As such, when someone shows up out of the blue, and makes emotive appeals based on the plights of the "poor persecuted unfortunate immigrants" the logical assumption is going to be that the person in question is making a backhanded slap at those opposed to immigration (not unlike the backhanded slap at conservatives every time Bush talks about "compassionate conservatism"). I am sure you did not intend this consciously, and text-based communication forums like this are notorious for misunderstandings; you may not consciously have intended to condescend or imply racism/bigotry, but you should understand why others might assume otherwise.
I will make my point clearer: if you are going to continue to make emotional appeals based solely on the needs of immigrants as the immigrants and their spokesmen define it, rather than hard-headed decisions based on the realities of what is best for the national interest, then you are engaging in the kind of soft, emotive politics which have been poisoning and destroying the West for these past 50 years or more. If you don't like my calling this kind of "thinking" feminine, then, fine, call it something else. But recognize the thing for what it is, whatever you chose to call it.
The future of what is left of Western Civilization depends upon clear thinking and hard choices, not hand-wringing and barely suppressed fears of transgressing against social taboos.
I don't class myself as elite. Not at all. In fact I class myself as reasonably practical. In fact, if I dare, to put it in American political terms, I'm most possibly Reaganesque. (So friggin' sue me!).
My alarm bells go off whenever I hear "Reaganesque". During the 80's the conservative movement and the GOP were highjacked and taken over by neo-cons flying under the false flag of Reaganism. It is these people who have turned the GOP into what it is, on the all important issues of immigration, especially.
Now, you may be as conservative as you say, but if you chose the wrong side on immigration, all of that carefully marshalled conservatism will be meaningless, because before long you will have nothing left to conserve, as millions of native Americans have discovered in recent years, as they were driven out of their native lands or reduced to a tiny and despised minority.
As to elites...you misunderstand me. You don't have to be part of an elite to be subtly controlled and manipulated by elite values, and to thereby be a purveyor and enforcer of elite-inspired and elite-created social taboos (indeed, part of being a true member of the elite is the freedom to disregard the propaganda bilge about diversity and tolerance which you force your social lessers to adhere to in public).
The primary motive driving adherence to elite values by non-elites is status anxiety; this is the fear of being seen as declasse, and there is nothing that will get one labeled a rube and a lower class person faster than being seen as transgressing elite values on immigration, race, globalism, and related issues. Indeed, the more one sees one's self as a "practical" and a "reasonable" person, the more one is likely to be open to status anxiety and manipulation by elite values, if being "reasonably practical" in fact means acceptance of de facto situations and accepted values, without reference to first principles or long-term goals, independent of what others may think about these.
I have never found a bigger flock of those suffering from status anxiety and herd mentality than amongst journalists. I hope you are an exception to this, but I stand by my generalization. Journalists on the whole are not an elite, but they are the effective and informal enforcers of the social taboos of political correctness, and their reality-distorting coverage of the news is the primary function of journalists in modern, media-saturated Western societies. As such they are one of the primary tools of elites in their effort to mold public opinion and thereby make democracy a hollow word.
You might want to investigate further for your own benefit the realities of immigration, both in the USA and in Europe. Mass immigration is brand-new in Ireland, and as such many people in Ireland are in the same stage of denial which the USA and the rest of Europe was at a few decades ago. You simply cannot trust mainstream journalist coverage on this issue, as on many others: the lies, evasions, suppressions, and distortions perpetuated by journalists in the media are massive and only fully realized by those who have first hand experience of the facts on the ground. You literally have to read modern news coverage like you would read an old issue of the communist Pravda: between the lines, and in code. Realization of these facts takes time and effort, and cannot take place at all if one is subconsciously driven by fears of social taboos or emotive sob stories generated to deflect hard questions about the public issues that really matter.