Turn Off The Spigot. Time For An Immigration Moratorium

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As yet another caravan of “migrants” marches toward the southern border like a relentless column of ravenous army ants, the Biden Regime and its lackeys in the Lügenpresse insist that the “Great Replacement” is a “conspiracy theory.” But the demographic transformation of the United States is not only quite real but also escalating while Americans watch helplessly.

Let’s look at the data.

The Border Patrol has encountered more than 1.2 million illegal aliens so far in fiscal 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show. And as of the end of April, the regime has released nearly 950,000 aliens into the interior.


Indeed, far from trying to stop illegal immigration, the regime is importing illegals as fast as it can. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, has repeatedly said he will not deport illegals and openly brags about ignoring statutory mandates that require authorities to detain them. 

Thus, the border has collapsed, and is, as a practical matter, a quaint fiction. The scope of the catastrophe is overwhelming and will undoubtedly worsen.

What most Americans likely don’t know is how we landed at this pass. Granted, Biden is the proximate cause of an invasion by Third World “migrants.” But the country has been changing demographically for decades, and not solely because of illegal immigration.

The ultimate cause is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. As the late and much-missed Lawrence Auster wrote in Our Borders Ourselves, “there seems to be almost no awareness of the fact that this alteration of our society has been the result not of an act of God but of an act of Congress, not of some inviolable provision in the Constitution but of a law passed in 1965.” 

In short, public policy made for the benefit of immigrants — a law Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signeddrove the demographic changes that have transformed the culture, politics, and laws of our nation. 

To stop that transformation, the country needs a  new public policy, one that benefits Americans, not foreigners. The time is now for an immigration moratorium.

When America Was White

Before 1965, the national origins quota system controlled immigration and granted visas primarily based on an immigrant’s country of birth. As a result, 70 percent of visas went to three countries — Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany. However, modifications resulting from the 1965 law, the brainchild of two Democrats, Senator Philip Hart and Rep. Emanuel Celler, established family reunification, and to a lesser extent employment preferences, as the new criteria for admission. 

In 1960, America was a nation of 180 million percent, 89 percent of whom were of European ancestry; i.e., white. Ten percent were black, and a few million Hispanics and Asians were sprinkled in for good measure. 

No more. The country has been remade, a new people elected.  

Since 2010, population growth among non-whites have driven population growth. The Census Bureau projects that the United States will become “minority white” in 2045. By 2060, the Census Bureau projects 100 million Hispanics — nearly 25 percent of the population — and 49 million Asians — nearly 12 percent of the population.  

Yet the important point here is that immgration and demographic change does not happen due to unseen forces, but instead is a consequence of policies that can be changed by political leaders with the will to do so.      

Thus, if this worrisome demographic decline is to be reversed, any immigration policy must address and answer two basic questions: How many immigrants should the United States admit, and who should get in?

Any immigration policy going forward must have two purposes: to reset the demographic balance of the country and serve the economic needs of the native population. That means white Americans, the descendants of those who landed here in the early 17th century up through the early 20th. It excludes the hordes that have landed here uninvited since 1965, legally or otherwise.

What Must Be Done

The immigration issue is powerful, as Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 well showed. With one sound bite about immigration in his announcement speech, Trump shot to the front of the GOP primary field and never looked back. It can happen again. One speech enunciating the right set of policies could be the spark.

A Wall Street Journal poll in December revealed that immigration is the top issue with voters. Fifty-two percent of respondents said the GOP will better handle immigration; just 16 percent of those polled preferred Democrats. Biden’s approval on immigration also continues to crater with an impatient public — 60% of whom disapprove with his handling of the issue. In short, immigration restriction is not just good policy, but good politics. 

Any future GOP future presidential candidate, and all GOP congressional candidates heading into November’s midterms election, must articulate the following:

  • A border wall must be finished and maintained. A small tax on remittances  would provide the money for construction and maintenance and shift the cost to immigrants.   
  • The magnets that draw illegal aliens must be neutralized. All subsidies for illegals in the form of welfare, health care, and education must cease immediately.
  • E-Verify, an employment authorization program, should be mandatory and lawbreaking employers that hire illegals must face steep fines and jail terms.
  • Mexico must be told that access to the American market is tied to her assistance in thwarting illegal immigation into the United States.  
  • Illegals must be deported, and high-profile raids of workplaces must begin immediately to convince illegals they must self-deport.
  • Perhaps most importantly, birthright citizenship must be terminated. Birthright citizenship is unpopular, yet Americans are largely unaware of it. Ideally this would be retroactive to Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, so children born to illegals since then would lose their citizenship. The Indian government is successfully enacting similar policies. 

But more dangerous to the country’s survival as a European nation is  legal immigation.  The borders must close to all but a token number of immigrants. That, too, must be part of the party’s immigration platform.

Here is why:

  • Between the start of the Bush administration to the end of the Trump era — almost 20 years — nearly 21 million foreigners became permanent lawful residents (see Table 1).  
  • Refugee admissions (1.14 million since 2000),  H-1B visas (about 6 million since 2000),  H-2B visas (1,5 million since 2000-(along with spouses and children), and other “guestworker” schemes that must be terminated.  

America needs a breather, a chance to digest the hardy ethnic fare it has devoured, unknowingly to most white Americans, since 1965. Prior lulls in immigration between 1790-1830 and 1925-65 served this function, allowing the engines of assimilation to function before new waves of migration caused renewed disruption. But the post-1965 wave posed greater challenges because it differs not only in scale and illegality but also in its lack of cultural affinity with the receiving population. The ongoing demographic transformation of the United States has no historic parallel.

But closing the borders needn’t mean, as a practical matter, halting  all immigration. Between 200,000 and 250,000 people leave the United States annually. Allowing 200,000 immigrants to account for Americans marrying foreign spouses or other hardship cases would simply mean a net zero population increase.

Current immigration policy has serious flaws: the numbers of immigrants are excessive, the benefits are nonexistent, and the racial balance is skewed.  But like a tub that has overflown and is leaking into the basement, the first thing to do is not clean up the mess.

The first thing to do is turn off the spigot. That’s what an immigration moratorium would do.

Darrell Dow writes from Kentucky. With Thomas Achord, he is the author of Who Is My Neighbor?: An Anthology In Natural Relations.

Editor’s note: Due to a technological problem, the original version of this article was scrubbed from AmRem.

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