Immigration discussion at the Corner
Peter A. writes:
Worth checking out, starting with the 4:12 PM Krikorian entry at the Corner. He approvingly links to you, but then hides behind a liberal platitude. Derbyshire is in good form, and takes a good swat at JPod for good measure.
LA replies:
Krikorian is not hiding behind a liberal platitude. His position in that post is consistent with what he’s said all along:
1. He supports the non-discriminatory principle of the 1965 Immigration Act.
I was distressed when I learned a couple of years ago that this is his position, but it is his position.
2. Therefore he says the only way to reduce immigration from especially undesirable sources (say, Muslims and Mexicans) is to reduce all immigration across the board.
As a practical matter, he may be correct, but my position is that we should push on every front, that is, emphasizing the importance of, e.g., eliminating Muslim and radically reducing Hispanic immigration while also pushing for overall reductions. We should express every valid concern and push every legitimate argument; otherwise we surrender. Overall non-European mass immigration is a problem—we must talk about that. But Muslim immigration is a particular danger—we must talk about that, too.
Meanwhile, Derbyshire’s reply shows Derbyshire’s lack of ability to grasp the reality of any larger concepts, namely the universalist liberalism that is the ruling ideology of the modern West. Even though Krikorian specifically said that he shares Americans’ moral universalism and thus the belief in treating all cultures and nations the same in our immigration policy, Derbyshire reduces such belief to (I’m quoting him):
(a) An empty moral-status-claiming pose on the part of our money-sheltered elites, to whose ranches, gated communities, and doorman buildings the practical consequences of immigration policy are of no importance, except in so far as they affect the supply of cheap domestic servants.
(b) Vaguely understood by large sections of the middle class as something they “ought” to believe, though very few of them could tell you why.
(c) Hotly disputed by several tens of millions of patriotic and law-abiding U.S. citizens, with Republican voters a large majority among them.
For Derbyshire, the belief in open immigration consists of nothing but self-interested moral posing (by the elites) and some vague sense of “ought” (for the non-elites). Because Derbyshire himself believes there is no truth in existence (other than the truth of random mutations leading to Darwinian evolution), he does not grasp that universalism is a real idea and that people actually believe in this idea.
Beyond those two groups, he continues, there are tens of millions of conservatives who oppose universalism. Tragically, this is not the case. Outside of tiny traditionalist and paleocon circles, there is virtually no one in America who on a rational basis rejects moral universalism and says we should discriminate in our immigration policy among different nations and cultures according to their similarity or lack of similarity to ourselves. Sure, there are millions of people who grumble about immigration, but the moment the standard of universal liberalism is held over them, they shrink back and have nothing further to say.
How could this very hard battle to reverse America’s liberal belief system ever be won by people like Derbyshire who don’t even recognize the existence of that belief system? Derbyshire is like Bush, who believes that the jihadists are just “dead-enders” who “oppose freedom,” rather than people who believe in a truth that is utterly opposed to Bush’s truth. If we think that all we have to do to win the immigration debate is get people on the other side to drop their supposed moral pose, we don’t have a prayer.
Meanwhile reader Sam H. sent the entire exchange at the Corner of which the above is just one part. I appreciate his pulling all these entries together into one sequence.
While I can’t comment on the whole discussion right now, for the moment I just want to say this. See below where Mark Krikorian complains about the crazy things that are being done on the immigration front, like giving green cards to illegals for reporting a crime, like McCain’s comment that everyone on earth should have the opportunity to come to America. Krikorian doesn’t like these things. But what is Krikorian’s own position? He supports the 1965 Immigration Act, which eliminated national and cultural discrimination from our immigration law and said we had to treat every country and people on earth the same as concerns their ability to immigrant to the U.S. Now what Krikorian does not realize is that the 1965 Immigration Act in principle destroyed America as a nation. A country that says that every nation on earth regardless of race, culture, religion, and civilization is equally permitted to send immigrants to America, has given up any particular cultural identity of its own and is no longer a nation. Yet Krikorian expects this non-nation to act as if it is a nation, to have the will to defend itself, to have the will to say, “This law is too open, that law is too permissive, we don’t have to allow everyone the opportunity to come to America.” But of course the 1965 Immigration act did in fact establish that everyone on earth should have at least an equal shot at coming to America.
Krikorian is in the position of the moderate “right-liberal” that I have analyzed so often at this website. He supports the radically liberal, anti-national principle of the 1965 Immigration Act, yet he still thinks that we have a nation that can defend itself in a conservative way. But he himself by backing the ‘65 Act denies the principles by which America could do that.
In short, Krikorian’s position, which is the position of all immigration restrictionists who accept the 1965 Act, is similar to the (much worse) British position I discussed recently: In reality, these “right-liberals” subscribe to a principle that ends America as a real national entity, yet they don’t realize that they have done this and they keep expecting America to act as a real national entity and defend itself. Their America is dead, but it doesn’t realize it’s dead. It’s a ghost, still thinking it’s alive and not able to understand why people keep walking through it.
[See follow-up to these ideas here.]
Here’s the Corner discussion:
A Right to Immigrate? [Mark Krikorian]
Two stories today that illustrate the inversion of the long-standing principle that entry to the United States is a privilege granted by us on any terms we choose and not a right:
* The president and Senate Democrats are pushing to expand the Visa Waiver Program to even more countries that feel we owe it to them to admit their citizens without scrutiny just because they’ve sent a few uniformed truck drivers to help us in Iraq.
* Illegal aliens are suing the federal government (let me repeat: illegal aliens are suing the federal government) because they haven’t yet been issued a new category of visa for crime victims who cooperate with police. This despite the fact they have been issued temporary permission to stay while the formal regulations regarding the new law are hammered out—but that isn’t good enough.
03/08 08:57 AM
Re: A Right to Immigrate? [Mark Krikorian]
Reality keeps overtaking my most fevered imaginings. Here’s John McCain, as quoted in the October 16, 2004, Tucson Citizen: “Everyone in the world should have the opportunity through an orderly process to come to this country.”
Everyone?
03/08 10:37 AM
McCain on Immigration [John J. Miller]
Mark: I don’t expect you to support McCain’s views on immigration, but your reading of his quote is extremely ungenerous. An “opportunity” to come to the United States as an immigrant does not equal a “right” to come here. Conservatives, of all people, should understand the difference between rights and opportunities.
I couldn’t find a link to the Tucson Citizen article via Google, but I did track it down on Nexis. Here’s relevant part, which is from a news story about a candidate debate:
“Opening the borders to all migrants from Latin America would preclude people from other parts of the world from finding a better life in America, McCain said.
“Those who live closest are the ones who can get here,” he said. “ Everyone in the world should have the opportunity through an orderly process to come to this country.”
I wish the article had more detail, but judging from this, what McCain said doesn’t strike me as a crazy, open-borders statement or anything.
03/08 10:53 AM
Re: Everyone? [Mark Krikorian]
John, you’re right—McCain seems to have been saying that people from everywhere in the world should be able to come, as opposed to just Latin Americans. Of course, that then raises the problem of mass “temporary” worker immigration from the Middle East.
03/08 02:30 PM
Re: Everyone? [John J. Miller]
Mark: When you have a chance, please let us know which geographical regions of the world should be denied the opportunity to send immigrants to the United States.
03/08 02:38 PM
Re: Everyone? [ Mark Krikorian]
John: Whether we should exclude immigration from certain regions of the world is an excellent question. To put it baldly: Large-scale Muslim immigration is a threat to the receiving society (for the latest, see this), so what should be the response? One possibility is to pick and choose among ethnic or national groups; this is an element of Larry Auster’s “Separationism“ and is a view I frequently hear, often from immigration expansionists who just want lots more Mexicans (or Chinese or Irish), but no Arabs. The problem is that this goes against Americans’ basic moral universalism, which I share, and thus is, at the very least, politically untenable. Thus, the other option—reduce immigration overall (for which there are lots of other reasons, too), regardless of nationality. Non-discrimination and mass immigration are just not reconcilable.
03/08 04:12 PM
Moral universalism? [John Derbyshire]
Mark: You write, concerning selective exclusion of geographical or cultural regions:
“The problem is that this goes against Americans’ basic moral universalism, which I share, and thus is, at the very least, politically untenable. Thus, the other option—reduce immigration overall (for which there are lots of other reasons, too), regardless of nationality. Non-discrimination and mass immigration are just not reconcilable.”
I am curious to know just how “basic” that moral universalism is. In respect of immigration policy, it is a pretty recent addition to our “basics.” Fifty years ago nobody would have known what you were talking about. Everyone understood that immigrants from some regions and cultures were to be preferred over those from others. Even Edward Kennedy, speaking in the U.S. Senate in support of the 1965 Immigration Act, took pains to assure the chamber that: “The ethnic mix of this country will not be upset. … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa or Asia…” Where is the moral universalism there? If Senator Kennedy had been a moral universalist, or believed that his voters were, why would he have felt the need to say those things? What would it matter what happened to the “ethnic mix,” or which “country or area” immigrants came from?
So far as immigration policy is concerned, the moral universalism you write about is an innovation, and I doubt it has sunk very deep into the collective American psyche. I suspect that this recently-coined moral universalism in respect of immigration is actually:—
(a) An empty moral-status-claiming pose on the part of our money-sheltered elites, to whose ranches, gated communities, and doorman buildings the practical consequences of immigration policy are of no importance, except in so far as they affect the supply of cheap domestic servants.
(b) Vaguely understood by large sections of the middle class as something they “ought” to believe, though very few of them could tell you why.
(c) Hotly disputed by several tens of millions of patriotic and law-abiding U.S. citizens, with Republican voters a large majority among them.
I fear you are right about “politically untenable,” though. A politician who came out for a total ban on all immigration from Muslim countries would be immensely popular; but he would never again hold public office.
I clearly recall the fuss over Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood“ speech in England in 1968. In the weeks that followed, you could hardly find anyone who disagreed with Powell. (A source of some distress to me: I was a 23-year-old love-the-word socialist at the time.) I half expected Powell to be swept into Prime Ministerial power by public acclamation. Instead, he was kicked out of the Shadow Cabinet and never again held government office.
Of course, all Powell’s dire predictions have come true.
Funny thing, representative democracy.
03/08 05:05 PM
Re: Moral Universalism [John Podhoretz]
Derb, you’re not from around here originally, right?
03/08 05:17 PM
Re: Moral Universalism [John Derbyshire]
Can you be a bit more specific about “these parts” JPod? I’m not from the Upper West Side, if that’s what you mean.
And your doorman’s name is…….?
03/08 05:31 PM
Re: My Doorman’s Name is… [John Podhoretz ]
…Ralph. And don’t pull your Upper West Side game on me, Derb—you live in Huntington, L.I., which is, as you know, the Berkeley of suburbs.
03/08 06:35 PM
Lady with a Torch… [John Podhoretz]
…not “Lady with a Driver,” will solve all your confusion, Derb. Ever heard these lines? “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”? They’re on this statue. Kind of famous. But I guess it’s news to you.
03/08 06:38 PM
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 08, 2007 07:50 PM | Send