Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster.

• Author: Motomura, Hiroshi

1. RACE AND IMMIGRATION: THE PROBLEM ACCORDING TO BRIMELOW

   Who is an "American," and how do we choose new Americans? Immigration law and policy try to answer these questions, and so it is no wonder the immigration debate attracts so much public attention. After all, it represents our public attempt to define ourselves as a community, and to decide what we ask of those who want to join our ranks.

   The stream of immigrants to the United States continues unabated. Many come here legally; others come any way they can. This seemingly inexorable trend highlights a complex national ambivalence about our past, present, and future. We share a deeply rooted tradition of being a "nation of immigrants" -- the America of Emma Lazarus's Golden Door,(1) of the poor and huddled masses welcomed by the Statute of Liberty. Despite this tradition of openess, a skeptical, restrictionist view of immigration has equally deep historical roots, and a growing number of Americans believe that we must limit immigration or risk jeopardizing our national future.

   Peter Brimelow, a senior editor at both Forbes and The National Review, has become a recognized proponent of severe immigration restrictions. Brimelow and his book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster,(2) have generated a great deal of interest. Reviews by prominent commentators in respected publications put Alien Nation in the spotlight.(3) Brimelow even presented his views to Congress(4) during its still-continuing consideration of immigration-slashing proposals.(5) Like it or not, his perspective has influenced the current immigration debate.

   Alien Nation uses simple and straightforward language -- in the style of a radio talk show -- to advance two major arguments against immigration. One is economic. Drawing heavily on the work of George Borjas,(6) Brimelow argues that immigration has not contributed to America's economic success but has instead precipitated its economic decline (pp. 137-77). He offers the example of Japan and its extremely restrictive attitudes toward immigration to argue that a nation can achieve economic prosperity without a significant immigrant flow (pp. 168-72).

   Despite Brimelow's lengthy discussion of economic considerations, it becomes plain -- and Brimelow himself acknowledges (pp. 56, 177) -- that the crux of his case against immigration is cultural, not economic. Brimelow grounds this cultural argument in considerations of race and ethnicity. As he puts it, "[e]thnicity is destiny in American politics" (p. 195; emphasis omitted). For Brimelow, United States immigration law has gone wrong because it has undermined what he terms "a plain historical fact: that the American nation has always had a specific ethnic core. And that core has been white" (p. 10). He elaborates: "As late as 1950, somewhere up to nine out of ten Americans looked like me. That is, they were of European stock. And in those days, they had another name for this thing dismissed so contemptuously as `the racial hegemony of white Americans.' They called it `America.' "(7)

   Brimelow does not bother to mention Native Americans, except to quote approvingly the Declaration of Independence where it denounces "the merciless Indian Savages."(8) He dismisses African Americans by reminding us that they were just property:

   To get a sense of perspective, we have to go back to the beginning. And in the beginning, the American nation was white.

   That sounds shocking because blacks were almost a fifth (19.3 percent) of the total population within the borders of the original Thirteen Colonies. But almost all these blacks were slaves. They had no say in public affairs. They were excluded from what I have called the political nation -- aka "the racial hegemony of white Americans" . . . aka "America." And the first federal naturalization law in 1790 was absolutely explicit about this: applicants for citizenship had to be "free white persons."(9)

   Brimelow warns that for America "the breaking of . . . `the racial hegemony of white Americans' " (p. 122; emphasis omitted) portends radical social upheaval, which he compares to the fall of the Roman Empire (pp. 131-33). On this same theme, he writes: "[t]here is no precedent for a sovereign country undergoing such a rapid and radical transformation of its ethnic character in the entire history of the world."(10) Brimelow's response?

   It is simply common sense that Americans have a legitimate interest in their country's racial balance. It is common sense that they have a right to insist that their government stop shifting it. Indeed, it seems to me that they have a right to insist that it be shifted back.(11)

   He contends that our empire will fall if current immigration patterns continue to make our society multi-racial and multi-ethnic.(12)

   Brimelow squarely blames the 1965 Immigration Act for this drop in the white share of the population.(13) The 1965 Act abolished the "national origins" system that had dominated immigration law since the 1920s. As a general rule, the national origins system limited immigration from a country to two percent of the total number of people already in the United States with that ancestry in 1920. In practice, this system strongly favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Brimelow complains that but for the 1965 Act, "the American population would still be where it was in 1960: almost 89 percent white" (p. 90).

   Brimelow repeatedly warns us that immigrants -- given their racial and ethnic composition and higher fertility rates -- will reduce whites to a minority of the United States population by the mid-twenty-first century (pp. 62, 74, 96, 137). To drive this point home, Brimelow invokes the image of white America in the grasp of "pincers." He displays a graph in which whites are squeezed over time by a growing Hispanic population -- rising from the bottom of the graph -- and by a growing Asian and black population -- choking them from above (p. 63).

   Brimelow professes some concern that immigration adversely affects African Americans (pp. 173-75). Yet, he provokes: "when you enter the INS waiting rooms you find yourself in an underworld that is not just teeming but is also almost entirely colored" (p. 28). He adds: "You have to be totally incurious not to wonder: where do all these people get off and come to the surface?" (p. 28). Brimelow asserts that were it not for U.S. immigration policy, Colin Ferguson, with his "hatred of whites," would not have come to this country, and no one would have been killed in the Long Island Rail Road shootings (pp. 6-7). Brimelow warns us not to "embrace" Haitian refugees because they may be HIV-positive (p. 113). He tells us that seventy-five percent of Nigerians are involved in perpetrating fraud schemes (p. 186), and that the "legacy of Chaka, founder of the Zulu Empire . . . is not that of Alfred the Great, let alone that of Elizabeth II or any civilized society" (p. 108). He approvingly quotes President Calvin Coolidge's view: "America must be kept American," and adds that: "Everyone knew what he meant" (p. 211). In case the meaning is unclear, here is what Coolidge said in 1921: "America must be kept American. Biological laws show . . . that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."(14)

   Even on its own terms, Brimelow's argument is flawed analytically. For example, his projections rely on fragile assumptions about future fertility and mortality rates. Moreover, he fails to see that race is a social construct.(15) The accuracy of Brimelow's demographic predictions depends on who calls themselves "white."(16) But racial categorization is inexact, especially for Hispanics and Asians and especially given the rising rate of intermarriage, a difficulty that Brimelow mentions but does not take seriously.(17) Brimelow claims that early in this century "immigration from the traditional northern and western European sources meant that not all immigrants were alien to American eyes" (p. 59). In fact, early twentieth-century restrictionists viewed Italians and Eastern Europeans (especially Jews) as outside their "race." Earlier and in like manner, many who sought to preserve American "racial purity" in the mid-nineteenth century did not consider the Irish to belong to the same race as Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigrants.(18)

   These analytical flaws, however, are not what is most disturbing about Alien Nation. Much more troubling is Brimelow's essential perspective on race, ethnicity, and immigration. Brimelow, and others who fear "they" will overwhelm "us," naively and invidiously ignore those of "us" who not only welcome "them" but also see "them" as vital to our national self-interest. The rest of this essay discusses this problem with Alien Nation.

   In immigration as elsewhere, race is a difficult, often uncomfortable, and even incendiary topic -- but we, as Americans, avoid it only at our great peril. There is a reason that Alien Nation has received so much attention. Brimelow's call to reverse current racial and ethnic demographic trends resonates deeply with the many who feel threatened by these changes. Their fear surely fortified public support for California's Proposition 187, which won fifty-nine percent of the vote in November 1994.(19) It may be tempting to dismiss Brimelow himself as little more than an advocate of "old-fashioned white racial nationalism."(20) But to understand and criticize Brimelow's perspective, we need to go beyond the simple question: Is he a "racist"? Indeed, much of this essay discusses why such labeling is often quite difficult in the immigration context. Ironically, if Alien Nation has any value at all, it is that its simplistic approach forces us to grapple more carefully with this important, complex question: How should we take race and ethnicity into account in making immigration law and policy?

2. THE 1965 ACT AND OTHER STORIES

   There is no doubt that the racial and ethnic composition of immigrants has...