¡Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, by Ann Coulter, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2015, 400 pages, hardcover.
Ann Coulter cares little for political correctness, and her sharp tongue generates enemies at both ends of the political spectrum. To many constitutional conservatives, for example, her foreign policy views are too aligned with the neoconservatives who led the United States into the Iraq mess under President Bush.
Writing in May, Coulter still defended the decision to go into Iraq: “There were lots of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein and none to keep him.” However, that’s highly debatable. One reason to “keep him” is that while Hussein was certainly a brutal dictator, at least Iraqi Christians fared better under his rule than they do now.
Liberals, in contrast, detest her for such things as the spirited defense of Senator Joe McCarthy she mounted in her book Treason.
And sometimes, it is not just her position on a political issue that enrages her detractors but the acidic commentary she uses to defend her position and assault those with whom she disagrees. Of course, her approach has also won her many fans, especially those who like her combative tone.
Her latest book, ¡Adios, America!, will win her no friends among those who favor more immigration into the United States, rather than less. Her book is certainly a one-sided and negative look at the effects of immigration, leaving out that many immigrants are hard workers, and often just want to escape the corrupt and violent cultures they left behind, and provide their children with an opportunity for a better life.
In fact, throughout the course of American history, immigrant labor has fueled the engines of America’s economic industrial growth, and immigrants have added many benefits to our culture. Some of our most patriotic citizens are immigrants who have escaped the multiple tyrannical governments of the world, and love America.
Yet, we cannot turn a blind eye to the many problems catalogued by Coulter in her own colorful fashion. While most immigrants (rather than “some,” as suggested by Donald Trump) are “good people,” some are not, and Coulter’s book details some of the crime problems generated by immigrant gangs, such as drug wars, rapes, and murder.
Another of Coulter’s major arguments against large-scale immigration is economic. She sums up her economic argument as follows: “Adding another 30 million poor, unskilled, non-taxpaying, welfare-receiving people to America is good only for government workers and employers who refuse to mechanize their operations or pay Americans.”
The H1-B visa comes under some especially harsh criticism in ¡Adios, America! The H1-B visa program’s stated purpose is to attract higher-skilled workers and professionals, supposedly in fields in which there is a shortage of those persons who are U.S. citizens. But Coulter’s contention is that the H1-B visa program is a modern form of the old indentured servant system. In the early days of colonial America, to deal with a shortage of manual labor, especially on the larger farms, desperate persons from Europe (mostly England) would sign indentures, or contracts, to work for a certain number of years for a particular employer. Under the H1-B program, a foreigner who comes to the United States to work cannot quit a job because he would then risk deportation. Coulter cites evidence that she believes proves that many companies fire their American workers and replace them with underpaid foreign workers. A person fearing deportation if he quits will work for less, she contends.
This statement touches on the solution aspect of the immigration issue, which often divides conservatives. Many like former Congressman Ron Paul argue that ending the “welfare magnet” would solve much of the immigration problem. Others counter that ending the welfare magnet is going to be nearly impossible with waves of immigrants who wind up voting for an ever-expanding welfare state when they obtain U.S. citizenship. Coulter does not address Paul’s “welfare magnet” argument in her book.
Also a major theme of ¡Adios, America! is the history of the political impact upon the country because of immigration, both legal and illegal. Coulter traces much of the present leftist trend we are experiencing in the United States to the 1965 immigration law authored by Senator Edward Kennedy. This legislation snuffed out quotas for immigrants from countries that had traditionally populated America — England, Ireland, and Germany — and added “family reunification policies.” Passed during the heyday of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” its purpose, Coulter asserts, was largely to improve the fortunes of the Democratic Party by creating an ever-expanding underclass inclined to vote Democrat. She cites as evidence that the Democrats have received a majority of the white vote only once since 1948.
As Democrat consultant Patrick Reddy boasted, “It will go down as the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.”
Apparently, at one time Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) didn’t have that fact figured out, but along the way, he comprehended the huge percentage of the immigrant vote enjoyed by his party, and he switched his position: In 1993, Senator Reid introduced a bill to clearly end citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, arguing that the cornucopia of government benefits was drawing many poor and low-skilled immigrants into America. Reid, speaking on the floor of the Senate, said, “If making it easy to be an illegal alien isn’t enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant? No sane country would do that, right? Guess again. If you break our laws by entering by entering this country without permission, and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and guarantee full access to all public and social services this society provides — and that’s a lot of services. Is it any wonder that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expense in county-run hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegal alien mothers?”
Too, Coulter makes the case that the non-immigrant [or if you prefer, native-born] American electorate is not moving to the political Left — it is shrinking and being replaced by immigrants who tend to vote socialist. When Democrats saw that they were beginning to lose elections, she says, they developed an “evil, genius plan to change this country by restocking it with voters more favorably disposed to left-wing policies than [the present composition of] Americans.”
An electoral analysis would seem to support Coulter’s thesis that the tide was running against the Democratic Party, as they lost five of six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988, before the rising tide of immigration turned California from a Republican “red” state into a Democrat “blue” state. We have gone from Republican landslide victories to an era of close elections, with Democrats usually edging out the Republican nominee. Beginning with the 1992 election, the Republican presidential candidate has captured a majority of the popular vote only once (2004).
Coulter also believes that this immigration effect has transformed the Democratic Party from its historic base of socially conservative, blue-collar workers into a party of urban elites, with feminists, untaxed hedge-fund operators, and the like dominating the party. On the other hand, Coulter argues, the Republicans share the blame for their own demise because they cannot think past the next election. Republican candidates, in need of campaign funds, vote to please the big donors who desire the cheap labor offered by immigrants. Because of this, Republican political leaders simply kick the can down the road, figuring the next generation can take care of themselves.
While many readers of The New American may take issue with some of the solutions offered by Coulter (such as border fences, which Ron Paul and others have warned can be used to keep Americans in as well as foreigners out and which are dubious in their effectiveness), it would be difficult to argue that immigration is not a serious issue for those who favor limited government. This is due to the voting patterns of those who immigrate into the country. While many immigrants are conservative on issues such as abortion and the like, political data indicates that social programs are often more important in determining how these individuals vote.
As Ron Paul lamented in his last speech in the House of Representatives, “Freedom is a hard sell.” Unfortunately, Paul’s lamentation is true far too often not only for those born and raised in the United States, but also for those who come here from the rest of the world to live.
