This excellent article reviews an immigration restrictionist book, presents
the principles which should inform all debates on immigration and describes what
makes an American.
What is an American?
By Tom Krannawitter
Posted December 21, 2004
"America must be kept American," wrote Calvin Coolidge, one of the
last presidents to understand and defend the principles of the American
Founding. Perhaps no question of public policy today cuts to the core
meaning of America as much as immigration, with its many implications for
American citizenship. Otis Graham, an emeritus professor of history at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, approvingly quotes Coolidge in his
book, and by doing so points to a problem intrinsic to immigration: making
new Americans American. Unfortunately, Graham never explains what it means
to be an American, and he shines no light on the principles that would help
Americans understand themselves—not only who and what they are, but who and
what they are becoming.
Graham does accomplish a few things in Unguarded Gates: A History of
America's Immigration Crisis. He provides a comprehensive and informed
history of American immigration policy spanning from George Washington to
George W. Bush, which is the overt purpose of the book. And he identifies
and narrates the changing tides of immigration throughout American history,
first from Northern and Western Europe, then from Southern and Eastern
Europe, and later from Central America and Asia.
Graham's account of the first serious debates about restricting
immigration beginning in the 1880s and culminating in the national quotas
policy of 1924 is particularly informative. He is also good on the new
immigration regime epitomized by the 1965 Immigration Act, which Graham
laments as "the Great Society's most nation-changing single act." Most
importantly, though, Graham shows his readers the genuine difficulty in
reaching an agreement over how to control growing waves of unsolicited
immigration. The United States had no real immigration policy for the first
hundred years—before 1820, the United States did not even keep any records
of who came into the country and who left. As the numbers of immigrants
swelled in the 1890s, writes Graham, "the largest problem was the lack of
clear ideas, based on experience, as to what to do to bring under national
control something that had never been controlled by public policy: mass
migration."
The author does not shy away from describing the real and many problems
associated with high rates of immigration—depressed wages and increased
competition for low-paying jobs, foreign-born diseases, over-population
threats to the environment, challenges to American civic culture, and,
especially after 9/11, breeches of national security. Graham shows how
Americans at different times in their history have responded, or failed to
respond, to these problems, urging throughout that "to reduce social
conflict over immigration, lower the numbers."
In Graham's universe there are only two opposing camps: Restrictionists
and Expansionists. Restrictionists favor no illegal immigration and minimal
legal immigration. Expansionists seem unable to make any principled argument
for limiting immigration, legal or illegal. The distinction cuts across
party lines, as well as any differences between conservatives and liberals.
For example, he tries to enlist liberal support for restricting immigration
by reminding readers that unions, dating back to the days of Samuel Gompers,
traditionally opposed high rates of immigration because of the downward
pressure it exercised on wages. Knowing that liberals support redistribution
of income from the rich to the poor, he quotes Harvard economist George
Borjas who describes those supporting the immigration status quo as
"supporting an astonishing transfer of wealth from the poorest people in the
country, who are disproportionately minorities, to the rich." "Immigration
is an income redistribution program," but one that directs the flow of money
the wrong way, at least for the liberal conscience.
For Graham, the difference between Restrictionism and Expansionism is
simple and clear: Restrictionism good, Expansionism bad. Expansionists
pander to special interests, sweep aside concerns for national interest and
national security, and in the end lack any coherent argument for their
position, taking an ostrich's approach to the well-documented and mounting
costs and threats of runaway immigration. Restrictionists on the other hand,
according to Graham, clearly see the harm done to America by rates of legal
and illegal immigration beyond the absorbing capacity of American society
and economy, and they advance the common good by upholding a common American
culture, and seeking to secure American borders and to limit the competition
for American jobs.
Indeed, one of Graham's primary concerns is to defend contemporary
Restrictionism, especially against those who identify it with 19th-century
nativism. By placing Restrictionists in a nativist light, Graham argues,
Expansionists have successfully discredited Restrictionism as being
motivated by bigotry and xenophobia.
Graham seeks to make today's public discussions over immigration more
honest by removing nativism, placing it in its proper historical context,
and showing its irrelevance to America's contemporary immigration crisis.
While Graham does not hide the ugly racism that sometimes attended nativism,
he also highlights the concerns of many good-willed Americans over the waves
of European immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nativism
included both these baser and nobler elements of the American mind, but at
its best, Graham believes, it represented a genuinely patriotic concern
about the future of our country. Still, Graham insists that whatever merits
and flaws nativism may have had, it has nothing to do with today's
Restrictionist movement, which is guided by the growing and documented costs
of immigration, no less than the wishes of the American people to better
control their own borders.
Yet, for someone who wants to put nativism back in history where it
belongs, and debate immigration policy solely on its merits, Graham's
partisan prose sometimes is over the top. When three-time Colorado Governor
Richard Lamm—a Democratic critic of mass immigration—was defeated in his run
for the U.S. Senate by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who was much softer on
immigration, Graham is almost unable to contain himself: "The Lord sent
Colorado voters an Indian, and they voted affirmative action."
* * *
What's more, Graham never addresses the basic principles which should
inform all debates over immigration. Let us, therefore, offer the following
axioms as the beginning points for any intelligent and principled discussion
immigration:
- First, the United States is a sovereign nation. American sovereignty
derives from the social compact—the voluntary consent of the men and
women who live under its laws, the only legitimate source of
sovereignty. Our government rests on our social compact, and its only
purpose is to protect the rights of those who have given their consent
to the compact. As our Declaration of Independence states, "that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
- Second, intrinsic to the idea of sovereignty is the distinction
between those who are and those who are not part of the social compact.
We may invite others from around the world to join our compact, and in
fact America has a long and noble tradition of welcoming millions from
around the globe who have come in search of civil and religious liberty
and economic prosperity. But whether we admit one person or one million
persons is a question to be answered entirely at our discretion. We
certainly wish the best for the people of the world—and we have left for
them the premier example of what free government looks like, and the
sacrifices required to found and sustain free government. As our
Declaration says, any people finding themselves under tyrannical
government possess the natural right "to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness." But Americans are under no
obligation to offer asylum or refuge to anyone from anywhere outside the
United States, just as no nation had a responsibility to house oppressed
Americans in 1776.
- Third, the distinction between those we welcome and those we want to
keep out—say, terrorists whose purpose is to kill Americans—requires
first and foremost that the American government secure our borders. The
border must be real, and it must be able to protect American citizens
from immigrants who enter our country illegally, a growing number of
whom come armed and with criminal records (in some cases violent crimes
committed here in the U.S.). Without secured borders, the American
people cannot decide who will partake in the social compact they formed
among themselves for their mutual protection.
Debates over American immigration will not be serious until these
principles are understood and accepted by the American people and the
policymakers they elect to office. When Restrictionists such as Graham cite
the economic costs, cultural costs, and environmental costs of immigration,
these may all be true—but they are not principles. They are only practical
considerations Americans should take into account when formulating policy.
Sound policy cannot be reached without starting from right principles.
Of all the problems discussed in Unguarded Gates, Graham is most
troubled by the need for what he calls "social cohesion." It is true that
America's success depends on shared beliefs among its citizens about the
nature of American life and the purposes of American government. But "social
cohesion" merely implies a culture that is common. What ought the character
of that culture be? This question points to the supreme importance of
citizenship. For a nation of people with such diverse ethnic, cultural, and
religious backgrounds, it is especially important to understand what unites
Americans as citizens.
Graham cherishes the period after World War I, when a combination of new
immigration policy and war gave America a half-century of relief from mass
immigration, and when, according to Graham, immigrants had the opportunity
to assimilate into American culture. These men and women became "patriotic
Americans who voted for the social reforms of the New Deal and stormed the
beaches of Normandy and the islands of the Pacific." Without question or
qualification, the immigrants who served America in the war against German
Nazism and Japanese imperialism deserve our deepest gratitude. But to equate
the meaning of American patriotism with the "reforms" of the New Deal is to
display a massive misunderstanding of American citizenship. The New Deal
represents the precise moment when American public policy rejected the
principles of the American Founding and began substituting a bureaucratic
welfare state for constitutional government, leaving in its wake generations
of dependent citizens, broken families, and increasingly burdensome
regulations. If this is the model of American citizenship for Graham, his
proposals can only make America worse, not better.
What unites all Americans and makes our country great is the proposition
that all men are equal in their natural right to govern themselves. More
important than job training or education, America should invite those who
want to become Americans, who understand that the security of their
own rights is bound to the security of the equal rights of their fellow
citizens. Not unlike admission to America's premier colleges and
universities, admission to the premier country in the world should be based
on intention and talent. We should welcome those who want to participate in
and contribute to the American experiment in freedom, who believe in the
American principles of limited government, strong families, and free
society—not those who wish to turn America into something else.
Just before his memorable phrase that America must be kept American,
Calvin Coolidge reminded his fellow Americans that "American institutions
rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by people who had a
background of self government. New arrivals should be limited by our
capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship." Let us recall
the principles that have made this country the envy of the world. Let us
train a new generation of politicians in those principles, politicians who
can tap into what is best in the American people—their love of human
equality and fairness, their desire to live freely and live well under a
government of limited power. Then, and only then, will we discover statesmen
who can formulate immigration policies that truly aim to protect the rights
of Americans and offer better lives for those who join us.
Tom Krannawitter is the Vice President of the Claremont Institute.
Copyright © 2004, The Claremont Institute.
Republican
National Hispanic Assembly
