Posted on 02/05/2003 5:29:01 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
The movie "Gangs of New York" paints a bleak picture of 19th-century America. "Gangs" takes place immediately before and during the American Civil War. In the recent Martin Scorcese film, a tidal wave of poor immigrants overwhelms society and the infrastructure of New York City. They also convulse the tenuous economic and social position of poor native-born Americans.
In fact, as depicted in the movie, pitched battles occurred between "nativists" who had been in America for some time and new immigrants. Both groups were poor and the political and economic elite was using both groups for their own purposes: cheap labor on one hand and votes on the other. In the end, the federal government opens fire on both gangs during the Draft Riots of the 1860s.
Immigrants were often used to fill the ranks of the Union Army during the Civil War and later in the western Indian wars. It is not a secret that the son of an elite Northeast family could buy his way out of the army for $600 if they chose. That money was used to draft recent immigrants. The newly arrived Irish, especially, were called into service in this manner.
In addition, as the cemeteries near the Civil War battle fields of Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain and Gettysburg will attest, the ranks of the Union forces were filled with many thousands of poor farm boys from Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Only occasionally did the sons of well-to-do New Yorkers or Bostonians volunteer for service. When they were drafted there was a way out.
In the 1800s, the battle lines in the immigration wars were drawn between ethnic and religious groups of white Europeans pitted against the needs of the establishment elite.
Yet taking all this into account, it would be stupid not to recognize that the problems of rich and poor, native and immigrant in 19th century America, is also a history of continuing progress and upward mobility. The citizens of the nation found the freedom and opportunity to move from class to class and place to place. In addition, the big country that was America offered nearly limitless horizons for expansion, progress, and growth to take place free of regulation and high taxation.
No one was forced to remain in New York in order to succeed. In the rush of history even the Northeast elite lost some of its clout, but not all of it. It is so until this day.
Since Ted Kennedy’s Immigration Reform Act of 1965, however, and most particularly since the mid-1980s, the immigration problems facing America have to do with the influx of immigrants from the Third World. The issue is so involved the complexity suits the agenda of the political and economic establishment to a T.
The Ties That Bind
Most immigrants of the 1800s and early 1900s had a common background in Western tradition. Whether they came from Ireland, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Russia, Czechoslovakia or England, immigrants shared certain basic principles and attitudes. America’s "e pluribus unum" (one from many) developed because the majority of immigrants did have the same basic philosophical, moral and cultural common denominators.
They did not, however, share an economic safety net. There was no welfare system except what was offered by charitable institutions or churches.
Economic progress depended on how smart, how flexible and how quickly the immigrant could adapt to "American ways."
Most of all it depended on how willing they were to work and how best they might make use of their opportunities. The best of them also had to be willing to take big risks.
From the numbers of immigrants involved in westward expansion, to those who saw the value in black gold, or the benefits of farming and ranching their own land, they seemed to recognize all these activities were just as important as accumulating the hard yellow stuff.
Immigrants also understood the necessity for a common language, learning a common history, and building communities of like-minded citizens. They may not have all been on the same page politically; however, they were secure in the knowledge that what they shared was more important than what divided them.
Until recently, there were tests given to new immigrants who wanted to become citizens, which included studying the language and learning American history and the U.S. Constitution. These have been dumbed down.
Nonetheless, the most important factor in the fragile nature of American unity was the common belief pattern inherent in the shared traditions of Christianity and Judaism. That is not the case with many of those immigrating to America today. That reality is impacting our national identity, sovereignty, as well as social and economic cohesion.
Unless these things are recognized and debated we will suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire: an empire that seemingly collapsed over night in one final onslaught of tribes from the hinterlands. In the blink of an eye, mighty Rome was brought to its knees.
In our era, as in the 1800s, America is experiencing the collision of needs of self-absorbed elites and the masses of the world trying to claim a piece of America’s promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Non-elite natives, poor and middle class alike, as always, are caught in between.
Crunching the Numbers and the Culture
The 33.1 million immigrants residing in the United States in 2002 are by far the most ever recorded. Even during the great wave of immigration at the turn of the century, the immigrant population was less than half what it is today. The foreign-born population’s growth rate in every decade since 1970 has been higher than at any other time in history, far surpassing the 31 percent increase between 1900 and 1910.
In Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Virginia, and Oregon, immigration accounts for half or more of population growth. Immigrants and their minor children now account for almost one in four persons living in poverty. The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 24.5 percent, compared to 16.3 percent for native households.
The low educational attainment and resulting low wages of many immigrants are the primary reasons so many live in poverty, use welfare and lack health insurance, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.
In 2002, there were 9.7 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States. (Facts from U.S. Census and Center for Immigration Studies.)
Furthermore, as Joel Mowbray reported in the National Review recently, the federal oligarchy was caught red-handed trying to combine the social security system of Mexico with that of the U.S. The deal would have cost the U.S. billions of dollars. These dollars would come from the taxpayer in an economy that is in the throes of a post-bubble free fall, a crash forged by the excesses and blindness of our financial and federal elite in the first place.
To make matters worse, laws in the various states are being changed to accommodate the cultures of the Third World. In Minnesota, for instance, the legislature passed a law that allows first cousins to marry. The reason for that particular change is to adapt to the customs of the Laotian Hmongs. Marrying first cousins is common practice among the Hmong peoples who began migrating from Laos to the Minneapolis area 15 years ago. Their population has grown to about 70,000. Minneapolis/St. Paul is now home to the largest population of urban Hmongs in the world.
Just recently, Hmongs received their own school in the St. Paul area. The new elementary school is totally geared toward Hmong culture, taught in Hmong language, with Hmong history. Out the window is a primary emphasis on American history and culture taught in English.
On the basis of anonymity one Minnesota teacher related her experience with Hmong children, parents and the goofy system that encourages "diversity" at the expense of unity and integration. She states that from her experience there is no desire among the majority to assimilate. Rather they move heaven and earth to continue in "their" ways while benefiting from the American system.
The establishment does not want to be hit with the immigration lobby's lawsuits, so it complies. Minnesota health care was sued not long ago, and that lobby won major concessions for new immigrants, which will cost Minnesota millions.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported recently that Minnesota now offers special programs and grants so that Hmong children can return to Laos to study their "roots."
The federal government also relocated thousands of Somalians to the region, as civil war drove them from Africa. In Minneapolis, and other cities in the heartland, Somalian youths are being recruited into gangs of disaffected urban youth bent on self-destruction and drug abuse. Many of the others are finding themselves the targets of bigotry by inner-city blacks. (See Part II: Meltdown in the Heartland.)
Another culture cruncher: Because a majority of Somalians are Muslims, their ability to create new business is limited. A recent article in a Minneapolis magazine tells us that as Somalians practice Islam they may not pay interest on loans. Thus, they will either have to obtain business loans through grants or fees from some government entity, or borrow it from other Somalians.
In God’s name, how can any of this be helpful in creating social or economic cohesion in Minnesota or in America? Has America merely become a giant suck hole for the needs of government to acquire taxes or establishing new voting blocs to promote the projects of the elite?
If that is the case, as a sovereign nation-state guided by the rule of law - we are over with.
Ya Gotta Have a Gimmick
The modern uninterrupted flood of humanity to our shores began back in the 1980s and '90s, New waves of humanity, legal and illegal, began to overwhelm the infrastructure and cohesion of the U.S. However, unlike the earlier era of massive immigration, new immigrants used tactics, which had been approved by shortsighted legislatures, as well as national and international courts.
As always, follow the money and the lawyers. The immigration lobby has been a major culprit creating momentous problems for the societies in which immigrants sought entrance. Abuse of the visa system ended with many people staying forever. Abuse of student visas allowed some of the murderers of Sept. 11, 2001 to gain entrance as they studied subjects or learned skills related to killing Americans.
Blaming the federal immigration services for all this is blind and dumb. The blame should really be set at the feet of the immigration lobby, the refusal of Congress to reform immigration laws, the trial lawyers who are always in search of a cash cow.
Most of all blame the social, political and economic elite who don’t give a damn about how all this impacts the country. They only care about how it impacts them.
Add to this to one of the biggest immigration headaches of all times. That is the continuing invasion of illegals from Mexico. This invasion has not slowed since the terrorist attack of 2001. Ballpark figures put together by the Border Patrol indicate about 10,000 a day are still crossing over. Out of that number only 1 in 5 are caught and sent back.
You just can’t help asking, wasn’t the adoption of the economic "fair trade" treaty called NAFTA supposed to remedy this flood of people looking for economic opportunity? Wasn’t the economic lot of Mexicans supposed to improve?
Since imposition of NAFTA under Bill Clinton and sought after by Republicans, the problem of massive illegal immigration has become much worse. The strange economic and political blindness of the elite dare call it the "free market" in action. Meanwhile, America’s manufacturing base is in the toilet. Joining it are skilled white-collar jobs in the computer industry as they go to H1-B immigrants in Silicon Valley or are exported overseas.
It is irrational not to recognize that the biggest beneficiaries of NAFTA were the economic and governmental elite. Most of the jobs generated after NAFTA do not reach the salary or benefit level of what has been lost. Meanwhile, Joe Six-Pack, who once worked for decent wages in the meat-packing industry in Georgia, finds his old job pays half of what it once did, but illegal aliens will take it anyway.
Sarah Six-Pack the Computer Programmer now trains her replacement at Siemens who will work at two-thirds to a half of her salary. (University of California, Norman Matloff study on immigration impact on computer industry.)
Then there is the quandary of secondary immigration. That involves familial chains of relatives who come to the U.S. because a relative is here. There is no apparent end to this practice. In some cases this chain reaction is bringing entire villages to the U.S., as has happened in Minnesota and Georgia and Maine. (More on that in Part II.)
Last but not least are asylum seekers. These are not the Cuban refugees running from Castro’s jails. It is not about Christians caught by the satanic communist regimes of Red China who are flooding the U.S. No, this is about people escaping poverty rather than political oppression.
In fact it is MORE difficult for a white farmer trying to get out of the murderous regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to receive asylum in the U.S. or Canada than it is for a poor Haitian or Somalian seeking economic or political refuge in the U.S. Preferred minority status elevates Third World asylum seekers or immigrants to positions of privilege for which immigration laws were never intended.
Colonizing Britain
America is not alone in this phenomenon of economic immigration from the Third World. Britain in many ways is worse off than we are. In Britain almost anyone who claims asylum for political reasons is allowed to stay. Immigration services meant to keep the system on an even keel are being submerged by the influx of humanity. Their ineptness is legendary in the U.K., Canada and the U.S.
As it is, countries such as Britain may have freed the colonies. However, its former colonies are now colonizing Britain. Sadly, even in some countries where Britain left an infrastructure in tact, including the basic forms needed to put together representative democracies, the native population failed in to apply those basics.
Marxism, tribal and religious warfare, strongman dictatorships, warlords as in Somalia, as well as bands of marauders roam the countryside. Tribal warfare and religious warfare now replace politics as the main element in the horror. Swept away was any positive legacy left by the West.
In Africa, in particular, the evil of white apartheid was replaced by the evil of a Marxists and racists such as Robert Mugabe. There is not one African country that can be pointed out as a model of stability and progress, not one.
The international leftist elite blames colonialism for this. They overlook India and Israel, which used the basics of what the British left behind to build democratic societies. Selective blindness covers a multitude of sins.
Meanwhile, the United Nations should be in the forefront helping the Third World to progress. It has received trillions to accomplish this end. Where it once had some good effect on world health issues, these days it simply offers an expensive, neverending conference and useless meetings so that the world’s butchers and elite can compare notes and live high. This is expensive and destructive foolishness that plays unconscionable games with the world’s poor and middle class.
In any event, the failures of civilization to take root in the Third World have produced the waves of immigration to the West in what amounts to reverse colonialism.
The Empire Strikes Back
Anthony Browne belongs to the British Labor Party and writes for the London Times. Browne attests: "About a quarter of a million people are coming to Britain from the Third World each year: a city the size of Cambridge every six months, an unprecedented and sustained wave of immigration to one of the world’s most densely crowded islands, utterly transforming the society in which we live against the wishes of the majority of the population, damaging quality of life and social cohesion, exacerbating the housing crisis and congestion, and with questionable economic benefits…I know knee-jerk accusations of racism and xenophobia will be fired at me by those who make careers out of suppressing legitimate debate, but I am hardly anti-immigrant or anti-immigration. I am the son of an immigrant, living with an immigrant, from such a family of émigrés that I have virtually no relatives in this country."
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has had to take in a million Indians, almost 700,000 Pakistanis, 260,000 Bangladeshis, up to a million Nigerians, over 100,000 Iraqis. In the past five years the white population grew by 1 percent, the Bangladeshi community grew by 30 percent, the black African population by 37 percent and the Pakistani community by 13 percent.
As Browne points out in a personal aside, one of his neighbors emigrated from Bangladesh 30 years ago. He brought over his non-English-speaking wife while his older son recently brought over his second non-English-speaking wife after divorcing the first. Six months of the year he spends on the family farm in Bangladesh, where they have servants and laborers to help them.
As happens thousands of times to thousands of immigrants, it isn’t just the "one" special case in which secondary immigrants come over to be with families, and it has created a deluge. As his friend relates they will bring over husbands for his two teen-age sisters, and then they will have rights to bring over the spouse’s parents and grandparents.
Brown maintains, "These are all individual private acts that in themselves are perfectly reasonable, but taken by so many individuals they have huge public consequences."
This chain migration will make sure that entire communities will come from the Third World to the U.K., thus, "they have been transplanted whole streets in some northern English towns: little Third World colonies in Britain." (Browne’s complete articles may be found at www.vdare.com)
Immigrants from the Third World are responsible for the entire net immigration of a quarter of a million a year. They have higher unemployment and lower earnings than average and do not pay their way.
Additionally, African immigration has overtaken gay sex as the biggest cause of HIV in Britain. If the 28 million HIV-positive Africans can get into Britain they can obtain "free" treatment for the rest of their lives by appealing under the Human Rights Act.
British officials have concluded that Third World immigration is bringing in such high levels of the lethal liver disease hepatitis B that it was considering vaccinating every child in the country to protect them. As Browne wrote, "Third World immigration is doubling the rates of HIV, tripling the rates of tuberculosis and increasing twentyfold the rates of hepatitis."
Housing illegal asylum seekers costs the British taxpayer $14,000 a person a year. There are upwards of 90,000 illegal refugees in Britain seeking public assistance, besides those already receiving handouts.
A report in the London Telegraph states, "Fake asylum seekers carrying AIDS and TB are draining the British free health service of resources the British taxpayer paid for in the expectation of health care being available for themselves on demand."
Furthermore, "Those who get asylum in Britain, which is the most used method, get a pile of benefits which include housing, full health care (including free plastic surgery) as well as free immigration lawyers who will string your claim out for years. Even when such cases are rejected out of hand as happens 90 percent of the time, asylum seekers are allowed to stay any way."
Gangs Bang "Gangs of New York" have nothing over the gangs of Britain. For mostly second- and third-generation Third World kids with nothing better to do, dealing drugs is one of the best ways to make a quick buck.
Recently, the Brits conducted raids to crack down on the organized criminal gangs of Third World immigrants who have taken over the drug industry in many British cities. Oftentimes, it erupts into open gang warfare. Americans had better not be too complacent because the same thing is happening in the U.S. (Part II has the hard data.)
Wisely, Brown understands that "mass immigration without integration leads to social fragmentation."
Furthermore, he says, "But we are too polite to say anything about it, too worried about being called racist, just too embarrassed about being British or English or whatever it is, just wallowing too much in post-colonial white guilt."
The same arguments used in the U.S. about the benefits of limitless immigration are used in the U.K. Browne recounts in his article some things that the immigration lawyers and the political and economic elites won’t tell Britain: "… from the Immigration Advisory Service to the United Nations and the European Commission, immigration is no 'fix' for an aging society … immigrants grow old too. There are no generalized labor shortages, rather unemployment of 1.5 million; importing communities who are far more likely to claim all forms of benefit apart from pensions and disability allowances, and who can have startlingly high unemployment rates, does not make Britain a richer country. It is, in fact, importing poverty."
Regarding the high cost of cheap labor, in a comprehensive, documented article appearing in Front Page Magazine, Jan. 24, 2003, writer Ellen Almer concludes, "America was founded on the concept – well understood by Alexander Hamilton and the other economic sophisticates among the founders – of a middle-class society, i.e. a society organized to minimize the number of people who constitute cheap labor. Cheap labor was the proletariat which drove Europe’s class-ridden and undemocratic politics, the nightmare of revolution and reaction America was founded to escape."
Amen!
The extent of the pathology afflicting immigrants is greatly exagerrated or at minimum varies by location and group. My experience has been overwhelming in favor or immigrants, except for allowing in any more Muslims. Especially since 1996 and welfare reform (thanks Newt!)I know of few immigrants that don't work full time supporting their families and most appreciating and supporting America. In fact, most are more conservative than the average American.
That was a LONG blink!
Depending on how you figure it, Rome took 2.5 to 12 centuries to fall.
Rome was also built on immigration (often unwilling immigration) from its very beginning. For a great many centuries it successfully Romanized the immigrants.
--Boris
There was some allusion to this in the article. Perhaps Part II will explicate this more.
Hmongs are one thing. They have no intent on taking over.
But Muslims (at least those not from Turkey) are of a different order.
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