going on in California from another California native - though one much more eloquent that I, check out: http://www.natesu.org/dlc/mcgrath2000.htm and then: http://www.amren.com Shawn
I'm not completly sure that trying to stop illegal immigration would necessarily prevent the Republicans from getting the Latino vote. I say this because I remember that many naturalized Californians originally from Mexico supported proposition 187. (Prop 187, among other things, proposed getting rid of many social service benefits to illegal residents). Apparently they worked hard and waited many years to get their citizenship and resented those who were sneaking in across the boarder.
I would support increased *legal* Mexican immigration if real steps to curtail illegal immigration are taken. Based on their support of prop 187 I think that many in the (non-American-flag-burning) Latino community would support this too.
Much of the separatist Latino activism we see is comming from the spoiled children and grandchildren of Mexican immegrants who have an ax to grind. I really doubt they would be willing to revoke their American citizenship, get rid of their high standard of living, and live out the rest of their lives south of the boarder.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
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