07/03/2003
Immigration enthusiasts have already stolen the Statue of Liberty. Next, they want Independence Day (now called the Fourth of July, William Safire has noted, because "the idea of national sovereignty — independence — has become controversial…")
As part of this campaign, OpinionJournal’s Brendan Miniter has just claimed that Thomas Jefferson was an immigration enthusiast, and that the Founders shared the pro-immigration views of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. ["Let Their People Come The Founders understood the importance of free immigration," By Brendan Miniter]
Miniter bases this on one line by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: King George had allegedly
"endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
Of course, Miniter here shows deplorable anti-native American bias. The reason the British Government was restricting immigration to America was that the resulting population growth caused conflict with the Indians on the Western Frontier.
The American Nation certainly had, as a consequence, immigration restriction without representation. But Minter’s Open Borders enthusiasm would once again transfer control of immigration policy outside the country. If the U.S. is required to accept everybody who wants to come, as a matter of right, then it’s the world that decides who lives in the U.S., not Americans.
The truth is that the Founders were very cautious about immigration. While Jefferson believed in the Rights of Man, he was, by the standards of Wall Street Journal Editor Robert ("the nation-state is finished") Bartley, a radical restrictionist. Some selected quotes:
"[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible … founded in good policy? … They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass … If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements." — Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118
"Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience. They differ from us little but in their principles of government, and most of those (merchants excepted) who come here, are sufficiently disposed to adopt ours." — Thomas Jefferson to George Flower, 1817. ME 15:140
The Treason Lobby will keep on trying to steal Independence Day — and America. VDARE.COM will keep on stopping them. Some more selected quotes:
07/03/01 — Wall Street Journal: Independence Day Means Immigration!
07/09/01 — Abolishing America (contd.): Establishment Sages Say Nation Obsolete
Happy Birthday, America!
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.