HandyHandle

Rick Perry has been governor of Texas since 2000. He was recruited for the GOP in 1989 after, believe it or not, serving as Texas chairman of Al Gore’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. Like Martinez, he was a Democrat who switched to Republican. Despite a few anti-immigrant actions he wants "amnesty without citizenship" and we know where that leads. It looks like Hispanics (along with Sheldon Adelson and Mark Zuckerberg) are helping elect pro-Amnesty candidates.

Despite Susana Martinez’s campaign platform rhetoric and (ineffectual) opposition to driver's licenses for illegal aliens ... from Fox News Latino: "The first Latina governor in U.S. history and the most prominent Latina in the Republican party criticized Mitt Romney’s campaign rhetoric, her party’s approach to the Hispanic community, and pushed the need for comprehensive immigration reform." If you follow polispeak, "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" is code for Amnesty, which word she would eliminate from the debate, but not the substance. After criticizing Romney for claiming that Obama pandered to minorities "Martinez criticized Republicans as well, implying that her party isn’t diverse enough. 'We have to start electing people who look like their communities all the way from county commissioners ... up into national politics,' she said ..." And you can bet that community isn’t white. “Who look like their communities” = Hispanics. She’s one nasty piece of work. A fifth-column politician. Full article: “Susana Martinez Rips Mitt Romney, Wants GOP Latino Outreach to Change”

Largest doesn’t mean most of the population. What matters is how the Hispanics voted in those states, and what they voted for. At this point there are more whites than Hispanics in every state, so who won is not always determined by the Hispanic vote. A Hispanic, Susana Martinez, got elected governor in the state with the largest Hispanic population (nearing half), by a narrow margin. She began her political career as a Democrat, later switched to Republican in 1995. She campaigned on a promise to be “tough on border security.” So take New Mexico – please.

A Cambodian moving from Cambodia to the U.S. is immigrating. An American moving within America is not immigrating. (United States Army Field Manual #35, pages 48 & 49. Diagrams showing maps and arrows not included here.) Multiculturalists – despite the multi – seek to destroy (what’s left of) American culture, whereas I want to preserve it. (Yes, I made up that Army manual.)

Not a straight question. It would be useless to repeat my position on the alleged right of a foreigner to move next door. And I’m not sure what’s meant by "collective personality” – American whites I guess. I don’t think they have a collective personality, but they do have a common interest in that they, individually, will suffer like the whites suffered in South Africa if and when they become a small minority.

First off both parties, Republican and Democrat, are pro-immigration. (A low point was Rand Paul giving a speech in Spanish to some Hispanic group.) It is the people who are against immigration, they’ve turned to the Republican party and they write and call them. Republicans are less immigratinist than Democrats. Despite that, they are betraying their constituency by now working on their own immigration amnesty / surge bill, (See the Associated Press article “House Republicans Work Immigration Behind Scenes.”) However, Nicky does have a point. If there were a difference between the parties, probably non-white immigrants would vote for the one that promotes more non-white immigration rather than the one that didn’t. Whites are the enemy, not only of most immigrants but of most neoconservatives (not all, there are one or two exceptions). For the immigrants look at the stuff La Raza puts out. As for the neoconservatives: “... we are becoming the first universal nation in history ... If you believe, as the author does, that the American drama is being played out toward a purpose, then the non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality.” — Ben Wattenberg, The Good News is the Bad News is Wrong. Blatantly false. Take an extreme case. Suppose the American population was replaced with sub-Saharan Africans. Could it possibly have the culture of the 1850s or anything like it? Nicky has lost it, LOL. Fact is, discussing this subject with people who disagree with my position more or less politely has been very interesting, and helped refine my position.

Suey Park all by herself is an argument against unrestricted immigration. FeatherFall says that I accept "... the premise that you can protect rights by violating rights." No, in this discussion the existence of a foreigner’s right to move here is in dispute. I maintain there is no such right. We can’t violate a right that doesn’t exist. FeatherFall (along with some others here) disagrees, claiming there is such a right and restrictions would violate it. Arguments and counter-arguments have been presented. FeatherFall says that I’ve been fooled by statists who "... create a problem ---> convince people to fear the problem more than they should ---> convince people to sanction more self-victimization." So, FeatherFall admits open immigration is a problem created by statists. Will wonders never cease? Oh, I get it, open immigration is not the problem. The problem is welfare programs, created by whites before Third World immigrants were an issue. Such immigrants – all of whom had a right to move here – will eventually take over and change America into a Third World country. They would not do this except for the welfare programs Americans created before they arrived. Therefore ... I am victimizing myself by opposing open immigration ! That’s FeatherFall’s argument fleshed out. It’s as absurd as having a real amnesty for foreigners then a hoped for tax and regulation amnesty for Americans later. The moral is not the impractical. If foreigners really possessed the right FealherFall claims they do it would lead to the extraordinarily impractical, the dissolution of the America we once knew. Our current open immigration policy, and worse in the works, is doing just that. (There are other forces to fight too but immigration is very important now per “the better Peikoff.”) Fighting this is the moral thing to do.

I provided both attitude poll and voting breakdown. To vote is to act. The attitude poll is relevant too because most people are not hypocrites. The first part is true, a significant number of whites do support big government. Do most of these claim otherwise? I doubt it, but suppose they did and we had to apply a correction factor. We would have to apply a correction factor to non-whites as well. What matters is the comparison, the difference between the two. If one is corrected up, so is the other. The fact remains, the percentage of non-whites supporting big government is far more than the percentage of whites who do. And whatever the attitude poll shows or doesn’t show, in the voting booth Hispanics, Asians and Blacks by and large screw the less authoritarian candidate much more than by and large whites do (by about a factor of two). After the non-white population reaches a certain point (it’s already 28%), eventually it becomes a sure thing: the less authoritarian candidate gets screwed, and eventually after that America either balkanizes or descends into dictatorship. Simple facts can be talked away but they’ll get you come next election. Leonard Peikoff at the end of his 26 August 2013 podcast, starting 22min:30sec, regarding the Rubio-Schumer amnesty immigration surge bill then in Congress: "I am against the immigration bill a hundred percent, not just one clause or another, for one very simple reason. It happens to be the case that we are teetering on the edge of dictatorship. It happens to be the case that if the Democrats continue to have or grow their political power we will be over that edge. And it happens to be the case, whether you like it or not, that of all Hispanics in America, whether they are rich or poor, self-made men or anything else, 80% are reliably and continually Democratic. So if [sic, delete ‘if’] you are talking about a bill, I don’t care whether it’s fair / unfair in any other respects, you are talking about a bill that will infuse into this country a massive amount of Democratic supporters and thereby guarantee the destruction of this country. That is what immigration means today. And there’s no use asking me in theory what do I think, there is no theory now, we’re on the end. So it’s a question of buying time." Trouble is, Peikoff more or less retracted this later, at the end of a two podcast debate with Yaron Brook, an immigration enthusiast. In so many words Peikoff said: I don’t know, and said how much he admires Brook.

I strongly disagree with Though the voting statistics and the poll I referenced don’t directly address statism, they’re not far from it, and they’re the best data in that direction available. We shouldn’t close our eyes just because the light isn’t as bright as we’d like. It’s not so dark that we must stumble around. I wouldn’t bother looking for a poll that asked "What do you think about statism?” It’s unlikely the man on the street, and certainly not a Third World immigrant, would know what you’re talking about. But food stamps and free medical care, that clicks.

Among everybody – whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc. – the number who answered "bigger” was 41%. Judging from the other statistics, this percent will grow as immigrants become a larger percent of the population.

Nobody here said Hispanics began statism in America. That they vote for more of it is another question. In 2012, 71% of the Hispanic vote, and 73% of the Asian, went to Obama. (The Hispanic vote is more important because there are more Hispanics.) Contrast this with 39% of the white vote going to Obama. A Pew Research poll (2013) asked Hispanics "Would you rather have a smaller government providing fewer services or a bigger government providing more services?” Some of the results: First generation immigrant Hispanics: 81% bigger Adult children of immigrant Hispanics: 72% bigger All Hispanics (immigrant and non-immigrant): 75% bigger I couldn’t find the percentage of whites who answer “bigger” but an educated guess would track the 2012 Obama vote, 39%. Despite some Hispanics responding "smaller” along with 61% of whites, all that matters in an election is the final total. Immigration makes the "big government” percent of the population get bigger. Why would anyone make fun of this? Immigrants weren’t here when the welfare state got rolling, therefore it doesn’t matter that they vote for more welfare. It’s a lousy argument.

FeatherFall says that what matters is that the quasi-immigrant But he won’t. He will get the vote and nationalize my lawn. About public property: We can talk about weaning ourselves from public property so that one happy day it no longer exists. We can talk about rescinding the so-called civil rights laws so that again we can choose with whom we deal. We can talk about ending the welfare state. But as we are today: public property exists, civil rights laws are on the books, welfare of one form or another is everywhere. Any hocus-pocus is this: pretending that culture, public property, civil rights, and welfare don’t exist and don’t affect the immigration debate. In practice that means: first amnesty for the immigrant, then later amnesty for you – except that as a consequence of the first amnesty your amnesty will never come.

Nothing but empty rhetoric, "don't do it.” Aleph_1 has a point. Right-of-way can't be used automatically or everywhere, not if we respect property rights. In post #6 I said I was sick of reading about unspeakable crimes committed by Third World immigrants. Nicky should read about them, say the latest development in the case of Juan Garcia: Hispanic Immigrants Taking Over FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

I thought FeatherFall was thinking of public versus private property when he wrote "Nobody needs to stay on private property." I read that with emphasis on “private property” and thought: where does he think they can be? However if his emphasis is on "stay," what then? Nobody ever needs to pause in their travels? That would be absurd. Distinguishing between perpetually traveling around the country and remaining in one place gets us ... nowhere. Added: "Public property" may be an invalid concept, but there are public parks, public schools, sidewalks, streets, etc. Then there is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 regarding businesses that violates freedom of association.

Whatever. The existence of landlocked property doesn’t hurt my argument, and immigration enthusiasts will say that a foreigner has a right to deal with landlocked property the same way as an American. Naturally I don’t think I’m obtuse or dishonest here. Part of FeatherFall’s second sentence warrants a reply. If the foreigner comes here he is somewhere, either on public property or on private property – or on private property unjustly treated as public by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but in the even subsume that property in “public property.” Unless the foreigner is in perpetual motion, now and then he will pause in his travels, again either in a public or a private place. "Nobody needs to stay on private property” means "Everybody can stay now and then on public property.” In this discussion the bodies FeatherFall refers to are Americans and foreigners combined. Thus he claims that every man on earth from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe has as much right to use American public property as an American does.

I could have written: No Afghani, Bolivian, Cambodian, Dane, Ethiopian or whatever has a right to come here, take up residence, take advantage of every aspect of U.S. citizenship except – and the exception wouldn’t last long as I have argued at length and even most immigrationists admit (and Leftists hope for) – the vote. He has no right to move here at all. When something seems possible in theory but is impossible in practice, there’s something wrong with the theory. Saying an Afghani or whatever could move here yet always remain on private property is so outlandish a proposition I wonder why anyone has to point it out.

Several political factors contribute to America’s decline, and unrestricted immigration is the worst because irreversible. If you are sick from drinking wood alcohol, drinking more wood alcohol will make you even sicker. The fact that unrestricted immigration isn’t the sole cause of America’s decline doesn't mean we should continue committing suicide. Of course these causes of decline themselves have causes, and one of the most far reaching is fear of standing up for yourself. After decades of multicultural propaganda people are afraid to criticize immigration. You get the treatment if you do. But a sea change is in the air. The immigration disaster is reaching critical mass, when it will become impossible to reverse America’s decline by political means, and more and more Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact. By the way, libertarians (loosely defined) are practically all immigration enthusiasts. One notable exception is Ilana Mercer, well worth reading on this subject. (Sometimes she annoys – me anyway. Comparing the alleged right of a foreigner to move here to the alleged Palestinian “right of return” is a stretch. Her analogy might help convince people who have friends in Israel, but it’s not a complete argument. Ethiopians etc. never lived within what came to be America, for one thing. This is not to argue for “right of return” but to point out that the restrictionist position for America is stronger than the Israeli position against “right of return.”)

So now we must give America back to the Indians? I prefer the Pilgrims. You might say I was mugged by reality. The following is my abridgement of a paragraph from “Huddled Clichés,” an essay by the late Lawrence Auster subtitled “Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments That Have Opened America’s Borders to the World”: Imagine what the British would have said if they had adopted “we are a nation of immigrants” as a guide in 1940 when facing imminent invasion by Germany. “Look, we’re a nation of invaders. First the Celts took the land from the Neolithics, then the Anglo-Saxons drove out the Celts, then the Normans subjugated the Anglo-Saxons. In between were Danish invaders and Viking marauders. Since we ourselves are descended from invaders, who are we to oppose yet another invasion of this island? Being invaded is our national tradition!” An immigration enthusiast might reply to that satire: Don’t speak to me of invaders. America is an idea, a philosophy, a “propositional nation.” By choosing to come here an immigrant signs on to the American ideal. But do they, the immigrants of today? Rich or poor, about three quarters vote authoritarian government. This doesn’t faze immigrationists, they just keep plugging away. “We are a nation of immigrants.” They used the same cliché to get the Immigration Act of 1965 passed, when it would have been less misleading to say: “We are a nation of Western immigrants.” In 1776, when Founders walked the earth, we were a nation of British colonialists. Saying “we are a nation of immigrants, any ol’ immigrants” is saying we are a nation of nothing. I have been emphasizing the vote because objective, simple, unarguable facts about elections and polls of political attitudes prove the restrictionist case. But the problem with open immigration is even worse than that more immigrants will vote us into dictatorship. America is not just an idea or abstract creed. America is a culture, manners, language, literature, history, tradition, customs, moral exemplars. And all that is slowly being destroyed by unrestricted immigration. The Left loves it, which is to be expected. But Objectivists? Except for Leonard Peikoff (on again off again), the official ones deny it is even happening.

I hope Nicky can think of a few. But of course he’s not really asking me, he’s saying I think Hitler was right. I’ll ignore the slur except to point it out. It is the immigrationists who are changing the country, I want to preserve it. Hart-Cellar was social engineering on steroids. When speaking of immigration we are talking about foreigners, not Americans. As I have argued, restricting immigration (of foreigners, naturally) – any focus, any reason, no reason – doesn’t violate anyone’s rights. No foreigner has a right to U.S. citizenship.

Quasi-immigrants possess the same legal rights as Americans except the vote, until they get that too. Therefore, we should care about these immigrants, care about their culture, how they act and think, how they will behave and vote. If they are worse than the average American, they will make America worse. Laws do not make us good. The best legal system imaginable would collapse if we did not by and large act decently when the law isn’t looking. Open immigration is like adding vinegar to wine. The label on the bottle isn’t going to keep the wine from turning vinegary. Regarding voting procedure FeatherFall admonishes: But foreigners aren’t franchised to begin with. How could they be dis-enfranchised? The real question is whether everyone in Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc should be offered the U.S. franchise in the first place. The answer is, No! If you want to keep America, it’s flaming obvious We don’t need a reason to exclude foreigners, we may exclude any foreigner for any reason or no reason. The claim that, on the contrary, a foreigner has an inalienable right to move here, negates the idea of a country, negates my vote, yours too probably, and makes a mockery of rights. Individual rights, individual rights. Why must we give up our freedom and way of life – it will be taken from us much faster – for a foreigner? Only stupid, colossal, self-sacrifice could justify it. Race is a factor whether we like it or not. Today most non-whites (immigrant and native) vote welfare and most whites do not (though a significant percentage do). The total determines the winner. In the 2012 presidential election about 60% of whites voted for Romney, yet he lost. If Obama makes your gorge rise, then so should the immigration disaster. Harry Binswanger and Yaron Brook give the impression that on average new immigrants are at least as freedom-loving as the America they moved to. That simply isn’t true. Again, look at the evidence. Exceptions do not disprove the overwhelming trend. (See pervious links.) We are at the tipping point of no return. Why make things worse than they are already? Without violating anyone’s rights we can stop making things worse by instituting a moratorium on immigration like the one we had before 1968. Take the opportunity for goodness’ sake.

And for many the reverse. Whatever. Whether they are on welfare or not, most Third Worlders vote welfare. No, I observe that current immigrants are more likely than native Americans to vote for the candidate promoting the most welfare. See end of last post. Not quite. An immigration moratorium like we had before 1968 will help prevent the growth of welfare-statism, and help end it. We ought to be proud of the attempt. Not at all. An immigration moratorium will prevent foreigners who by and large would vote welfare from becoming such voters. FeatherFall turns the clock forwards and back simultaneously, as if Asians, Africans and Hispanics etc have a right to decide U.S. elections even before they move here. Why not, per above, help end welfare so they cannot be recipients?

If we liken a foreigner to a piece of goods, then an American can bring him over, or have him brought over, despite intervening land owners who don’t like it by obtaining a right-of-way easement against them. I had assumed that the American would make no attempt to keep the foreigner or quasi-immigrant on FeatherFall’s property. (“Quasi-immigrant” because he isn’t a citizen and can’t vote – “not right away” as The Undercurrent says.) Without that assumption my objection becomes stronger. The point was that keeping him on the farm or whatever was impossible. Not even attempting it gives away the show from the beginning. Just one American willing to say “come on over” then over they all can come, everywhere. FeatherFall points out that the quasi-immigrant can use a chain of like-minded Americans, who allow him on their property, to travel around the country. This will end up being everywhere an American can go whether Americans object to it or not. Today there are laws governing “public places” (even if privately owned), so-called civil rights laws (which violate civil rights), laws governing emergency rooms, there are the police, courts and so forth – as I mentioned earlier. And as I argued, these quasi-immigrants become voting immigrants and a political force. The existing welfare situation makes my position stronger but isn’t necessary to object to all this. Suppose, contrary to fact, there were no welfare. Today, most Third world immigrants (most new immigrants today) vote for welfare whether they are productive or not. The posited no-welfare state would soon be under siege. See my earlier references and this one.

Nicky, spare us the Objectivist boilerplate and name-calling. I’ve stated my concern several times: I don’t want to be swamped by the Third World. This is evil? Not lead in socialist tendencies? That part is false – overwhelmingly false. Nicky should investigate the white vs. non-white statistics. See my previous posts for some introductory references. All illegals initiated force, whether they broke the lock on the door or found an unlocked door. Nobody here said most immigrants commit violent crimes. Relative ethnic crime rates is another question. The "stranger violent crime” rate for non-whites, including non-white Hispanics, is much higher than that for whites. (By stranger violent crime I mean a violent crime where the perpetrator and his victim were previously unknown to one another – the kind of attack against you or yours that you worry about.) Nicky mentions "Mexican or Latin American immigrants as a group” then claims that according to me "they should be persecuted for belonging to that group.” Actually I address foreigners and “illegal immigrants” – that is, more foreigners. And by opposing open immigration I am not (to paraphrase) “persecuting foreigners.” That’s Left-wing victim talk. To get what they want the Left works to inculcate white self-loathing, or "liberal white guilt.” This is the extreme end of the demoralization process I mentioned in an earlier post. Nicky is right about one thing, he is wasting his time with yours truly.

FeatherFall introduces a new argument. Instead of enlisting the (bogus, as I’ve argued) right of a foreigner to move to America, FeatherFall argues from an alleged right of every American citizen to bring a foreigner to his property. If we don’t allow open immigration it is the American’s rights that get violated, not the foreigner’s (or not just, per Nicky). I see three flaws in this argument. The first, relatively minor, is that FeatherFall (to use this exemplary American) doesn’t own the property between the border and his place through which to transport the foreigner. But let it pass. Suppose FealtherFall can get him to appear at his place somehow or other like teleportation, say a rocket drops down, or (rather a stretch) all of America is privately owned and he contracted with a ribbon of property owners to carry him. The second flaw is much more important. FeatherFall, I think we can assume, expects this immigrant to have all the rights of an American except suffrage: access to the courts, emergency waiting rooms (ever been to one recently?), protection by the police and military, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly – for example with like minded immigrants, etc. (If not, it would be chattel slavery.) Americans will pay for all this and also be influenced by the foreigner’s actions. Eventually he will want the vote, and lobby for it, and Leftists will help him do it. The rest of us have an interest in all this. It’s our country after all. The third flaw is the worst. The assumption that the immigrant will remain on FeatherFall’s property is absurd. An immigrant is not like a sack of flour that stays where it’s put. He has a mind of his own and two legs. No way will he stay at FeatherFall’s place for long. When a politician says "guest worker program” in practice it’s another name for amnesty. Quoting this: Nothing is more permanent than temporary workers. As with Nicky’s notion that any foreigner has a right to move here, so with FeatherFall’s notion that any American has the right to bring him here – the result is the same: mass immigration. What about the American’s individual rights? The following is not just a rhetorical analogy, it’s justified by my argument above. An American has no more right to import random foreigners than he has to set fire to his house and sprinkle incandescent sparks on someone else’s.

No one here has said welfare isn’t helping to destroy America, quite the contrary. To repeat, these days immigration is the prime tool of Leftists. No need to persuade recalcitrant Americans to socialism, just import socialists ready-made. No one here has mentioned limiting the population per se. Since you bring up the subject, there may be a sort of inflation factor when it comes to people, the more there are the less human life gets valued, or at any rate the less pleasant things might be. I haven’t really thought about it except to lament the over-crowding in places where I once lived and came back to visit years later. This thread is not about limiting population but limiting immigration. I’ve argued for an immigration moratorium like what was in place from 1924 to 1968. I hear they were good years, even – culturally speaking – during the great depression. When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. I’ve been emphasizing the political cost of Third World immigration but there is also a cultural cost, well captured in this article by Bryanna Bevens: "Not Your Mom’s Mall Any More” I recommend it from first hand shopping experience. While I am, as Nicky might say, regurgitating webpages, see also "Catholic Elites Spend Millions to Sell Illegal Alien Amnesty” by Brenda Walker on the same website. It should give Objectivists pause to find themselves on the same side of an issue as Leftists and the Catholic Church, not to mention Baptist, Lutheran, Jewish and Evangelical organizations (if not rank and file church-goers, which is something else again). That’s not much of an argument against open immigration (guilt by association), just something that should make us think twice before joining the parade.