One of my pet peeves—hmm, correction—one of my deeply held frustrations with the ruling class has been their refusal to address the invasion over our southern border for decades. It’s not just been the Democrats, although they have exacerbated the problem through their anti-American hostility, while the Republicans just ignored the problem.
Fortunately, President Donald J. Trump, who just won his third election and has been sworn into office for the second time, is wasting no time in closing the border and deporting illegal aliens at a record pace.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, taking directions from President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, have arrested over 2,500 illegal immigrants since Trump was sworn into office last Monday.
One of the arguments made by Dilutionists (those who want to dilute the unity of American culture by importing unvetted hordes of third-world welfare cases into the country) is the “but, we’re a nation of immigrants.” In fact, Vice-President J.D. Vance faced off with Margaret Brennan, the propagandist of “Face the Nation” on CBS Sunday morning.
At 3:57 in the video below (cued to that time), after JD Vance says he doesn’t know why we’d allow a person born to parents living temporarily in the US to be automatically conferred US citizenship since there’s no other nation that does that, Brennan replies, “Well, this is a country founded by immigrants,” and gives him a wry “gotcha” smile.
His response wiped the smile off her face. “Just because we were founded by immigrants doesn’t mean that 240 years later, we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world.”
Exactly. We were founded by some immigrants. So?
In a terrific article at The Federalist, Brianna Lyman dismantles that argument.
Britain began establishing the 13 original colonies in the early 1600’s. Over the next century or so, hundreds of thousands of Brits moved to the British colonies that were established by settlers — not immigrants. There was no “nation” being immigrated to by the first settlers. The Brits didn’t come to America to join a pre-existing country. It was just land. There were no laws, borders, maps, or written language. The British settlers came to uncharted land to establish colonies under British rule. They were entrepreneurs building this nation from scratch, not immigrants joining a pre-existing nation.
[…]
America was never just a multicultural experiment that began with and requires an endless influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) to sustain itself. The settlers were not a hodge-podge of random cultures and religions and languages and customs. America was founded by Anglo Protestants who pulled ideas of liberty and independence from Anglo-liberalism, which grounded itself in the idea of equality, freedom, and government controlled by the people (it was most commonly associated with thinkers like John Locke). These settlers forged a new nation, instituted customs, traditions, and a national identity.
And our Founders understood the importance of a national identity, with Thomas Jefferson writing in 1776 that while he is “for extending the right of suffrage (or in other words the right of a citizen) to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country … Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, and has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it.”
In simpler terms, assimilation was a requirement of anyone coming to America.
But what exactly is to be preserved or assimilated into if the left is correct in that America was “founded” by immigrants and therefore is just a nation of immigrants? Such a premise presupposes that we are merely an ever-changing mixture of the dominant immigrant groups at any point in time.
Most helpful is Lyman’s distinction between “settlers” and “immigrants.” Immigrants are traveling to an established nation; settlers are traveling to an unsettled land to establish a nation. Immigrants are expected to assimilate into the nation they’re joining, not act like settlers establishing their own distinct culture within the host nation.
Yes, foreigners emigrated to the United States after it had become an established nation, and they still do today. But it should be controlled immigration that protects our unique American culture and values, not an uncontrolled mass invasion of third-world peasants and criminals who burden our nation with the cost of their presence and destroy cultural cohesion.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s 27-year-old press secretary, held her first press briefing yesterday and addressed this administration’s attitude toward illegals.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was taking questions during her first press briefing since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last week when she was asked about the mass arrests.
“The 3,500 arrests that ICE (U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement) has made so far since President Trump came back into office. Can you just tell us the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally,” one reporter asked.
“All of them, because they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and therefore, they are criminals as far as this administration goes,” Leavitt replied. “I know the last administration didn’t see it that way. So it’s a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that’s exactly what they are.”
The reporter then asked if they all have criminal records.
“If they broke our nation’s laws, yes, they are a criminal,” Leavitt said.
More like that, please.
For another great article on immigration from The Federalist, read, “Birthright Citizenship Is A Pernicious Lie That’s Destroying America” by John Daniel Davidson.
Great read Dave. Thanks for clarifying the “we are a country of immigrants” line. I remember meeting a former TX Senator on a plane going to Dallas. He was a personal friend of George W Bush. He told me Bush in his retirement was involved in helping immigrants into our country. Why? I think one reason was to bring in low wage workers because Americans don’t want to work for low wages.