Immigration Watch International (2): Demographic Conservatism

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Demographic Conservatism

Sunday is the 100th anniversary of Calvin Coolidge’s signing the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which brought the Ellis Island immigration wave to an end. In my New York Post op-ed, I argue that the official narrative that the law was execrable needs to be retired: “It was precisely the two-generation-long pause in immigration brought about by the bill that made the earlier Great Wave a success.”

I conclude:

The 1924 law bore the marks of the obsolete racial fixations of its time, but had astonishingly positive consequences for all Americans.

The 1965 law was well-intentioned, but has caused immigration to spin out of control.

We should be able to combine the best of the two approaches to bring an end to this latest Great Wave, and give America another much-needed breather.

On my podcast this week, NumbersUSA founder Roy Beck spoke especially about the boon that the 1924 immigration restriction was for black Americans, something he also addressed in the Detroit News.

Of course, most of the other commentary on today’s centenary was the usual stuff about how wicked our forebears were, such as the Washington Post piece which also warned that “U.S. immigration politics have again taken a dark, xenophobic turn.” (Trump’s name appears seven times in an op-ed about a 100-year-old law.)

The Wall Street Journal, which you might expect would jump on that bandwagon, given its repeated support for a five-word constitutional amendment proclaiming “There shall be open borders,” chose instead to run a more sober piece, albeit arguing for a gimmicky plan to sell U.S. citizenship.

(For comic relief, peruse unhinged pieces from the Cato Institute and the World Socialist Web Site — complete with the obligatory Hitler references. And both got the date wrong, apparently cribbing from Wikipedia.)

But for all the racialist gibberish that really did surround the 1924 law, the real issue was numbers. The House sponsor of the bill, Representative Albert Johnson (R., Wash.), responding to the vogue at the time of imputing differences among races from skull shapes, memorably said, “So far as we are concerned, we do not care whether they are round heads, longheads, or bone heads. We are going to cut down the number who come here.”

Coolidge biographer Amity Shlaes, no immigration restrictionist, put her finger on the real issue in a way that is relevant today. As she wrote of the 1924 law in City Journal last year:

Certainly, there were many racists or racialists in the U.S. who supported Johnson-Reed because it accorded with their theories. But the majority of supporters simply wanted their country to change more slowly.

Wanting to change more slowly is the core of the conservative temperament — in the immigration context you could call it demographic conservatism. As Burke wrote about the inevitability of change, “All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees.”

The 1924 immigration law sought to do just that, and succeeded for decades. Given that we now have the highest foreign-born share of the population ever recorded, it’s time for a return to demographic conservatism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/demographic-conservatism/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.

Immigration Watch International (2)

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Demographic Conservatism

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