“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”–G K Chesterton
Let’s do a little thought exercise here. Imagine that some force was flooding an indigenous people’s lands with millions of unassimilable foreigners, and it was understood that this influx would irretrievably change that land’s culture and replace the population. What would anthropologists call this phenomenon? Cultural genocide comes to mind.
Of course, in America we call it “immigration policy.”
Now, when King Edward I “Longshanks” said about dominating the Scots in the film Braveheart, “If we can’t get them out, we’ll breed them out,” it was to be expected from an enemy of Scotland. And how should we characterize America’s immigrationists?
Before answering, let’s first consider the testimony of Fredo Arias-King, ex-aide to former Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox (hat tip: Timothy Birdnow). About how he and his colleagues spoke to 50 U.S. congressmen and senators back in 1999 and 2000, he writes:
Of those 50 legislators, 45 were unambiguously pro-immigration, even asking us at times to “send more.” This was true of both Democrats and Republicans. …[Moreover] [m]ost of them seemed to be aware of the negative or at least doubtful consequences of mass immigration from Latin America, while still advocating mass immigration.
… [The Democrat legislators] seemed more interested in those immigrants and their offspring as a tool to increase the role of the government in society and the economy. Several of them tended to see Latin American immigrants and even Latino constituents as both more dependent on and accepting of active government programs and the political class guaranteeing those programs, a point they emphasized more than the voting per se. Moreover, they saw Latinos as more loyal and “dependable” in supporting a patron-client system and in building reliable patronage networks to circumvent the exigencies of political life as devised by the Founding Fathers[.]
Republican lawmakers we spoke with knew … that they may not now receive their [the naturalized Mexicans’] votes, [but] they believed that these immigrants are more malleable than the existing American: That with enough care, convincing, and “teaching,” they could be converted, be grateful, and become dependent on them. Republicans seemed to idealize the patron-client relation with Hispanics as much as their Democratic competitors did. … Also curiously, the Republican enthusiasm for increased immigration also was not so much about voting in the end, even with “converted” Latinos. Instead, these legislators seemingly believed that they could weaken the restraining and frustrating straightjacket devised by the Founding Fathers and abetted by American norms. In that idealized “new” United States, political uncertainty, demanding constituents, difficult elections, and accountability in general would “go away” after tinkering with the People[.] …
I remember few instances when a legislator spoke well of his or her white constituents. One even called them “rednecks,” and apologized to us on their behalf for their incorrect attitude on immigration. Most of them seemed to advocate changing the ethnic composition of the United States as an end in itself.
Continue….