Immigration to the U.S. is an enormous subject. It's much bigger than a mere “issue” because mass immigration, both legal and illegal, affects—adversely!—nearly every aspect of our national life. Over time, regular visitors to VDARE.com read about all these aspects.
But could someone create a “Short Course” to help patriots more quickly develop expertise on immigration's baneful effects?
This isn't just an academic question. With the new amnesty peril looming, our country needs a legion of patriots armed with the intellectual resources to defeat, in direct confrontations, the well-funded and shameless onslaught of the Open Borders zealots and greedheads and to educate our alarmed-but-poorly-informed fellow citizens.
That “Short Course” notion was the motive for my 10,500 word article in the current, Fall 2009, issue of The Social Contract Magazine: Reading Assignment: Gird For Looming Battles With The “Great Books” Of Immigration Sanity, which VDARE.COM has thoughtfully archived here [PDF]. [To subscribe to or buy a copy of the tree-based Social Contract, click here].
My purpose in this article is to announce the placement of my “Short Course” in VDARE.COM's archives—and encourage you to give it a look.
Despite the “Great Books“ trope in the title, my article isn't actually about books! Instead, it's effectively a review article—a guide to notable, web-accessible literature about immigration.
The referenced literature comes in easily digestible chunks, with most chunks requiring reading times between five and ten minutes, and a few items ranging between a minute and two hours.
From my Introduction:
“There are, of course, some (literally) great books on America's immigration madness, too. But my aim here is to put before you seminal readings that are less daunting projects than reading whole books. The approximately 30 items cited below, with links provided in the Endnotes, are articles (plus a video and a poster) that have impressed me, over about the last dozen years, as particularly memorable and instructive.”
Of course, since all these items, which also include a brief video and some sound clips, are available online, I could just provide a list of links, or links and titles, and urge people to go look at them.
So why did I, instead, wind up with 10,500 words (probably 30 to 45 minutes straight-through reading time for most folks)?
Well, about 60% of it consists of meaty quotes from the cited articles, passages that are long enough and striking enough that I hope they'll entice you to go read the full articles, thus working your way through the promised “short course”. The remaining 40% of the article consists of my attempt to tie the referenced items together and into a logical flow.
What kinds of articles make up my list? They are all discursive and qualitative—although, when necessary, tightly argued. In other words, these aren't articles about the best estimate for the number of illegal aliens in the country, nor about statistics on the educational attainments of the grandchildren of immigrants, nor about the net financial burdens on taxpayers caused by immigrants and illegal aliens in different states, etc. etc.
In my experience, most people—including our ill-informed fellow citizens whom we need to persuade or buttress—aren't very numerate and don't easily grasp quantitative arguments. For them, arguments involving culture, language, and ways of life are generally more gripping.
Altogether, then, these are the articles that have shaped my own view of the facts and of what's at stake for our American civilization; and which I think will also impress others.
My “Short Course” is divided into nine sections, as follows:
1. Scoping Our Subject
Brief once-overs about many of the component issues that make up the huge subject of mass immigration's impact on America, e.g. Robert Locke's 2000 FrontPage.com article Close The Borders. (This was originally published with a disclaimer by David Horowitz, which seems to have been removed).
2. Life in the Trenches (or Immigration in One Country)
Particular, striking examples of the pummeling our country is enduring under the regime of mass legal and illegal immigration, for example The Ordeal Of Immigration in Wausau, by Roy Beck, which originally appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, April 1994.)
3. Mexico and Mexicans
Aside from sheer numbers, the problems with immigration from Mexico are rooted in the culture of Mexico, for example Roger McGrath's South Gate; Mexico Comes to California, which originally appeared in The American Conservative Magazine, May 19, 2003.
4. The Nation-Wreckers Reveal Themselves
Some immigrants, unwittingly, show quite clearly what bad news they are for us, for example 6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence, by Samuel Quinones, Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2006 (which contains this great quote from an illegal alien in Kentucky: “We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico—everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken.”)
5. Larger perspectives (A): Is it the Rest against the West?
Examples of dysfunctional, self-destructive immigration policies elsewhere in the West, for example Risible lies about immigrants no substitute for honest debate, by Kevin Myers, The Independent [Dublin], August 15, 2008, giving appalling details about the highly disproportionate use of Irish public benefits by newcomers from Nigeria.
6. Larger Perspectives (B): The Auto-Immune Sickness of Western Civilization
Our immigration dysfunctions are prominent manifestations of deeper problems in the West. See, for example, The Myth of Diversity: Seldom have so many pretended to believe something so absurd, by Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, July/August, 1997.
7. Three Memorable Perorations
Speeches by c, Don Feder, and Peter Brimelow also make great essays.
8. Our Heavy Artillery
Broad and deep explications of both general principles and specific points that we can use in our fights, for example Larry Auster's The Path To National Suicide,
[PDF | HTML] which Peter Brimelow in Alien Nation called “perhaps the most remarkable literary product of the Restrictionist underground, a work which I think will one day be seen as a political pamphlet to rank with Tom Paine's Common Sense.“
9. A Statement for Our Side
John Tanton reminds us that we have every right to argue for our own interests: The Puppeteer Replies.
Besides the several writers mentioned just above, a non-exhaustive list of the articles' authors includes Lawrence Auster, Mark Cromer, George F. Kennan, and Thomas Sowell.
These authors, and the others not listed here, have produced a treasure trove of facts, observations, arguments, and wisdom.
I hope my “Short Course”, by introducing this trove to a larger audience, will help strengthen the capabilities of patriots working in the trenches, nationwide, for immigration sanity.
If it, indeed, helps you, please spread its contents far and wide!
Nachman note for VDARE.COM readers: As I said, there are, of course, some (literally) Great Books on America's immigration madness too. Should you be in the market for such a book, instead of a medley of articles, Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (1995) is instantly downloadable, for free, here [PDF]. So is Roy Beck's The Case Against Immigration (1996), here [1.4-MB PDF]. (Brimelow's seminal article Time to Rethink Immigration?, published in National Review in 1992, was the precursor to Alien Nation and is archived here.)
In my view, three other books, not available for free, also fall into the Great Books category.
First is Victor Davis Hanson's finely observed Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (2002). Brenda Walker reviewed it here; Peter Brimelow reviewed it here.
More recently, Mark Krikorian's The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal (2008) is encyclopedic, yet slim and readable. (Marcus Epstein reviewed it here and I reviewed it here.)
And Otis Graham's brand new Immigration Reform And America's Unchosen Future (2009) is a history for immigration-sanity patriots who would like to know what happened before they entered the fray. Steve Sailer reviewed it here.
Paul Nachman [email him] is a retired physicist and immigration sanity activist in Bozeman, MT. Read his VDARE.COM blogs here.
