From: Vincent Chiarello (e-mail him)

Although not a magazine that stresses the baleful impact of immigration, both legal and illegal, on US society, the current issue of The Claremont Review of Books includes a symposium on Immigration and American Exceptionalism.[Fall 2013] The contributors include William Bennett, former Sec. of Education, Linda Chavez, Angelo Codevilla, Edward Erler, Stanley Kurtz and John O’Sullivan.

Chavez, who is the token “open borders” advocate in the group, insists, despite every known indicator to the contrary, that the new immigrants from south of the US border will not, “change America far more fundamentally than America will change them.“ In this case, however, she is not preaching to the choir, or readers of The Washington Post. That assumption is risible.

Bennett, using the example of the Boston Marathon murderers, points out that the family was given asylum, an act that he questions in light of their “savage” rejection of the nation that provided them with benefits unknown in most of the world. He further aks if birthright citizenship is wise, and rejects that preposterous assumption as well. Codevilla, Professor Emeritus at Boston University, writes that “immigration reform ... is likelier to dissimulate into subjects,than to assimilate into citizens.” 

Erler, a senior fellow at Claremont Institute, rightfully claims, “If the Republican Party wants to commit suicide, it can find no more dramatic method...” than to support amnesty. But it is John O’Sullivan, known to VDARE.com readers as the former Editor of National Review removed for his–and Peter Brimelow’s–resistance to the the “open borders” policies at that magazine, who provides the best insight.

Using  the tomato soup metaphor used by Samuel Huntington in his 2004 publication, Who Are We?, The Challenges to America’s National Identity,  O’Sullivan stresses the point that tomato soup may become more delicious when you add spices, garlic, basil and chopped onions, but it is still recognizable as tomato soup. However, he adds that the soup will become unrecognizable if you add the cultural accretions of nearly one million newcomers into the country each year occurring in a backdrop of multiculturalism, and in which the American tomato soup is a foreign element to their sensibilities.

America, O’Sullivan insists, was never a nation of immigrants, but if the current Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act passes, “...America, for the first time, (will become) truly a nation of immigrants. That is to say, no nation at all.”

Chiarello is a retired Foreign Service Officer whose tours included U.S. embassies in Latin America and Europe. See Vincent Chiarello's previous letters to VDARE.com.