JOHN (“We Are Doomed”) DERBYSHIRE: There IS (Partial And Incremental) Hope On Immigration!
01/05/2024
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Earlier (2009) by Steve Sailer: John Derbyshire Says We Are Doomed!—Good News For The Alternative Right

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

It’s my New Year podcast! As is customary, I’ll take a quick glance back, and then one forward. I shall strive to be a little more upbeat than Robert Burns addressing his mouse.

[Voice of Donald Douglas:

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
 On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
 I guess an’ fear!]

”To a Mouse,”   by Robert Burns, 1759-1796

For immigration patriots the year just past, 2023, and indeed the two preceding years, have indeed offered Prospects Drear. Our federal government, as its very first priority, threw the country’s southern border wide open. Foreign invaders have been pouring in ever since, unhindered and unchecked, in defiance of our laws.

The total for these three years is generally given as more than eight million. That’s TWO POINT SEVEN MILLION a year, at least; so if the flood continues, a year from now that total will be over ten million.

This is really a very astonishing thing. Our federal government—the President, Vice President, and their cabinet secretaries—are conducting a huge criminal enterprise, in plain violation of their duty to see the people’s laws faithfully enforced.

Not only is this criminal in itself, it places our government and its employees in collaboration with even more indubitably criminal enterprises: the foreign crime syndicates organizing the smuggling of drugs and people into our country.

Our government is plainly, unapologetically, on their side.

Are senior members of our government being paid off by the cartels? I have seen no evidence of it; but from the evidence a-plenty we do have about the Biden family’s international dealings, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

If there is no such straightforwardly monetary motive, there are only two other possibilities:

  • a powerful ideology driving the perpetrators; or
  • some style of collective insanity

Here’s a quote from a very good piece of commentary:

Americans have no real idea why these revolutionaries are destroying our border.

Are they nineteenth-century anarchists who want to undermine the United States itself? Are they cynical ”Demography is Destiny” and ”The New Democratic Majority” Leftists who need new dependent Democrat constituents to find votes for agendas that most Americans reject? Do they want to create billions of dollars in new entitlements and subsidies to grow government, hike taxes, and make the upper middle class pay, as Biden puts it, ”their fair share?”

The Utter Insanity of Joe Biden’s Open Border AmGreatness.com, January 2, 2024

The writer is Professor Victor Davis Hanson, with whom I have had some slight personal acquaintance. I don’t always agree with what Professor Hanson says, but he has a first-class mind that I respect and admire.

He’s right on target here. The very title of his piece seems to favor the insanity defense.

He offers some illustrations: His home state of California, for instance, which, while facing a $70 billion annual budget deficit, has just extended free health care services to illegal aliens. Fiscally, socially, medically, any way you cut it, that’s insane.

As Prof. Hanson’s argument develops, though, it’s clear he believes, as I do, that our Ruling Class is in the grip of a powerful ideology—one that sees human affairs entirely in terms of who-whom, oppressor and oppressed, supremacist and victim.

For a while back earlier in this century we called this ”Cultural Marxism,” and I still think that’s an apt description. Karl Marx certainly saw things in those terms, with capitalism as the oppressor and labor as the oppressed.

The phrase ”Cultural Marxism” has fallen out of fashion in favor of the rather vacuous—to my ear, anyway—term ”woke.” [VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow was persuaded by one J. Derbyshire that the appropriate term is communist.”] It’s an ideology, though, whatever you call it; and as evidence of that, it’s world-wide … or at any rate First World-wide.

The British Isles and most European countries have borders as wide open as ours. Electoral politics has done nothing to stop the flow, as witness the many-years failure of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party to conserve something as basic as border integrity, or the hapless flounderings of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, chronicled here at VDARE.com by Steve Sailer and myself.

So yes, it’s an ideology. Its precepts look insane from the perspective of a smart, thoughtful, well-read person like Professor Hanson (or me…); but their grip on the mentality of the afflicted is mighty and unshakable.

Open Borders is the strongest, the most unshakable of those precepts. It is the Prime Directive that all right-thinking people must hold dear.

How do we counter this? Must we, after looking back on those prospects drear, look forward guessing and fearing?

Well, guessing, yes; nobody can be sure of the future. Grounds for fear? Yes: but there are also grounds for hope.

First, the fears.

Looking at the situation right now, the fear must be that the Great Replacement is a fait accompli—that it’s done, and irreversible.

Once again: If the flood continues through this year, as it likely will, there will have been a total inflow of over ten million during Joe Biden’s term. That’s on top of a big population of illegal aliens already living here: eleven million was the figure usually given, but it’s hard to believe it was static at eleven million all through the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations.

We could, I believe, easily end this year with more than thirty million foreigners settled here illegally—close to ten percent of the entire population.

An illegal population of that size could indeed be an irreversible fait accompli. How, after all, would we reverse it?

True, there has been some talk of mass deportations. GOP Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told us back in August, according to the Washington Post, that he would deport all illegal aliens [Where Vivek Ramaswamy stands on immigration, November 8, 2023].

A few weeks later, at the end of September, rival candidate Donald Trump pledged to enact ”the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if re-elected.

On the same day, at a different gathering twenty miles away, Ron DeSantis told his audience that he would deport, quote, ”everyone that has come illegally under Biden” [Ron DeSantis vows to deport ’everyone that has come illegally under Biden’, Fox News, September 29, 2023].

Easily said, but the logistics are formidable. Even on Ron DeSantis’ plan to just deport those who arrived in Joe Biden’s four years, we’re talking more than ten million people. That’s a lot of school buses.

Even worse than the physical logistics are the legal obstacles. What about illegals who already have a date booked to go before immigration court? ”The poor guy just wants his day in court,” we’ll be told by sympathetic media. Illegals with kids born here? Pending asylum claims? Temporary Protected Status overstayers? Country of origin unknown, or just unwilling to receive them?

And then there’s the time limit on Expedited Removal, spelled out for us here on VDARE.com January 1st by our correspondent ”Federale.” I hope he won’t mind my quoting him:

By the time Donald Trump returns to office, most illegal aliens who entered under the Biden Regime amnesties will have been here more than two years, which is the current time limit for use of Expedited Removal. After two years, illegal aliens are no longer eligible to be removed expeditiously and have the right to a hearing before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which has a current backlog of over three million illegal aliens.

Biden Open Borders Hits A New Record High: Reportedly 302,000 Illegals At Border, Highest Number EVER—Again!

So a mass deportation program would be a feast for immigration and human-rights lawyers, with endless ways to block or thwart removals. It would be a feast, too, for bleeding-heart media lefties: heartstring-tugging stories about families being torn apart, and so on.

It’s possible that a vigorous Congress could cut the Gordian knot, legislating all the obstacles away. Given the Congressional record on forceful, patriotic immigration reform, though, that’s not something I’d pin my hopes on.

All that notwithstanding, there is hope, if only of a partial and incremental kind. That hope was expressed at length, very eloquently, by another colleague here at VDARE.com, ”Washington Watcher II,” posting here January 2nd.

The Republican Party, says our correspondent, is at last showing movement on the immigration issue. For example, ”Every GOP presidential contender wants Birthright Citizenship eliminated.”

I’ll leave you to read ”Washington Watcher’ II’s” column for yourself; it will lift your spirits. Here is just the closing short paragraph:

2024 looks bright for immigration patriotism. A win on Capitol Hill and a win in November will bring major opportunities for the GOP to reverse the Great Replacement. It just requires the party to remain focused on immigration and not get distracted by trivial issues.

 Here’s hoping, pal.

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.

For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.

Readers who wish to donate (tax deductible) funds specifically earmarked for John Derbyshire’s writings at VDARE.com can do so here.

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