[Bret L]

Message On Labor Day: Working America Needs An Immigration Moratorium

" In 1995, when there were a lot fewer immigrants in the United States, and there was a boom rather than a financial crisis, Peter Brimelow in Alien Nation suggested an immigration moratorium to allow America to finish assimilating its recent immigrants. A moratorium proposal also featured in his 1992 NR cover story Time to Rethink Immigration? (NR’s Ramesh Ponnuru subsequently announced the magazine’s abandonment of this not-Beltway-friendly position after Buckley’s purge of immigration patriots).

“Moratorium” means a pause in some activity, usually debt repayment.
An immigration moratorium—no net immigration—would mean a pause in
almost all kinds of immigration, which would have the advantage that
it wouldn't require Americans to argue about which kinds of immigrants
are best. Preferring one group of immigrants over another will always
be considered racist by someone.

I suspect the average man on the street would say that the US needs
fewer Mexicans and Guatemalans, and more Swedish girls in bikinis. (I
did a post once about the difficulty of keeping out the New Swedish
Bikini Team, who were "trained in hang-gliding, jet-ski wave jumping
and skydiving, and scubadiving.") It's possible that even Mexicans and
Guatemalans on the American street would be in favor of that, since
blondes who walk by Hispanics in the street report a lot of unwelcome
attention.

But that's the kind of thing that starts fights. I don't expect
Hispanics to admit that the US already has too many Mexicans, or the
Black Caucus to agree that the US does not need any more African
immigrants. What I'm talking about, in the middle of this huge
financial crisis, is the "citizenist" position that the US doesn't
need any more immigrants PERIOD. It's already got more than it needs,
and they're costing it money every day.

This is not a new idea. In fact, something like it was official
government policy from 1924 to 1965, when LBJ revised the Immigration
Act. That was a very successful period in American history, something
that David Frum points out in his book on the 70s, with suitable
acknowledgements to Alien Nation. In those days, Americans did jobs
Americans "won't do."

Now immigrants have jobs Americans "used to have" and American are
short of jobs and prospects. What's amazing is that, according to
Google News as Labor Day Eve, no one has proposed an immigration
moratorium. (No one but us at VDARE.com, that is.)

We don't even know if jobs in the federal "stimulus" budget, (WPA 2)
will be reserved for Americans. You would think that the AFL-CIO,
(what's left of it) would be interested in preserving American jobs.
But they aren't.

Recently, the number of Americans who think that unions "mostly hurt"
the US economy jumped from "39% in 2006 to 51% last month," according
to Mickey Kaus. Union support for mass immigration is not the only
reason for that, of course. But it's part of it.

So why isn't anyone proposing it? Partly because it doesn't even cross
their minds that it's possible. John Podhoretz, [Email him] (the new
editor of Commentary Magazine) threw a tantrum in National Review's
corner blog in 2007, when Mark Krikorian suggested that immigration
was incompatible with a modern society. JPod wrote

"So why didn't you immigration restrictionists just say so in the
first place, instead of hiding behind the word "illegal"? Why didn't
you then acknowledge your problem wasn't with law-breaking at all but
rather with the fact that any people are coming in? Could it be that
you knew then it was an extremist view that only had support on the
fringe, but that there would be real strength behind using the
illegality of illegal immigration to rally people to your cause? And
that now, with real movement in your direction ideologically, you now
feel freer to advocate openly what you have always hinted at but have
never quite said so blatantly?"

Apparently Podhoretz the Younger (and distinctly the Lesser) totally
missed the immigration debate of the 90s, and couldn't figure out that
Alien Nation wasn't called Illegal Alien Nation. The problem with an
alien nation isn't that it's illegal, it's that it's alien.

But even if you didn't care about that—and I suspect Obama doesn't—on
pure economic grounds, Obama should be calling for, and Congress
should be voting for, an immediate halt to all immigration.

The fact that no one but us is saying that is a sign that America's
intellectuals have failed to deal with the immigration problem—
probably because it involves race, and in modern day America, that
means intellectual paralysis.

Have a Happy Labor Day—if you still have a job."

http://www.vdare.com/fulford/090906_fulford_file.htm