At the risk of sounding pessimistic, the law seems so shot through with loopholes and delays that I doubt very much that even a small fraction of the 26,000 will be deported pursuant to it.

It is a hopeful sign that the Dutch parliament enacted it, but laws alone don’t achieve results. The United States has some fairly severe immigration laws, but our federal government simply declines to enforce them. How likely is it that Dutch legislation will be translated into action? HRS

Speaking of the proper use of the word “tolerance”, note this sentence from the Guardian story about the asylum policy: “The unprecedented move was a blow to the Netherlands’ reputation for tolerance and set a tough benchmark for Europe’s asylum policies.”.

The Netherlands has an asylum policy that applies to people whose lives would be in danger if they returned home. Many such policies are very loose in assessing that danger. The Dutch government has decided that many of its asylum seekers would not be in danger if they returned home, while others would be in danger. The latter get to stay in Holland, the former must return. Could someone explain what this has to do with “tolerance”? To “tolerate” is to permit something of which one disapproves. For example, I disapprove of cigarettes, but I do not seek their prohibition. I tolerate them. Nothing in the Dutch policy has anything to do with approving or not approving of anyone, merely with evaluating the truth of their claims to need asylum. What does that have to do with being tolerant or intolerant?

Mr. Coleman,

In truth, nothing. But in liberal-think, to consider anyone unwelcome, for any reason, is intolerant. That this inevitably leads - as anyone who walks the streets of New York, London, Paris or Rotterdam can plainly see if he will only look - ultimately to the dispossession of the over-tolerant by those they refuse to remove is not something liberals are willing to acknowledge. Or if they do, like Harvard’s race-lunatic Ignatiev, it is to celebrate that result. HRS

Mr. Coleman’s question brings to the fore the REAL meaning and purpose of all liberal immigration policies, from the point of view of the liberals themselves. To the liberals, it doesn’t matter whether the ostensible purpose of a particular immigration policy is to provide needed workers, or to save people from an imminent threat to their lives, or to “re-unite” families. No. To the liberals, immigration has only ONE meaning and ONE purpose, and that is to demonstrate the tolerance and non-discriminatory nature of the liberals themselves, particularly as it relates to the ethnicity of the immigrants.

That, by the way, is the reason why immigration reformers who have no concern about the immigrants’ ethnicity, who focus, for example, on non-ethnic aspects of immigration such as its environmental or economic effects, still get attacked and marginalized as racists. Since the primary reason for mass immigration is to demonstrate the tolerance of the receiving society, any immigration reduction effort that ignores that underlying motive, that seeks to avoid any confrontation with that underlying motive, will ultimately get nowhere. Openness to mass Third-World immigration is driven by a spiritual disease within Western man, and the immigration can only be stopped by diagnosing and healing that disease.

VFR has had many illuminating posts and threads about the diagnosis of Western man’s disease. How can Western man, marinated as he is in liberalism’s false premises, be brought to the point of starting to heal himself? For, as the disease is largely self-inflicted, the cure will have to be entirely self-imposed. What sort of shocks will it take to make Western man even see the need to search for a cure? HRS

Mr. Sutherland brings up the point of Western Man’s disease, and how to cure it ? The cure, I’m afraid, is of the most difficult kind; and it involves faith, and a spiritual strength not observed in the West since the likes of Winston Churchill stood on the world stage. There is no National; or world figure in the West who has the basic courage to stand up in public and speak truths. If there was such a Man; the scales would and could fall from the eyes of the people more easily than most believe. My fear is that such a man as this no longer dwells in the West ! I can not for the life of me name him, or even imagine who he would be. If he is to come into public view he will be a total unknown.

I am inclined to agree with Howard here. It would be a mistake for conservatives to be too heartened by the new Dutch resolve. Recall that France too tried valiantly about 5 yrs ago to deport a couple hundred illegals from North Africa. After an initial determined stance, the center-right government buckled after many illegals took refuge in the Eglise de Notre Dame
and the usual array of beatnik Marxists took to the streets in protest. Perhaps the only recent example of real courage & success w/ deportations is Prime Minister Howard of Australia (2 yrs ago). Somehow, the hard left has a way of constantly upping the ante and resorting to more legalistic or anarchist tactics to block deportations. Center-right politicians usually lack the required backbone to win the day.

My post about a Churchill like figure speaking out for Western values would not in any way overshadow; or be the only way to stop the invasion of the West. A bottom-up, grassroots effort by the public could work; but would be difficult. To shatter multiculturalism; and to strip it of its power could be achieved faster if an elite figure, or several elites went public and exposed the system.

As I’ve said before, this whole issue could turn around on a dime if the following events occurred:

(1) A prominent public figure stands up and denounces our entire, non-discriminatory immigration policy.

(2) When he’s attacked, INSTEAD OF APOLOGIZING AND RETREATING, he stands by what he said.

(3) Several other prominent figures stand up and take his side.

If those things happened, the entire notion of what is moral or immoral, permitted or not permitted, in American public life would have been changed.

I hope for neither, but I fear that the only things that will wake up enough spiritually diseased Western men to make a difference will be bloodshed and poverty. I do not know how badly Westerners will have to suffer to be shocked into sanity, but it will have to be far worse than I had imagined. While I believe that a recovery of Christian faith is the necessary precondition to the recovery of the West, and I pray for it every day, I confess I do not see how it will happen anytime soon.

Westerners will have to suffer grievously, at home, at the hands of invaders. That has already happened, on a large scale, in the United States on 11 September 2001. It has made no practical difference, except to give the Bush administration a license to avoid the really sticky issues by pursuing military ventures in the Middle East. Westerners are already seeing their standard of living and job security eroded by the flood of cheap labor. That, too, has given rise to no effective resistance.

We are commanded not to despair, but it is hard not to go Eliot one better and wonder if when Western man ends he will even bother to whimper. HRS

Mr. Sutherland’s last comment and my last comment each express a truth. It COULD turn around on a dime, because man is free to choose truth over falsehood, but in practical terms Western man’s commitment to falsehood is so deeply entrenched that terrible sufferings may be required to make him repent of it.

Mr. Auster is entirely correct. Leadership. We need to seek out and lobby the leader.

The first order of busines this November is for the conservative base of the Republican Party to toss GWB out of office. As this is happening, and after, we need to stress this was over culture, borders, and jobs ! The Democrats are starting to get the jobs part of this; of course they will never get the immigration part for obvious reasons, but that is our job.

I believe something of great importance happened at the State of the Union Address given by GWB last month. I believe he planted the seeds of his future defeat that evening by the base of his own Party due to his immigration policy. This Administration has yet to recover from that evening; and nor should we allow it to as conservatives. Something broke on the evening of Jan 7 in D.C. It’s up to us to make the larger culture understand this; and not let them spin GWB’s possible defeat into some accident.

I don’t think we necessarily need to suffer enormously before a leader can come forth. Mr. Auster’s elements 1 and 2 from his 10:56 post contain what I perceive as the essential ingredients for major immigration reform. Hard work and sacrifice probably will be needed also but not necessarily bloodshed or poverty or anything approaching enormous hardship, although we need to accept enormous hardship as possibilities because we can’t predict the future. Many decisive victories have been won without major hardship.

I agree with Mr. Auster that courageous leadership from a prominent leader would work wonders. Look at what its done for Mel Gibson. His film has been denigrated and villified for nearly a year, and he has simply refused to back down. The result is that his film appears on the verge of becoming a quite specular success.

On the other hand, it is hard to see what kind of leadership, no matter how courageous, would be enough to turn the West from its path to suicide. A great saint, on the order of Augustine or Benedict or Francis Xavier, perhaps. I often wonder if Saint Benedict illuminates the pattern we must ultimately follow — the pattern of abandoning a sick world while preserving what is worth preserving.

It may no longer be possible for “leadership” to emerge from within a democratic system of government. Too many Third World invaders now hold an effective veto.

I would remind Paul C. that even in California whites still control over 70% of the vote. This battle is far from over.

And, Mr. Hagan, just how much good has it done them? When they overwhelmingly voted to institute Prop. 187, the tribunes of the Third Worlders immediately intervened and invalidated the election. The political class has made it clear, time and time and time again, that they have no intention of listening to American citizens on this matter. They’re going to do whatever they please, and if there was a 99 percent vote to restrict and deport immigrants, our politicos would ignore it, invalidate it, or hide it.

As Mr. Hagan notes, white Americans still cast most of the votes in American elections, even in California. Nevertheless, Paul C makes a good point. Immigrants are not a majority in any state (yet), but politically motivated immigrants can effectively veto American leadership devoted to keeping the United States American. Look at the extent to which Cuban concerns have come to dominate Florida politics.

The reason is that the white electorate is deeply divided. These percentages are guesses, but I think not far off: roughly 40% of white voters would vote consistently in white Americans’ interests, given the opportunity; another 40% is so liberal in political habits that it is no help to us under any circumstances; and the remaining 20% is apolitical or fence-sitting. If white Americans were a real voting bloc, they would have things entirely their way (whatever way that might be). As it is, white Americans are the only group in this country that does not vote basically as a bloc - and all bloc-voting ethnic groups vote Democratic.

The divisions among white Americans are what give immigrant groups the political power they enjoy. If there were “nativist” lobbies with one-tenth the persistence of Maldef or La Raza, the immivasion would end next week. HRS

The idea that ethnic lobbyists hold a veto on such things as Prop. 187 is a slight exageration. At the time it passed, Newt Gingrich talked openly of legislation to “Federalize 187”, i.e. apply prop 187 to the entire country. However, I believe some ultra-motivated beltway insider, open border, shills got to him, since he quickly recanted. Would it have been the likes of Morton Kondracke & Bill Kristol who persuaded Kemp & Bennett to editorialize against it? Or Stuart Anderson, Orrin Hatch & Spencer Abraham?
There is, to quote, Michael Savage, an “enemy within” that seeks to subvert the democratic will on immigration regardless of what La Raza may say. Sure La Raza & liberal judges like Mariana Pfaelzer will do what they always do - push hard left agendas. Looking back at the period from Nov., 1994 to March 1995, the conservative movement had a head of steam and could have slam dunked some 187 type legislation through congress. It would have rendered null & void any liberal intervention from the judiciary. However, the insidious open borders neocon/libertarian clique within the beltway won the day.

It wasn’t the ethnic lobbyists that sank 187. It was the courts.

Alan, Yes & No. Sure the ACLU used the courts to stop 187 initially, then Gray Davis let it die by using mediation to prevent it getting to the Supreme Court (Damn you Pete Wilson! You should have stayed on as Governor) However, my point about federalizing it still stands. Had that happened any legal challenge would have at least gone all the way to the Supreme court. If they dared block it, it would at least have stayed front & center in national politics and the GOP would have had to respond by further legislation including constitutional amendments. My main point is that the 187 victory gave reformers momentum both at the state & federal level. Pete Wilson’s ill advised presidential run ( & bad health) quashed progress at the state level. At the federal level, it was the neocon/libertarian dweebs that took the momentum away.
At the end of the day, I blame folks like Bill Kristol & Orrin Hatch for stifling immigration reform, more than any liberal. Heck, we can expect liberals to be liberals. Immigration Reform is a political winner as Pete Wilson demonstrated. It is the neocons & libertarians who have co-opted the GOP who are to blame for
the lack of reform.
CM

I agree with Chris M. that much of this immigration disaster comes from within the mainstream Right and its Libertarian, open-borders friends. I do believe California is trying to get a new Prop 187 measure voted on this year. Mr.Sutherland is right that the white vote is deeply divided, though the South, even with a Black population approaching 40 percent in some States is regularly trumped by whites voting as a block on a very constant basis.

Actually, the paleolibertarians (as opposed to establishment “big-L” Libertarians) are usually very much in favor of border control.

On the Netherlands, I find it interesting that the immigration issue managed to turn a flamboyantly gay social liberal into a conservative icon, and then into a conservative martyr. (I’m talking about Pim Fortuyn).

The Dutch have erected a statue of Pim Fortuyn in front of his former home; which I take as a positive sign of mental health, and a daliy reminder to the population of the culture war they are in.

Mr. Hagan makes an important observation as a follow up to Mr. Auster’s three requirements for change: A new ideology must be based upon a faith. The regime feeds the population it’s phoney utopian myth. Only a stronger, competing faith can hope to descredit it and overthrow it.

Certainly some figures have come forth. Pat Buchanan is one example. In my view, that failure demonstrates that even ideas that are true, are not enough to overthrow an entrenched regime unless tied to a greater moral imperative.

(Apologies to Mr. Auster here for getting long winded)

Such a movement must represent more than positions and ideas. It would preach a national belief and moral imperative to replace and discredit the myths of the regime.Mere self interest is not enough. It would go on the attack, as a competing faith. It would condemn the system and its leaders as knowingly and deliberatly carrying out a plan to purge the nation of every competing allegiance.

This leads me to ask: would such a faith have to be by its nature, both religious and political?

Mr. Cox is absolutely right (and of course he wasn’t being long-winded at all). None of the well-known figures on the American scene have a positive vision of nationhood to replace the abstract, slogan-ridden, over-heated vision that is now the American orthodoxy. There are two key elements in such a positive vision that I’ve often discussed: particularity and transcendence. We are a particular people; we are a particular people who are part of a particular civilization; and we are a particular people under God. The idea of God by itself is not enough, because under conditions of liberalism God is made into an abstract idea of universal equality. Particularity by itself is not enough because without transcendent moral truth, particularity becomes amoral tribalism and power-worship (and there’s plenty of that on today’s paleo and racialist right). The two axes of our collective being are particularity and transcendence, culture and truth.

New leaders, their loins girded with these truths, wearing the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation, could stand against the evil forces that surround us and quench their flaming darts.

This talk of Pete Wilson reminds brings up a question.

Wilson was known as a ‘moderate’ republican. He was also a practical politician who IMO dig a lot of good for the city of San Diego as mayor and dig okay as governor. While no doubt electoral politics led him to embrace 187, I have a suspicion that his experience running a city — right on the border, no less — led him to see the everyday costs of immigration. Strangly enough, Dianne Feinstein has a similar political profile.

Now, given that immigration is probably the number one thing threatening the cultural of this country, should we be backing moderates like Wilson and Feinstein over ‘conservatives’ like Kemp et al., with whom we agree more on moral issues?

Mitchell,
I reckon that immigration reform is quickly becoming THE issue wrt a candidate’s merit overall. If the demographic changes continue as they have, they may be permanently change three things-
1) The electoral dynamics will change to weaken conservatives, making them a permanent opposition party. Similar dynamics can be seen in a more acute way in Canada, Holland, England & France where to varying extents multiculturalism, media censorship and thought police/totalitarian controls prohibit open discussion of the issue. In the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec & British Columbia, the ruling Liberal party has used immigration to transform once conservative areas into safe seats for Liberals. In England, the Labor Party has done the same thing to huge parts of London, Manchester, & Birmingham. By the sound of a recent post by Lawrence on Ireland, I imagine the same thing is happening in Dublin. It is also happening in California in places like Bob Dornan’s old Orange Co. district. Typically, hard left multiculturists run wisper campaigns to polarize the issue of immigration. They scare potentially conservative immigrants who might be receptive to immigration reform by telling them that evil conservative Republicans secretly want to deport all recent immigrants, legal and illegal. And that conservative Republicans are really Nazi types with a polite veneer. These lies pesuade many law abiding, self reliant new citizens into voting against their interest and for Demoncat scaremongers. With these sleazy tactics, multiculturalists ensure that the more immigration we have presently, the more we SHALL get in the future.
2) As population density increases, problems like sprawl, water scarcity, smog & decaying infrastructure become more insoluble.
3) The leftist media/professorial elite continues to promote affirmative action & multiculturalism/multilingualism. This works synergistically with the current ultra high levels of immigration from 3rd world nations. Again, looking to Holland, Canada etc., one sees the balkanization of countries into ethnic ghettos, the loss of a shared history, and scapegoating of caucasians to justify racial quotas. Things that Americans once took for granted like relatively corruption free police & judiciary succumb to the narcostate influences so common in countries like Mexico & Brazil.

Anyway, these things taken together mean that the immigration effect is in many ways permanent. High taxes can be cut, Defense Spending can be mended, Big Government can be downsized, but borders left open for too long lay waste to a country and make it nearly insurmountable to make changes.

Chris’s picture is accurate, but can lead to a despair that would be wrong. The cause and effect chain he describes seems unstoppable and irreversible, but only so long as we are inchoately thinking in terms of getting our country back in one giant leap as it were, because such a change is obviously impossible. An instant cure is not possible, but a change of direction, a radical change of direction, IS possible. If the country’s mindset switched around, if it stopped admitting mass immigration, if it seriously began to deport illegals, if it dropped its whole “inclusion” ideology and began asserting itself once again as a European majority country, then, despite the already very large immigrant and third-world presence in this country, we would start to see a steady net decrease of both the numbers and the cultural/political influence of the immigrant groups. Instead of getting steadily worse, things would start to get steadily better. I’m not saying this change of direction is a sure thing, obviously. But it COULD happen. It is something worth dreaming toward and working toward.

I accept Chris M.’s general outline, but I have a few comments.

1. I think he overestimates the decree of media and state surpression of the debate over immigration in Europe — especially continental Europe, Likewise he underestimates the ‘soft’ but none-the-less real surpression of the debate in the United States. Anti-immigration parties have actually won elections in continental Europe, and the BNP actually has the main British parties worried. A German CSU politician actually ran on a slogan ‘Kinder Statt Inder”, i.e. Kids instead of (Asian) Indians. What American politician would do that? The much hated BBC actually and the courage to show a debate on immigration and ‘asylum’ between the great and the good and ordinary folks, complete with call-in polls which were decidedly anti-immigration. They followed with a ‘Panarama’ undercover exposé about the easy of sneaking into Britain and getting false documents. I haven’t seen anything similar in the American media.

2. An interesting analogue to the use of immigration to alter political balance in the US and Canada is its use to dillute regionalism in the nations of Europe. The Vlaams Bloq complains that the French dominated Brussels government is importing Francophonie Africans in order to dillute Flemish voting power. The Catalans have long complained that internal immigration was diluting the uniqueness of their region, now they are faced with a more serious challenge in that foreign immigrants want to learn Castillian, not Catalan. One wonders if the central French state likes the fact that Maghrebis with no local roots are swamping southern French cities, which have always had a strong regional identity. To me, it is a crime that one is far more likely to hear and see Arabic in Marsellies or Nice rather than Provencal.

3. But my main point was that we have two practicle, moderately liberal politicians in Dianne Feinstein and Pete Wilson who have realistic views on immigration. Both supported 187. I submit that these two are more worthy of support than Orin Hatch, Sam Brownback, and Bush. Precisely because immigration does permanent harm, while issues like taxes, spending etc can be dealt with later rather than sooner (or more easily without the masses of poor immigrants needing support.)

Mitchell:
On pt. 1), I conceed you are correct. European media are not quite so suffused with political correctness as is the US.

Your comments wrt European nations using immigration to dilute regionalism or the unique history &/or politics of certain regions is also true of So. California, British Columbia & Quebec. So.Cal & suburban Vancouver were once reliably conservative areas - immigration has made them otherwise.
Quebec was once an emerging nation state. Pierre Trudeau & liberal social engineers faciliated the entry of many thousands of french speaking migrants from Haiti & French Africa. It is well documented that these new Quebecois provided the edge for the liberal elite in a 1995 referendum for Quebec to become more loosely associated to other Cndn provinces. There has been a school of thought in Green political circles that the optimum size for a nation state is 5-10 million people. It ensures that decision making processes do not become too far removed from the citizenry. This is a persuasive view to me & increasingly one sees the old iron fisted USSR as model towards which the US & EC are moving. Vast centrally controlled political entities are great for egotistical, power mad politicians, but abysmal for true advocates of healthy democracy. At some point, it may turn out that the best option for conservatives is to seek a radical devolution of power to individual states or clusters of states. DC could remain only to ensure national Defense, some infrastructure, etc.
WRT Dianne Feinstein, she opposed Prop 187. Indeed I remember her being questioned about it on Larry King Live before the ‘94 elections. She sympathized with the people behind 187, but said that it was cruel to scapegoat ‘the children’. Like Clinton, she made token gestures acknowledging problems with illegal immigration, but slyly opposed any real legislation to remedy the problem. Maybe she has since changed her tune, but I’d be sceptical.
An aside: Yesterday, NPR’s “Living on Earth” show on the environment featured a discussion on the debate within the Sierra Club on advocating an immigration policy consistent with a stable poplulation. It was astonishing to hear Professor Paul Ehrlich twist himself in knots to curry favor with the media elite. You can see the transcript on
livingonearth.org (or maybe just loe.org)
If Ehrlich were intellectually honest, he would have conceeded that Americans have a far larger ‘ecological footprint’ in terms of resource consumption, pollution per person etc. It is self evident that developed first world nations should stabilize their populations asap in addition to consuming more sparingly and using more benign technologies. Anyway, Ehrlich doesn’t have the fortitude to say this, and just counsels that we really don’t know enough (despite Virginia Abernethy’s research) and that the debate within the Sierra Club is really just a debate among ‘know nothings’.

I have a comment on this subject that’s been getting deleted elsewhere, even though it is true and not offensive. This causes me to think it may be valuable. Free immigration into a country which has any welfare or redistributionist features, no matter how minuscule, is aggression on the net taxpayer. Even if there were no such programs, the state must still defend against foreigners who are hostile. Since the absolutely free immigration policy is always unreasonable, there must be some standard of discrimination; in short, a merit system.It is false to say that it is not the immigrant’s fault, if he uses redistribution to get something stolen. That the officials try to legalize aggression, does not take away the absolute guilt of the net recipients of public subsidy, who are foreigners here. When the police are pulled out during a riot, the looter still has no way to claim innocence. The greater the extent of the welfare society, the more strict the merit criteria should be. Language, age, intelligence , beliefs, genetic advantages, non-criminal record, all these and more should be at higher levels, the greater the chance there is for immigrants to go on net public subsidy. Yet the clearest sign of intent to do damage to the net taxpayer is to have children of school-age, in the case of an immigrant who is not among the wealthiest. Advocating the abolition of the welfare state is no excuse for making it bigger today through immigration. That would be like saying that one may well drink ruinously more each day, because one has made a resolution to stop next year.