Filtering out the seasoning provided by Crook’s livelier British writing style, this essay is an astonishingly unoriginal rehash of the usual rah-rah immigration enthusiast nonsense. Immigration, of course, is what caused America’s greatness:
The strangest thing of all, of course, is that this gathering moral panic about immigration is happening in, of all places, the United States — a country that offers definitive proof of the strength and vitality of a nation powered by immigrants.
And, needless to say, the cheap labor lobby is motivated only by the purest motives
Microsoft, or any number of other high-tech American enterprises …are in despair over this restricted immigration regime. They simply want to hire the best engineers and other skilled personnel they can find, regardless of where they come from.
Spending a Saturday developing a reply to Crook would be tedious: but a patriotic American has been prepared to do it. The blogger Katie’s Dad 2.0 has an extensive refutation already up. While expressed in the American vernacular, this essay develops several sophisticated lines of argument and is well worth reading. Katie’s Dad points out Crook displays no comprehension that anything matters in American life except economic activity:
you and all disciples of economism favor profit over everything, including sovereignty, family and culture. What we acknowledge, but you don’t, is since it gives no charter to ideals like sovereign nations, distinct cultures and family attachment to heritage, your profit based life can do no better than devolve into the idolatry of cash.
He acidly rejects the insulting view that the Founding Peoples of America had nothing to do with its development, and the na??ve one that assimilation will always happen
This nation has never, ever, been ”powered by immigrants.’ It has been powered by Americans from day one. Those of us whose ancestors were Brits before Lexington and Americans after Concord take offense at your slighting our forebears as ”immigrants.’ And your follow-up of that old canard about how we have historically been fearful of newcomers and this will all pass rubbish is insulting to anyone with a modicum of intellect. It takes just two points to bury that crap: 1) This nation has never proved capable of assimilating any group from any culture that did not originate in Western Civilization; and, 2) historically, there was never a huge social safety net to entrap or entice immigrants. However, history does show pretty clearly that those who could not assimilate in the past were not here for very long, soon repatriating. America’s ”not as tolerant as you want us to believe’ historical majority made life here impossible for them.
Katie's Dad has first hand knowledge of the destructive interplay of profligate visa issuance and outsourcing.
Just seven years ago, tech training schools were filled with Americans working to become certified in computer programming and other high-tech job classifications. But thanks to visa programs and the proliferation of unpatriotic assholes who run outsourcing businesses, those folks paid thousands of dollars for certifications to get jobs that ended up not paying enough to cover the cost of the classes and tests. I know. Many of my former sub-contractors were driven out of business for this very reason.
Clive Crook’s article utilizes an increasingly fashionable argument by apologists for mass immigration: that comparatively high employment rates amongst the native born prove that immigrants do not take jobs away from Americans.
Literally, of course, this is absurd on its face, as a glance at the composition on the work force for instance in summer resort work or meatpacking shows. But more fundamentally, the news that the total sum of jobs may go up is of no comfort to Americans whose real wage levels are being depressed by increased competition. (Although it may please those in the social elite benefiting from the income redistribution effect of immigration.)
The facts of this are well expounded today at Old Atlantic Lighthouse: Martin Luther King’s Dream: Wages frozen at 1973 Levels. Pursuing a trademark interest, Old Atlantic Lighthouse notes that
7 of the top 8 wealthiest Senators voted for S. 2611 (VDARE.com note: last year’s Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill), amnesty, affirmative action, non-deportable crime, and a pathway for the top 1 percent of households to continue to enjoy 20 percent of each year’s income, compared to 10 percent before Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act.
The Great American Immigration Debate of 2007: Salaried (even imported!) hacks recycling long-refuted slogans in the MSM - versus patriotic volunteers doing fresh work on the internet. Congratulate Katie’s Dad and Old Atlantic Lighthouse. Uncongratulate Clive Crook.
