02/09/2009
Although The New York Times acknowledged that their editorial slamming VDARE.com, myself, and others as "nativists" received "a lot of mail," they have yet to print any letters critical of their editorial. (They normally do not print letters more than a week after a piece, so it unlikely that they will.) They did, however, publish this doozie by Hilary HinzmannThe nativists have already lost — irrevocably. The unparalleled diversity of the United States — and the increasing economic, political and social significance of Latino Americans — is assured by current demographics.Roy Beck and Numbers USA make it very explicit that their policy is based on Mr. Hinzmann’s guidelines: reducing total numbers, not bashing immigrants or making ethnic claims. This did not stop the NY Times editorial board from regurgitating the SPLC’s slur that Numbers USA was part of the "Nativist Lobby."The immigration issue today is not ethnicity but numbers. How much immigration will there be, how diluted will the labor market become, how large a percentage of the population will be poor, and how wide will be the gap between rich and poor? These are the questions that progressive liberal critics of high rates of immigration have asked from Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh to Barbara Jordan.
The nativists are a failed sideshow to those critical questions.
I agree with Mr. Hinzmann that progressives have many reasons to support immigration reform for completely non-ethnic reasons. VDARE publishes writers like Randall Burns who make this point.
But I am still waiting for any progressives to actually do anything about immigration. Since Barbara Jordan, I cannot think of a single African American leader or politician of any significance to actually argue in favor of serious immigration control. Nor can I think of a single progressive organization, politician, or leader, who really makes any arguments for immigration reduction in terms of numbers.
We "nativists" aren’t a sideshow, we are the only show. When People for the American Way, The Center for American Progress, and the NAACP start advocating reducing immigration numbers, I'll be happy to cede the issue to them. Until then, Mr. Hinzmann should come to grips with the fact that to the SPLC and other open borders advocates, he is still a "nativist" for supporting immigration reduction, no matter how "progressive" his motives.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.