Originally published in IntellectualCapital.com 08/21/97.

A change is coming over the immigration debate. For about a decade, immigration enthusiasts have been loudly minimizing the significance of the influx unleashed by the 1965 Immigration Act, after one of the longer immigration pauses in American history. But now the influx has become so significant that it has actually destabilized the ethnic balance—population growth will be driven by post-1970 immigrants and their descendants in the next century. And suddenly, the immigration enthusiasts are in favor of this transformation.

All that remains is for them to admit that this transformation is being achieved at taxpayer expense (a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences showed that immigration is a net cost to Americans, for example, costs amounted to over $1,100 per native-born household in California.)

Re-engineering America

What the enthusiasts are rationalizing is a social engineering experiment without precedent in the history of the world. And especially without precedent in American history.

Diversity propaganda aside, it is simply a matter of historical fact that America is a nation like the great nations of Europe—an ethno-cultural community, not entirely ethnic but not entirely cultural either.

If this surprises you, just look at exactly who it was who signed the Declaration of Independence and convened in Philadelphia. You may not like those dead white males—and of course their voiceless black slaves were excluded—but, for better or worse, they were the polity. The only difference from Europe is that the process of nation-building through incremental assimilation that took three thousand years on that side of the Atlantic was accomplished here in three hundred.

This is no mere theoretical issue. It goes to the roots of American order. America evolved, it was not merely put together by accepting anyone who agreed to sign on some credal dotted line. It cannot be held together that way now. Not just nation-building, but also nation-demolition, can be accomplished quickly. That is the danger that the United States now faces.

Republished in VDARE.COM on March 07, 2002