The Immigration Debate

Of course it is easy to oversimplify, but it is an inescapable truth that the land/man ratio underlies all civilization. Where human beings are sparsely settled, each man is more highly valued and where human beings are overcrowded, life is cheapened because each man is easily replaced. Caste systems develop under conditions of overcrowding due to simple competition and it cannot be denied that our once largely agrarian, small town, egalitarian America is evolving into something very different – something fragmented and hierarchical. The class structure we have sneered at throughout our history is undeniably now becoming part of American life.

Americans concerned about quality of life issues, especially preserving the environment and our historical heritage while limiting urban sprawl, must also eventually come to terms with the immigration issue, although the most impassioned environmentalists seem to be avoiding it like the plague. Imagine an America if our current round of mass immigration (since 1965), hadn’t happened. It is an America with 100 million fewer people. Imagine how many fewer cars would be on the roads, how many fewer acres would have been paved over, how many less landfills would be required and how much less air and water pollution would be lowering our quality of life and changing our landscape forever. Our overall economy would not be as large nor growing as swiftly and our tax base would be less, but our carbon footprint as a nation would be much less. More of our national historic spaces (battlefields and historic buildings) would be better preserved, our schools would be much less crowded and our cities would be smaller and more livable.

Krikorian soberly sets out the irrefutable and grim statistics that build the case for curtailing immigration (both legal and illegal) to the point of net emigration. H then forsees that gradually the pressures of our current mass immigration crisis would lift, which sounds very sensible to me.

The weakest part of his book deals with Muslim immigration, or rather, doesn’t deal with it as a unique problem or set of problems. He does point out, after presenting exhaustive evidence about how our immigration departments are overwhelmed by the current numbers, that with lower overall levels of immigration, immigration officials will be better able to screen and then to keep track of those allowed in. Unbelievably, there are still policies in place that reward immigration officials for the shear volume of cases they clear rather than for the thoroughness and diligence of their work.

Nor does Krikorian deal with the problems of refugees, which is surprising since his Center for Immigration studies has produced excellent, especially by Don Barnett, in that area. Perhaps he believes this important topic deserves a book of its own. As Krikorian clearly states, “The backwardness of the Third World is not a matter to be addressed through American immigration policy.” Indeed. That isn’t stopping a myriad of Church groups and other volunteer agencies from making a net profit on every Third World “refugee” they settle in America at a lifetime cost to the taxpayer under our current system.

Nevertheless, within the narrow scope of this book, Krikorian manages to shift the debate away from the immigrants and onto the changing nature of American society. This is where the focus should be, for American immigration policy is our responsibility not that of the immigrants. Too many politicians make the mistake of focusing only on illegal immigration, because that is the most pressing issue of the day. But our immigration policy as a whole needs to be overhauled and I, for one, would support a moratorium on all immigration and refugees across the board, while we calmly and deliberately decide whom we should allow to settle within our shores and whom we should exclude. The destiny of the United States is at stake and all factors, including the unique problems and dangers posed Muslim immigrants, which are posed by no others, must be addressed. No doubt there are many today in Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark and The Netherlands who wish they would have taken time to learn a bit more about this thing called Islam before allowing millions of Muslims to immigrate to within their borders.