July 03, 2003
Independence Day Is NOT Immigration Day - Despite
the Wall Street Journal
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:
07/04/02 - Immigration Day?
07/03/01 - Wall Street Journal: Independence Day Means
Immigration!
07/09/01 - Abolishing America (contd.): Establishment
Sages Say Nation Obsolete
07/04/01
- Patriotic Bore
Happy Birthday, America!
