This article is also posted at
VDARE.
Senator Chuck
Schumer, one of the notorious Eight
Banditos, gave a revealing
speech to the Center
for American Progress about the Tea Party the other day. Conservatism
Inc. types like Bill O’Reilly
criticized Schumer’s
remarkably blatant call for the IRS
to be used against the Tea Party. But more important was Schumer’s
equally blatant acknowledgement of the ethnic agenda behind post-1965
immigration policy—and behind the implacable drive for some form of Amnesty/
Immigration Surge, which the House GOP Leadership appears to endorse this
week.
Basically, according to Schumer, Tea Partiers are afraid of change. He
drew an analogy with the Temperance Movement of the 1920s as a reaction
to the changes wrought by the last 1880–1924
immigration Great Wave:
This reaction against social and cultural changes isn’t new to us.
Edward Shils, a professor from the University of Chicago, wrote about
the Temperance Movement identifying that it was about much more than
abolishing liquor. In the 1880s the U.S. was a rural country and
people were on farms and small towns living a clean, God-fearing life. By
1920, America had been urbanized and diversified because
of manufacturing, immigration, and so many other forces.
And the cities were a totally different way of life with
slums, bars and dance clubs, emerging suburbs and country clubs. Prohibition
was not simply about abolishing alcohol; it was an attempt by
rural Americans to pull their country back to a Jeffersonian
agricultural ideal that was being rapidly replaced by a new cultural and
economic order.
Today, we see the Tea Party doing much of the same thing. Tea Party
adherents see an America that’s not reflective of themselves,
and the America they have known, and they just don’t like it. [Emphases
added throughout].
The reference to Edward Shils is revealing: Shils, a member of the New
York Intellectuals—a Jewish intellectual movement reviewed in Chapter
6 of my book The
Culture of Critique—was a leading theorist of the idea that
attempts by majorities to resist the increase in the power and influence of
other groups are contrary to the democratic process. A defining feature of
the New York Intellectuals was their hostile
reinterpretation of Populism,
the anti-elite insurrectionary movement of the 1890s.
As I noted:
There were also real conflicts of interest involved. On one side were
Jewish intellectuals advancing their interests as an urbanized
intellectual elite bent
on ending Protestant, Anglo-Saxon demographic and cultural
predominance. On the other side were what John
Higham [Send
these to me: immigrants in urban America, 49]
terms “the common people of the South and West” who were battling to
maintain their own cultural and demographic dominance.
As the vanguard of an urbanized
Jewish intellectual elite, this group of intellectuals was also
contemptuous of the lower middle class generally. [As noted by Christopher
Lasch,] from the perspective of these intellectuals, this class
clung to outworn folkways—conventional
religiosity, hearth and home, the sentimental cult of motherhood—and
obsolete modes of production. It looked back to a mythical golden age in
the past. … Lacking liberal culture, it fell easy prey to all sorts of
nostrums and political fads. [The
True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, Christopher
Lasch 1991, 458) (see here,
pp. 195–196)
It may well be true that the Temperance Movement was really about
opposition to a changed America. After all, shortly after the Eighteenth
Amendment passed in 1920, the Immigration
Act of 1924, which attempted to maintain an ethnic status quo as of
1890, was also passed by much the same constituency.
Of course, this proved to be a temporary victory. The passage of the Immigration
and Nationality Act of 1965 opened immigration to all the peoples of the
world. I have argued that
this was a watershed victory marking Jewish immigrants’ rise to power as an
intellectual, media, financial and political elite in the U.S.
Nevertheless, with the 20/20 hindsight of history, there is no question
that the “common people” fearing change
in the 1920swere absolutely
right to want to restrict the tide of immigration.
But their actions proved to be too little, too late. There was already a
critical mass of soon-to-be elite Americans who were hostile to the
traditional people and culture of America, and who subsequently have used
their power to dispossess them.
Senator Schumer is a prime example.
Thus the struggle between populist movements rooted in the middle- and
lower-class White America and a hostile elite is ongoing. But the forces against
these populist movements have been greatly aided by the 1965 Immigration
Act, which has resulted in increasing
the non-White population of America by around 68 million
This increase in the non-White population has had a dramatically
negative impact on the political
power of White America—which pleases Schumer greatly. He says:
Yes, things have changed. White Anglo-Saxon men are
not exclusively running the country anymore. President
Obama lost the white male vote 35%-62%, yet he recaptured the presidency
by 5 million votes and a resounding Electoral College margin. And more
profoundly, only 1
in 10 GOP voters were non-white.[Schumer:
Tea Party Opposes Immigration Reform Because America Is Becoming Less
White, TPM, January 23, 2014,]
Just why White Americans should want an America dominated by people
unlike themselves is unexplained by Schumer. But, as a professor of
psychology, let me give a primer on why they shouldn’t want it: Multiculturalism leads
to conflict between groups, political alienation, lack of willingness to
contribute to public goods, and, I suspect, increasing victimization of
whites by groups that hold historical grudges against whites because of real
and imagined conflicts in the past.
Schumer, who is nothing if not a Jewish nationalist, would be horrified
at the suggestion that Israel has no legitimacy as a Jewish state. He is
leading the charge for the Iran
War Bill in the Senate, a project of the Israel
Lobby. He also supports an
organization that opposes abortion for Jewish women in order to increase the
Jewish population in Israel, while being staunchly
pro-choice for his American audience.
In the U.S., however, Schumer campaigns to displace the historic American
Nation. And he is winning—in fact (thanks to John Boehner) he is on the
verge of victory.
As Schumer notes, white Americans of all social classes are indeed
coalescing the Republican Party. This phenomenon is part of the ongoing racialization
of American politics.
When I was growing
up in Wisconsin, the Republican Party was the party of choice for
business and professional people. But in the most recent presidential
election whites of all age groups and all social classes voted for
Romney, even though Republican Party elites have done essentially
nothing to defend this constituency.
Schumer continues:
[“Fear of a changing America] also explains why so many on the right
vehemently opposed the Senate immigration bill, a bill that actually
embodies many conservative, non-governmental principals [sic]:
reducing our deficit by billions, growing our economy, creating jobs and
spurring new entrepreneurial activity. In a pre-tea party world, the
Senate immigration bill would have been welcomed by House Republicans.
However, the tea party rank and file know it’s a different
America. It looks different; it prays
different; it works different. This is unsettling and angering
to some.
The idea that there is anything at all in the Senate immigration bill
that is “conservative,” fiscally prudent, or likely to “grow the economy” is
of course a bald-faced lie. Schumer’s Senate colleague Jeff Sessions has it
right:
With three job seekers for every open job, [Obama] proposes doubling
the number of guest workers entering every year, granting immediate
work permits to millions of illegal immigrants, and tripling the number
of new immigrants granted permanent residency over the next decade.
Today, the U.S. admits 1 million immigrants a year. The plan
supported by the president and Senate Democrats would increase that to 3
million a year, or 30 million largely lower-skill immigrants over
the next 10.
Did anyone ask the American people whether they wanted to triple
immigration?
Polling shows that the public opposes these
increases. The opposition is particularly strong among lower- and
middle-income Americans. Those earning under $30,000 prefer a reduction
to an increase by 3-1.
This is not hard to understand. From 2000 to 2013, a period of record
immigration, the number
of U.S.-born Americans with jobs declined by 1.3 million while the
number of immigrants with jobs increased 5.3 million. On net, all
employment gains went to immigrant workers.
Sen. Sessions: Immigration spikes income inequality, January 27,
2014 (Links in original)
There go those lower-and
middle-income Americans again—still fighting for their legitimate,
rational interests after all these years, and despite Schumer’s assertion
that most Americans “overwhelmingly” support the Senate immigration bill.
But now, they are fighting a rear-guard action in the House of
Representatives, their power dwindling with each election cycle.
The bottom line here: Schumer correctly depicts the issue as an ethnic
conflict in which White Americans are losing. And it’s clear which side he
is on—the same side as the organized Jewish community and non-White America,
which overwhelmingly votes Democrat (80% for Obama in the 2012 election).
I believe that Schumer is also correct that the pleas of the Tea Partiers
for limited government are really all about fear that
the America they once knew and loved is fast disappearing, along with their
power and cultural influence.
In other words, it’s about implicit
whiteness—attitudes that express White interests and attitudes but
without explicitly framing them in racial/ethnic terms.
This is unlike the 1920s, when immigration patriots argued that
all groups in the country had legitimate ethnic interests, so that a
pre-Great Wave ethnic status quo was fair to all. (They did not, contrary to
myth, argue that any group was superior.)
The fact that arguments defending the ethnic status quo are missing in
mainstream debates over immigration is yet another sign of the dominance of
the anti-white Left. The argument from ethnic interests is powerful, and it
is at least arguable that
without explicitly
legitimizing arguments based on ethnic interests, the anti-immigration
forces cannot win. But apparently it cannot be made.
In default of such arguments, it is no surprise that the Tea Partiers
resort to rhetoric about the size of government.
Schumer’s solution for destroying the Tea Party: to convince them that
big government is just fine, by emphasizing things like Social
Security and Medicare which appeal
to white Americans.
But, as he is quite aware, it’s not really about big government. It’s
about the eclipse of white America.
Kevin MacDonald [email him]
is professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach and a
frequent contributor to The
Occidental Observer. For his website, click here.
| Year |
Name of legislation or case |
Major highlights |
| 1790 |
Naturalization Act of 1790 |
Established the rules for naturalized citizenship, as per
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, but placed no restrictions
on immigration. Citizenship was limited to white persons, with no
other restriction on non-whites. |
| 1795 |
Naturalization Act of 1795 |
Lengthened required residency to become citizen. |
| 1798 |
Naturalization Act (officially An Act to Establish a Uniform
Rule of Naturalization; ch. 54, 1 Stat. 566)
Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens; ch. 58,
1 Stat. 570)
Alien Enemies Act (officially An Act Respecting Alien Enemies;
ch. 66, 1 Stat. 577)
|
- Extended the duration of residence required for immigrants
to become citizens to 14 years. Enacted June 18, 1798, with no
expiration date, it was repealed in 1802.
- Authorized the president to deport any resident immigrant
considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United
States." It was activated June 25, 1798, with a two-year
expiration date.
- Authorized the president to apprehend and deport resident
aliens if their home countries were at war with the United
States of America. Enacted July 6, 1798, and providing no
sunset provision, the act remains intact today as 50 U.S.C.
§ 21
|
| 1802 |
Naturalization Law of 1802 |
|
| 1870 |
Naturalization Act of 1870 |
- Extended the naturalization process to "aliens of African
nativity and to persons of African descent."
- Other non-whites were not included in this act and remained
excluded from naturalization, per the Naturalization Act of 1790
|
| 1875 |
Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 1873-March 1875) |
- The first federal immigration law and prohibited the entry
of immigrants considered as "undesirable"
- The law classified as "undesirable" any individual from Asia
who was coming to America to be a contract laborer
- Strengthen the ban against "coolie" laborers, by imposing a
fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon
anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan, or any
oriental country to the United States "without their free and
voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of
service"
|
| 1882 |
Chinese Exclusion Act |
- Restricted immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years.
- Prohibited Chinese naturalization.
- Provided deportation procedures for illegal Chinese.
- Marked the birth of illegal immigration (in America).[1]
- The Act was "a response to racism [in America] and to
anxiety about threats from cheap labor [from China]."
[2]
|
| 1882 |
Immigration Act of 1882 |
- First comprehensive immigration law for the US.
- Imposed a 50 cent head tax to fund immigration officials.
|
| 1885 |
Alien Contract Labor Law (Sess. II Chap. 164; 23 Stat. 332) |
Prohibited the importation and migration of foreigners and
aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United
States |
| 1891 |
Immigration Act of 1891 |
- First comprehensive immigration laws for the US.
- Bureau of Immigration set up in the Treasury Dept.[3]
- Immigration Bureau directed to deport unlawful aliens.
- Empowered "the superintendent of immigration to enforce
immigration laws".[4]
|
| 1892 |
Geary Act |
Extended and strengthened the Chinese Exclusion Act. |
| 1898 |
United States v. Wong Kim Ark[5]
|
The Supreme Court ruled that a child of Chinese descent born in
the United States - whose parents at the time of his birth are
subjects of the Emperor of China but who are domiciled in the United
States as permanent residents; are carrying on business there; and
are not employed in any diplomatic or other official capacity under
the Emperor of China - is a citizen of the United States by virtue
of having been born "in the United States and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof," per the first clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Several years later, in the wake of the
1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, a number of Chinese
immigrants who were otherwise subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act
were nonetheless able to claim American citizenship by alleging they
were born in San Francisco, and that their birth certificates
had been destroyed along with those of everyone else who had been
born in San Francisco. "Papers for fictitious children were sold in
China, allowing Chinese to immigrate despite the laws."
[1]
|
| 1903 |
Immigration Act of 1903 (Anarchist Exclusion Act) |
Added four inadmissible classes: anarchists, people with
epilepsy, beggars, and importers of prostitutes |
| 1906 |
Naturalization Act of 1906 |
- Standardized naturalization procedures
- made some knowledge of English a requirement for citizenship
- established the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization
|
| 1907 |
Immigration Act of 1907 |
Restricted immigration for certain classes of disabled and
diseased people |
| 1917 |
Immigration Act of 1917 (Barred Zone Act) |
Restricted immigration from Asia by creating an "Asiatic Barred
Zone" and introduced a reading test for all immigrants over sixteen
years of age, with certain exceptions for children, wives, and
elderly family members. |
| 1918 |
Immigration Act of 1918 |
Expanded on the provisions of the Anarchist Exclusion Act. |
| 1921 |
Emergency Quota Act |
- Limited the number of immigrants a year from any country to
3% of those already in the US from that country as per the 1910
census.
"An unintended consequence of the 1920s legislation was an
increase in illegal immigration. Many Europeans who did not fall
under the quotas migrated to Canada or Mexico, which [as Western
Hemisphere nations] were not subject to national-origin quotas;
[and] subsequently they slipped into the United States illegally."
[6]
|
| 1922 |
The
Cable Act of 1922 (ch. 411, 42 Stat. 1021, "Married Women’s
Independent Nationality Act") |
Reversed former immigration laws regarding marriage, also known
as the Married Women's Citizenship Act or the Women's Citizenship
Act. Previously, a woman lost her US citizenship if she married a
foreign man, since she assumed the citizenship of her husband, a law
that did not apply to men who married foreign women. The law
repealed sections 3 and 4 of the Expatriation Act of 1907. |
| 1924 |
Immigration Act (Johnson-Reed Act) |
- Imposed first permanent numerical limit on immigration.
- Began a national-origin quota system.
|
| 1924 |
National Origins Formula |
- Established with the
Immigration Act of 1924.
- Total annual immigration was capped at 150,000. Immigrants
fit into two categories: those from quota-nations and those from
non-quota nations.
- Immigrant visas from quota-nations were restricted to the
same ratio of residents from the country of origin out of
150,000 as the ratio of foreign-born nationals in the United
States. The percentage out of 150,000 was the relative number of
visas a particular nation received.
- Non-quota nations, notably those contiguous to the United
States only had to prove an immigrant's residence in that
country of origin for at least two years prior to emigration to
the United States.
- Laborers from Asiatic nations were excluded but exceptions
existed for professionals, clergy, and students to obtain visas.
|
| 1934 |
Equal Nationality Act of 1934
|
- Allowed foreign-born children of American mothers and alien
fathers who had entered America before age 18 and lived in
America for five years to apply for American citizenship for the
first time.
- Made the naturalization process quicker for American women's
alien husbands.
|
| 1930s |
|
Federal officials deported "Tens of thousands, and possibly more
than 400,000,
Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans... Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens."
[7] "Applications for legal admission into the United
States increased following
World War II — and so did illegal immigration."
[8] Some used fraudulent marriages as their method of
illegal entry in the U.S. "Japanese immigration became
disproportionately female, as more women left Japan as "picture
brides", betrothed to emigrant men into the U.S. whom they had never
met."
[9]
|
| 1940 |
Nationality Act of 1940 |
Pertains chiefly to "Nationality at Birth," Nationality through
Naturalization," and "Loss of Nationality" |
| 1943 |
Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943 (Magnuson Act) |
Repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and permitted Chinese
nationals already in the country to become naturalized citizens. A
quota of 105 new Chinese immigrants were allowed into America per
year. |
| 1952 |
Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act) |
- Set a quota for aliens with skills needed in the US.
- Increased the power of the government to deport illegal
immigrants suspected of Communist sympathies.
|
| 1953 |
Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding,
344
U.S.
590 (1953) |
The Supreme Court found, "The Bill of Rights is a futile
authority for the alien seeking admission for the first time to
these shores. But while an alien lawfully enters and resides in this
country he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the
Constitution to all people within our borders". |
| 1954 |
Operation Wetback |
Immigration and Naturalization Service roundup and deportation
of undocumented immigrants in selected areas of
California,
Arizona, and
Texas
along the
border. The
U.S. Border Patrol later reported that more than 1.3 million
people (a number viewed by many to be inflated and not accurate)
were deported or left the U.S. voluntarily under the threat of
deportation in 1954.[10]
|
| 1965 |
INA Amendments (Hart-Celler Act) |
- Repealed the national-origin quotas.
- Initiated a visa system for family reunification and skills.
- Set a quota for Western Hemisphere immigration.
- Set a 20k country limit for Eastern Hemisphere aliens.
|
| 1966 |
Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act |
Cuban nationals who enter, or were already present in the United
States, legal status. |
| 1970s |
|
The United States saw a total number of illegal immigrants
estimated at 1.1 million, or half of one percent of the United
States population.
|
| 1980s |
|
- About 1.3 million illegal immigrants entered the US.
|
| 1982 |
Plyler v. Doe,[11]
457
U.S.
202 (1982) |
The court also stated that illegal immigrants are "within the
jurisdiction" of the states in which they reside and, therefore, are
under the equal protection laws of the fourteenth amendment, and
stated, "We have never suggested that the class of persons who might
avail themselves of the equal protection guarantee is less than
coextensive with that entitled to due process. To the contrary, we
have recognized [457 U.S. 202, 212] that both provisions were
fashioned to protect an identical class of persons, and to reach
every exercise of state authority." |
| 1986 |
Immigration Reform and Control Act |
- Started sanctions for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.
- Provided amnesty to
illegal aliens already in the US.[12]
- Increased border enforcement.
- Made it a crime to hire an illegal immigrant
|
| 1990s |
|
Over 5.8 million illegal immigrants entered the US in the 1990s.[13]
Mexico rose to the head of the list of sending countries, followed
by the Philippines, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and China.[14]
|
| 1990 |
Immigration Act |
- Increased legal immigration ceilings.
- Created a diversity admissions category.
- Tripled the number of visas for priority workers and
professionals with U.S. job offers[citation
needed]
[15]
|
| 1990 |
United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez[16]
|
The court reiterated the finding of Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding,
344 U.S. 590, 596 (1953), "The Bill of Rights is a futile authority
for the alien seeking admission for the first time to these shores.
But while an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country he
becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to
all people within our borders".
Stated, "those cases in which aliens have been determined to
enjoy certain constitutional rights establish only that aliens
receive such protections when they have come within the territory
of, and have developed substantial connections with, this country.
See, e. g., Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 212 ."
|
| 1996 |
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
(IIRaIRA) |
- Phone verification for worker authentication by employers.
- Access to welfare benefits more difficult for legal aliens.
- Increased border enforcement.
-
Reed Amendment attempted to deny visas to former U.S.
citizens, but was never enforced[17]
|
| 1999 |
Rodriguez v. United States, 169 F.3d 1342, (11th Cir. 1999) |
Held that statutes which discriminate within the class of aliens
comport with the
Due Process Clause of the
Fifth Amendment (and the equal protection principles it
incorporates) so long as they satisfy rational basis scrutiny. |
| Post 9/11/2001 |
|
- An estimated 3.1 million immigrants entered the United
States illegally between 2000 and 2005.[15]
- From 1998 to 2001, Mexicans accounted for 68% of immigrants
who entered the United States illegally. That percentage jumped
to 78% for the years between 2001 and 2005, mostly due to
stricter security measures that followed the
September 11, 2001 Attacks upon the United States (which
more efficiently prevented illegal entry from nations that did
not share a land or maritime boundary with the United States).[18]
|
| 2002 |
Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act |
- Provided for more
Border Patrol agents.
- Requires that schools report foreign students attending
classes.
- Stipulates that foreign nationals in the US will be required
to carry IDs with
biometric technology.[19]
|
| 2005 |
REAL ID Act |
- Required use of IDs meeting certain security standards to
enter government buildings, board planes, open bank accounts.
- Created more restrictions on political asylum
- Severely curtailed
habeas corpus relief for immigrants
- Increased immigration enforcement mechanisms
- Altered judicial review
- Established national standards for state driver licenses.
- Cleared the way for the building of border barriers.
|
| 2012 |
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
Dream Act |
- On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security
announced that certain people who came to the United States as
children and meet several guidelines may request consideration
of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to
renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred
action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal
action against an individual for a certain period of time.
Deferred action does not provide lawful status.[20]
|