Mush, Cant and Immigration

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 111 - 113

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Mush, Cant and Immigration

IMMIGRATION IS ONE OF A GROWING number of issues that cannot be discussed rationally. Mush and cant are the standard ingredients in any debate on the subject. Some examples:

"We are a nation of immigrants."

"Diversity is our strength."

"Criticism of immigration is racist."

None of these statements is an argument. Each is a way of not making an argument, while pretending to do so.

Of course we are a nation of immigrants. So are most other nations. The English are not the indigenous people of England, the Turks are not the indigenous people of Turkey and the Malays are not the indigenous people of Malaysia. But so what?

The fact that immigrants were once valuable additions to the country does not mean that the same thing may be arbitrarily assumed today, any more than the fact that horses and buggies were once the best way to get around means that we should rely on them today.

If you want to make an argument for immigration, then make an argument for immigration. But don't waste everybody's time with lofty buzzwords.

One of the problems with discussing immigrants in general is that there is no such thing as an immigrant in general. Not only do they vary from one individual to another, whole categories of immigrants have very different histories, both in their respective homelands and in the United States.

Less than 5 percent of the immigrants from Britain or Germany go on welfare when they get here, but more than one fourth the immigrants from Vietnam go on welfare, as do nearly half of those from Cambodia. That compares to 14 percent among American blacks.

If making any distinction among immigrant groups is "racist," as the intelligentsia seem to think, then apparently the choice facing the country is to be racist or to be suckers who pay for anyone who wants to come here and live off the American taxpayers. Nothing will promote racism more than a choice like that.

What about that wonderful "diversity" we hear so many rhapsodies about?

You want diversity? They have diversity in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Rwanda and in various former Soviet republics where people are today slaughtering each other just for belonging to the "wrong" group.

We haven't reached that point yet, but give us time. Already polls are indicating that young whites and young blacks are more hostile to one another than are their elders. What does that say about the future? Throw in a few more groups, and lots of "leaders" and activists to hype their differences, and our future may not be a lot better than that of other "multicultural" and "diverse" nations.

Do immigrants contribute nothing? Of course they contribute something. Some immigrants — Albert Einstein and Edward Teller, for example — have undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of American lives by making this the first nuclear nation. That not only brought World War II to an end without leaving the beaches of Japan strewn with the bodies of American soldiers, it made any new Pearl Harbor against the United States a suicidal gamble for any other country.

Some immigrants come here with more of the traditional American values of work and family than many of the current generation of Americans. Many come here wanting nothing more than to become Americans. But many of the morally anointed intelligentsia want them to stay foreign in culture and alienated from the values of the country.

To a large segment of the intelligentsia, immigration is just one more stage on which to engage in moral preening, showing off their own wonderful specialness compared to the grubby masses. They treat immigration to the United States as if it were a civil right of foreigners around the world and regard any thought of controlling our own borders in the interest of the people who live here as mean-spirited.

One of the few books to challenge this vision of the anointed is the recently published Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow. This book has its flaws, but it is one of the few opportunities to see what arguments can be made against immigration.

Brimelow points out, for example, that diseases once virtually extinct in the United States, such as tuberculosis, leprosy and measles, have now been introduced again by immigrants from the Third World. Crime rates are also very high among some immigrant groups.

Anyone who wants to see arguments on the other side can read any of a number of pro-immigration books or essays by Julian Simon. The point here is that the whole subject of immigration policy has been beset with taboos for too long.

All sorts of rational arguments can be made for or against immigration. It is just that very few are. Among the questions that need to be addressed are: How many and from where?

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11 June 2024