Whence the immigration restriction movement?

Rachael S. writes:

I read an article on VDare.com by Marcus Epstein. The gist is that the immigration victory we just had (attributable to a groundswell of inchoate nationalism) may be Pyrrhic if the trend in conservative thought and feeling isn’t directed properly, or is subverted by establishment types casting themselves as the only proper conservative voices to listen to.

This goes back to what I was saying to you about NR not giving credit where it is due for the immigration victory. If the country is ever to become more conservative in a robust sense, all parties must be allowed at the table. I think this is the strength of the left; they tend not to malign even the worst of their ilk when it comes down to beating us. We, however, are divided into more and more purist camps, or more and more relativist camps, as the case may be.

If we are ever to get a good candidate in the White House, he has to get coverage, right? He has to be set up and featured in a positive fashion, so that the American people get a good look at him (or her—maybe we could get another Margaret Thatcher). And if we are ever to make headway on immigration, people like you need to be taken seriously. You said that NR was seeing “no friends to the right” and that is the way it always will be. But why should we accept that “it” will always be that way, when it is that exact state of affairs that dooms our society to constant compromise with the left?

I don’t know how we could force establicons to admit all parties to the table, though. I suppose it could only happen if the right were coming from a position of strength; if traditionalists and the other people on the outskirts created a separate social network that was seen as powerful and useful (or popular with the public)?

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George writes:

Rachael says that she is concerned that the neocons will hijack and “moderate” the Republican immigration debate in the same way that some establishment conservatives such as George Will—and especially the paleocons—accuse the neoconservatives of hijacking Republican foreign policy, and transforming Nixon/Eisenhower/Reagan/James Baker III high WASP foreign policy realism into full scale, Messianic-Wilsonianism.

My opinion, as someone who likes to observe politics, is that hijacking the immigration debate will be considerably harder for Goldberg and his ilk to pull off than it was for the them to hijack the foreign policy debate for one major reason:

The immigration situation is going to cause a host of problems that cannot be solved by the “moderate” measures the neocons will propose. The immigration crisis is going to get so bad that that only severe responses will be effective.

Thus, the neocons will have a harder time getting traction with moderate solutions to immigration, and shall therefore have a harder time controlling what is and is not acceptable to say on the right.

I can see several societal phenomena in the future which will cause the public to demand radical solutions that seem a fantasy for us now, such as paying legal immigrants to leave or revoking citizenship for Muslims and other undesirables.

For instance, the high Hispanic birth rate over the past two decades is going lead to a crime wave as Hispanic high school dropouts and former anchor babies become violent gang members (even more so than they already are). And the incoming Hispanic crime wave is likely to be considerably worse than the black crime wave during the 70’s and 80’s simply because Hispanics have a much younger demographic profile than blacks did and numerically they will have more violent males than blacks had during the past crime wave.

Another problem is that skilled baby boomers are retiring and being replaced by unskilled immigrants.

Since skilled workers pay more in taxes than unskilled workers, the retirement of the baby boomers will strain state budgets and force cutbacks in spending for minorities. This will further exacerbate tensions between Blacks and Hispanics who need services and Whites and Asians who will be sick of subsidizing uneducated minorities and their uneducated crime ridden spawn via taxes (Thank You Bob Bartley!).

A final problem is the Muslim population. Although Muslims are only one percent of the population, there are still 2-3 million Muslims in the U.S. That is more than enough to ensure that we will be constantly attacked if even five percent of U.S. Muslims believe in Jihad.

As more Muslims kill more Americans over time, more Americans will demand more and more radical solutions to the Muslim immigration question and create a greater backlash against immigration in general. We may be one terrorist attack, not only to ending Muslim immigration, but having an immigration pause.

All of the above problems, and others, are coming to a head right now. I will wager that the immigration debate will move not to the center right but instead to the far right and out of the ideological control of people like Kristol and Hugh Hewitt.

Like the millionaire in Jurassic Park, the neocons will not be able to control all the chaos they have helped create.

The monster has broken free of the chains.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 05, 2007 06:26 PM | Send