bobbyw24
10-19-2009, 05:56 AM
Immigration, perhaps more than any other issue today, reveals the chasm that so often exists between “democracy” and the actual will of the people. Polls consistently find solid majorities of Americans in favor of immigration reductions, yet the problem grows more severe and out of control each year.
Every morning on my way to work, I drive by a 7-Eleven in Farmingville, N.Y., where a large group of, um, “undocumented” Mexicans can be found waiting to be hired out for day jobs. Perhaps 50 feet down the road is a small group holding signs reading “Deport Illegal Aliens.” Drivers wave and honk in support, but still those who profess to govern us do absolutely nothing to secure our borders.
One of the ways in which pro-immigration propagandists have sought to attain the moral high ground is by the implicit suggestion that the right of immigration is a hallowed national principle that no loyal American can consistently oppose. Yet this usually unexamined premise is actually false. The Founding Fathers were generally wary of immigration, a phenomenon that they did not wish to exclude altogether but that they saw no particular need to encourage, especially among migrants whose cultural backgrounds were significantly different from their own.
Consider Benjamin Franklin, that well-known cosmopolite and child of the Enlightenment. Franklin, it turns out, said quite a few politically incorrect things about non-British humanity. On one occasion he asked, “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion?” Thus immigrants of sufficient number and concentration could radically change the cultural landscape in ways that the native population may not want.
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/feb/16/00011/
Every morning on my way to work, I drive by a 7-Eleven in Farmingville, N.Y., where a large group of, um, “undocumented” Mexicans can be found waiting to be hired out for day jobs. Perhaps 50 feet down the road is a small group holding signs reading “Deport Illegal Aliens.” Drivers wave and honk in support, but still those who profess to govern us do absolutely nothing to secure our borders.
One of the ways in which pro-immigration propagandists have sought to attain the moral high ground is by the implicit suggestion that the right of immigration is a hallowed national principle that no loyal American can consistently oppose. Yet this usually unexamined premise is actually false. The Founding Fathers were generally wary of immigration, a phenomenon that they did not wish to exclude altogether but that they saw no particular need to encourage, especially among migrants whose cultural backgrounds were significantly different from their own.
Consider Benjamin Franklin, that well-known cosmopolite and child of the Enlightenment. Franklin, it turns out, said quite a few politically incorrect things about non-British humanity. On one occasion he asked, “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion?” Thus immigrants of sufficient number and concentration could radically change the cultural landscape in ways that the native population may not want.
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/feb/16/00011/