U.S. history is rooted in immigration, so how would the country morally justify blocking immigrants? How far is too far for a president to go to bring forward immigration reform? – How Does America Solve Unauthorized Immigration? The Atlantic, Priscilla Alvarez, 3/8/16
Fact Check: The author of this article asks a number of questions, such as the ones above. The obvious purpose is to encourage responses in favor of endless mass immigration. The claim that our history is “rooted” in immigration is a false premise which distorts the realities of our past. Immigration is only one facet of American history, and not an essential one.
Contrary to the common assertion, immigrants did not create and build America. Immigrants are people who move from one settled country to another. The founders and builders of America primarily were pioneers and settlers, who moved from the British Isles to create British colonies in the New World. Immigrants arrived later.
The essential roots of America as she developed were those of Western civilization, most specifically her heritage of British custom and culture. It was that heritage that laid the basis for our commitment to rule of law—which in turn laid the groundwork for our freedom and prosperity.
Large-scale immigration to the independent United States did not begin until the 1840s. It continued for eighty years until the American people, through Congress, decided that the high numbers were excessive and posed a problem for our cultural cohesion and the economic prospects of our working people. Thus our history has roots in immigration restriction as called for by citizens who exercised their democratic freedom to decide what kind of society they wanted to have.
That restriction, lasting for 40 years, worked well. Immigrants assimilated, and rose up the economic ladder. All of American society benefitted. Unfortunately, the cycle of mass immigration began again in 1965. Large-scale immigration made some sense in the 19th century when we had a country in need of development, but it served no real purpose in the kind of modern developed country we’ve had for the past 100 years.
The current wave of mass immigration is more problematic than the previous one in terms of numbers and diversity. The peak of the previous wave was between 1900 and 1910 when we received around 800,000 immigrants a year. For the past twenty-five years, during the current wave, we have taken in one million legal immigrants a year plus 300,000 illegal aliens per year.
Another difference is much greater diversity. In the previous wave, most immigrants were from Europe and at least shared a common identity in Western Civilization. Today the great majority of newcomers are from non-Western countries, which places a great challenge to the cultural identity in which our country is rooted.
Now let’s turn Atlantic’s question around. With immigration now undermining our common culture and threatening to turn us into an overcrowded, balkanized, Third World society, how can we morally justify not limiting immigration?