“By greatly slashing the number of Hispanic and black African immigrants entering America, this proposal would reshape the future United States. Decades ahead, many fewer of us would be nonwhite or have nonwhite people in our families,” said Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development, a think tank that has been critical of the proposal. “Selectively blocking immigrant groups changes who America is.”Clemens is wrong and right.
On the one hand, he is wrong because not “selectively blocking immigrant groups”—meaning the groups entering now—is changing “who America is.” We are not blocking the Third World from flooding the country. America is still predominantly European.
On the other hand, he’s right. “Selectively blocking immigrant groups” could change “who America is,” or at least who it is becoming. If we selectively block the Third World and return to a Europeans-only immigration policy, the historic American nation might well be spared its predicted demographic dispossession.
Either way, note the eggheads, America is no longer what it was, even though, numberswise, it still is.
