Time Tackles Immigration [Peter Brimelow]

A reader writes:

I was astonished to hear Time magazine had a good cover story (!) on illegal immigration. I bought a copy from the newsstand—first time since I was in college.

It seems to me excellent—except that VDARE.COM was not mentioned. What happened?

Ha!

Seriously, the Time piece is a superb piece of journalism and I strongly commend it even to VDARE.COM readers, to whom much of it will not be news (see above). And I salute the senior management of Time, no doubt now deluged with hostile comments, for allowing it to go forward undefaced by the usual weasel qualifications.  What a difference to when I proposed an immigration story at Fortune in 1983 (I've been in this a long time) and was greeted with embarrassed silence!

The writers, Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, are card-carrying liberals who caused a stir with their populist business-bashing in the 1990s. At VDARE.COM, we did detect their deviationism on immigration some years ago. Now they have thrown off the mask.

Some quotes:

• The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous…While the growing millions of illegal aliens cross the border on their own two feet, the problem is one of the U.S.'s own making. The government doesn't want to fix it.
• On the Mexican side of the border, President Vicente Fox has actively encouraged the migration.

• Investigations targeting employers of illegal aliens dropped more than 70%, from 7,053 in 1992 to 2,061 in 2002. Arrests on job sites declined from 8,027 in 1992 to 451 in 2002. Perhaps the most dramatic decline: the final orders levying fines for immigration-law violations plunged 99%, from 1,063 in 1992 to 13 in 2002.

Additionally, Barlett and Steele do not flinch from discussing the crime dimension of unrestrained immigration, and the negative economic impact on native-born Americans. And they are unswerving in identifying the problem, quoting one Arizonian saying:

• "All the politicians …rely heavily on the donations from Big Business…Big Business likes this system… "

and another, even more to the point:

• "People in Washington get up in the morning, their laundry is done, their floors are cleaned, their meals are cooked. Guess who's doing that?"

I know from my emails (which I always read and try to answer, eventually!) that some sympathizers are dispirited by the long trail of immigration reform defeats in recent years—even though this exactly parallels the 1880-1924 experience. Many others are simply afraid to associate with a cause which has been so thoroughly purged from orthodox establishment media platforms.  

But what happens in the major media has an impact and an influence difficult for us net-heads to remember. Time's courage in being willing to discuss this issue will be a beacon to others.  

Maybe John Kerry reads Time. Or, more likely, some ambitious operative in one or other of this year's campaigns. 

Being Reasonable  [James Fulford]  

Reason Magazine, which considers illegal immigration to be a civil right, has already reacted to the Time story, Who Left the Door Open, by saying Go Ahead, Leave the Door Open [Brian Doherty September 14, 2004]

The problem is that it's everyone's door. Everyone in America is affected by immigration, legal and illegal, and lax enforcement is what drives the illegal side.

And Doherty's idea that it would be easier to abolish public education, free emergency medicine, and welfare than to enforce the immigration laws is Very Silly.

While Americans might be able to do all that on free-market basis, and still have a stable society, Mexicans can't or they'd be doing it already.

Izzy Lyman, for example, is capable of home-schooling her kids, but many immigrants are Mixtec Indians, who haven't learnt Spanish, although it's been more than 500 years since Columbus.