Immigration restrictionists must start thinking outside the box, because right now we’re boxed in with no clear path to success. The rise of President Trump gave restrictionists hope that genuine reform of our broken immigration policies was possible. For the first time in years, immigration as a national issue came out of the shadows to receive a serious national hearing.
It appeared at long last that we might finally get a grip on illegal immigration and finally put the brakes on excessive legal immigration, now running at the highest sustained level in our history. With Trump’s election, these long elusive goals at last appeared feasible.
Today that vision seems almost as far away as ever. Trump’s attempts to bring some degree of sanity to our immigration policies have elicited savage opposition from the institutional left, from judicial supremacist judges to frothing journalistas. The leaders of the Democratic Party, including most presidential contenders for 2020, seem to be in competition as to how far they can push the envelope toward keeping immigration law enforcement as minimal as possible.
And the “conservatives” of the cheap labor persuasion have dug in their heels as well. They’ve doubled down on their demands for massive immigration, on the pretext that we face a “labor shortage.” The fact that automation will soon be filling a large percentage of jobs now done by humans makes no impression on them at all. Their concern for profits too often exceeds their patriotism. Sadly, they have persuaded President Trump to abandon his previous commitment to cutting legal immigration.
So what can restrictionists do to break this deadlock? One possibility is a strategic shift to the left. This does not mean trying to appeal to hard-core “politically correct” leftists, whose zealotry makes them impervious to any reasonable appeal. They are committed to uncontrolled immigration because it serves to destroy the traditional America they so bitterly hate.
These types are all too numerous today, but they are probably a minority of left-leaning Americans. Our society today—for better or for worse—is feminine in outlook, with nurture and compassion having great political currency. The hard left effectively manipulates this inclination.
Restrictionists don’t lack compassion, but they see the need to balance it with prudence and practicality. Specifically, they believe that charity should begin at home and that there are definite limits on America’s ability to uplift the world by welcoming immigration. Unfortunately, this realism strikes many “compassionate” Americans as a tad insensitive if not mean spirited.
How might restrictionists appeal to them? One possibility is to point out that it would be best for everyone concerned if potential migrants didn’t feel the need to leave their homelands. To help achieve this goal, restrictionists might endorse what one could describe as a Marshall Plan for countries where many people are leaving.
The United States could initiate substantial packages of financial aid and economic incentives to those countries to increase their standards of living. At the same time the U.S. could enlist other developed countries to chip in as well. Yes, it would be costly, but such costs should be weighed against the burdens that mass immigration is imposing and will impose on our nation and those countries. Perhaps this thought could help mollify conservatives who have a very low opinion of foreign aid.
That opinion, however, is not without justification. Far too often, foreign aid has done little but feed corruption in recipient countries. Cynics have described it as poor people in rich countries contributing to rich people in poor countries. Clearly for the proposed Marshall Plan to work, we would have to rethink and reinvent the whole concept of foreign aid.
With an effective aid program in place, left-leaning people would have less reason for the guilt they seem to have about restricting immigration. At the same time they might appreciate the need to shun “diversity” so that America can stay united and strong—and capable of providing assistance to other lands.
Still, there is the issue of finding the money for the project. It is not a small issue in a country with a national debt so enormous as ours. One possible source of funds might be major cuts in the military budget. According to some accounts, our defense spending exceeds that of all other countries combined. One wonders why we sustain such a huge military and project force abroad when we don’t bother to safeguard our border. A peaceful invasion means the end of our country and sovereignty just as surely as an armed invasion.
So why do our ruling elites allow this to be? If one speculates that they are globalists who want to erase our nation—and all nations—it makes perfect sense. A strategy of invade-the-world/invite-the-world is perfect for getting rid of national sovereignty, ours and that of other countries.
Quite a few of our political leaders seem hell-bent on military interventions which make little sense in terms of anything rationally connected to our national interest. The pretexts range from blatant lies about “weapons of mass destruction” to gaseous platitudes about human rights. These acts of war, unsanctioned by the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war, have caused havoc in such countries as Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
This chaos in turn has unleashed a flood of migrants and refugees to Europe, and a lesser flow to the U.S. This reveals a direct link between U.S. militarism and mass immigration. As of mid-2019, some of our key leaders are proposing new invasions of sovereign countries, specifically of Venezuela and Iran. Even more alarming, they keep pushing hostility toward nuclear-armed Russia, with the goal, it seems, of reviving the Cold War.
And what prompts this latter campaign of madness? As tension and distrust between Russia and the U.S. rise, one miscalculation on either side could unleash a nuclear conflagration. Our elites seem to think the risk is worth it because they so deeply despise Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. They call him a dictator, but the more likely reason for their ire is that Putin is a Russian patriot who won’t submit his country to their globalist designs.
Most ironically, globalists argue that reducing or eliminating national sovereignty will promote peace. That claim rings quite hollow as they plot more invasions for profits and power. Immigration restrictionists can appeal to genuinely compassionate Americans by championing the authentic cause of peace and exposing the moral bankruptcy of invade-and-invite the world.
Expanding the resrictionist cause to include foreign development and anti-militarism could help lay the groundwork for a new alliance in American politics—one which might challenge the current Establishment. Its chief players, as already noted, are the anti-patriotic radical left and the anti-patriotic corporate right. Currently they work together in a kind of updated version of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The two sides certainly have their differences, but also much in common. Both see traditional America as an obstacle to their agendas. The left radicals want to bulldoze our sovereignty and social order so they can build their “progressive” utopia. The corporatists want a borderless world to pursue profits from cheap labor. On board with the corporate team is the military industrial complex, a strong instigator of the invade-the-world agenda.
The two sides are united in a belief that elites should rule society. They assist each other in a symbiotic fashion. The radical left gives the corporate right moral cover for mass immigration and globalism. At the same time, the left gets money from the corporate right. In some cases, such as that of left-wing billionaire George Soros, both factions exist in the same person.
Some years ago, some American militarists were promoting intervention in certain countries by calling them an “axis of evil.” That phrase could well apply to the radical-left/corporate alliance. Good Americans of whatever political views must stand against this sinister coalition. Immigration restrictionists can help lead the way.