What John Quincy Adams Said About Immigration Will Blow Your Mind

The Federalist ^ | August 18, 2014 | D.C. McAllister

[MSSC6644]

We often hear about the glory days of immigration when America threw open her arms to the huddled masses, but one thing you don’t hear about is how those people had to make it on their own without a government safety net. There was plenty of private charity, which was highly encouraged, but health care, a minimum-wage job, college entrance, housing, legal representation, and education certainly weren’t promised—not like today.

[LibertarianLiz]

Nor was Affirmative Action; which, puts these darker skinned folks flooding over our southern border, at the head of the line for college, jobs, you name it.

[cripplecreek]

Gotta figure, the Hessians were primarily mercenary forces on the side of Britain during the war.

[headstamp 2]

Recht auf

[Verginius Rufus]

Very interesting and thoughtful letter.

The principle of treating everyone alike was abandoned in the 1960s with the advent of "affirmative action," which gives people preferences based on the accident of their birth (how many people choose before their birth which race and which sex they will belong to?).

[untenured]

It is a remarkable letter, one that seems to describe a different country. Who in our country could today say with a straight face something like the remarks below?

"This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others."

The whole thing is full of passages like that that read like a document from an ancient civilization.

[CivilWarBrewing]

The WASPs are witnessing their own demise and have been reduced to merely talking about it.

[ckilmer]

Well we German descent folks are the single largest group in America these days.
..............
I believe the hispanic numbers passed German descended people a while back

[Phillyred]

They can thank the pill and abortion. Doesn’t take more than a generation to lose a culture.

[SunkenCiv]

• Rand Paul Wants Bigger GOP: 'You Go to a Republican Event and It's All White People'
• (Rand) Paul: GOP Needs to 'Look Like the Rest of America' to Win Again (again)
• Rand Paul slams Cliven Bundy's racist rant
• Rand Paul: Bundy's racist remarks are 'offensive'
• Rand Paul: I'm Open to Voting for Immigration Bill
• Paul: Still hope for immigration reform this year

Rand Paul's immigration speech

...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.

Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.

Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.

Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.

If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...

This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.

Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.

[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]

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Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reform

Latinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...

[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]

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[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]

[TYVets]

The governments are the servants of the people, and are so considered by the people, who place and displace them at their pleasure.

They are chosen to manage for short periods the common concerns, and when they cease to give satisfaction, they cease to be employed.

If the powers, however, of the government to do good are restricted, those of doing harm are still more limited.

The dependence, in affairs of government, is the reverse of the practice in Europe, instead of the people depending upon their rulers, the rulers, as such, are always dependent upon the good will of the people.

[Henry Hnyellar]

Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.

Why? We can spend billions on other useless things but none to enforce our immigration laws. Further, this line from Rand is a red herring. We would not need to deport 12 million (or whatever the actual number is) of illegal aliens. Begin aggressive and very visible deportation, make it economically infeasible to be here (e.g. can't hold job, can't get a drivers license, no welfare, etc) and the rest will self-deport.

[dfwgator]

We can do anything we want if we have the Will to do it.

[SunkenCiv]

That’s not what Rand wants. He’s a Democrat, no matter how he self-describes. So is his old man.

[EternalVigilance]

Excellent post.

[donaldo]

How about this heresy? “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Other Tocqueville quotes:

[Daveinyork]

It had nothing to do with Hessians. Franklin thought the immigrants from Germany were going to change the English culture. His solution was to breed the Germans out of existence. Since he didn’t think any Englishman would want to bed a German woman, he wanted English women to marry German men.