Stephen
Kershnar
Immigration and Who We Are
Dunkirk-Fredonia
Observer
November
13, 2018
Migrants from Honduras, Guatemala,
and El Salvador have formed a caravan to come into the U.S. Their number,
perhaps less than ten thousand, is a drop in the bucket given the number of
people in the U.S., but it highlights how the U.S. is changing.
In 2017 according to the Center for
Immigration Studies (CIS), immigrants (legal and illegal) are nearly one out of
seven (14%) U.S. residents. This is the highest percentage since 1910. CIS
reports that the number of immigrants is now a record 45 million.
These
figures underestimate the impact of immigration. Current immigrants have had 17
million U.S. children (2017 figure). This means that roughly one out of five
U.S. residents are now immigrants or their children (62 million out of 326
million). Also, roughly one out of five babies in the U.S. are now born to immigrants,
whether legal or illegal.
According
to a recent study by Yale and MIT professors, there are now 22 million illegal
aliens in the country. Again, this number underestimates their impact. The Pew
Hispanic Center estimates that, roughly, 5 million children have been born to
illegal aliens and received birthright citizenship.
Consider
what a country is. A country is a collection of people connected through
certain legal relations. What makes a government morally legitimate is that the
people that constitute it consented to it. It is analogous to a country club in
that voluntary membership creates the club, distributes its privileges and
duties, and controls the use of its property. Without such consent, members
would have neither a duty to pay for the club nor would they have to subject
themselves to the club’s rules. The content of such consent is set out by the
contract that members agreed to when they formed or joined the club.
The problem is that the U.S.
citizens have not authorized this flood of immigrants into their club. First, they
did not authorize the sea of illegal aliens. Second, many of the immigrants
became naturalized through birthright citizenship that the Constitution does
not permit. The Claremont Institute’s Edward Erler convincingly argues that birthright
citizenship involves a deliberate misreading of the Constitution. Third, even
if the citizens did authorize the past flood of immigrants, and they didn’t, by
electing Donald Trump they sent a clear message that they want the flooding to
stop. By analogy, if citizens were to elect a President and Congress on the
basis of their explicit promise not to send the country to war and then they
promptly do so, the people’s will would have been thwarted.
Importing so many people with
different histories, values, and cultures will significantly change the
country. Imagine how members of a rich-and-educated WASP country club in
Westchester County, New York would be shocked at what happened to their club if
suddenly one out of five of its members were a poor-and-uneducated Central or South
American. They might not be able to reverse the change if it were done by a do-gooder
executive board who didn’t tell them what it planned to do. Because a club is
composed of its members, it would even go out of existence in a metaphysical
sense, if not a legal one, were its membership to change fast enough.
Just as the country club members are
within their rights not to want their club drastically changed, Americans are
within their rights not to want their country drastically changed. This is true
regardless of whether the proposed changes would make the country worse.
It
is worth noting that the way in which the elites want to change this country
will make it worse. It is a fact, no matter how impolite, that today’s
immigrants are less educated, intelligent, and skilled than the native
population. They vote for higher taxes, more government spending and regulation,
more affirmative action, and so on.
To
see some of these differences, consider that 27% of working-age immigrants are
high school dropouts versus 7% of working-age Americans (2015 CIS number). CIS
also reports that more than half of households headed by an immigrant (legal or
illegal) used at least one welfare program (Medicaid, cash, food, or housing
assistance) versus 30% of native households. National Review’s Jason Richwine argues that the average IQ of
immigrants is lower than that of native American whites and that this
difference is likely to persist over several generations.
Even
if none of this were true, a people have the right to prevent their country
from drastic change. A country has a culture to the extent that its people
share a history, identity, and set of values. Intuitively, it is morally permissible
for Israelis, Japanese, and Norwegians to ensure that their country stays
focused on their interests rather than others’ interests. One way that they
might do this is by making sure their countries are mostly composed of their peoples.
This will ensure that their culture, government, and surroundings remain Jewish,
Japanese, or Norwegian. Americans should be able to do the same.
The
purpose of the United States is increasingly unclear. If it continues to be
flooded by immigrants who differ greatly from native Americans, it will cease
to constituted by a specific people. It already wasn’t constituted by a people
in the way that Israel, Japan, and Norway are. Every year it is less committed
to an idea or coherent set of them. The country’s commitment to freedom or the
Constitution is waning with increasing government power. This can be seen whether
we look at ever increasing taxes, encroachment on traditional American rights
(for example, free speech, gun ownership, and rights against search and
seizure), or the number of people under the control of the criminal justice
system.
Perhaps
the U.S. doesn’t need to be constituted by a particular people or committed to
a particular idea or a coherent set of them. Still, it would have been nice if the
citizens had been asked.
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