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We’ve all heard the laments: “My grandpa
from Sicily learned English, and my grandma
from Minsk got by without welfare. So
what's the problemwith immigrants today?” Actually,
immigrants today are very similar to those who
arrived in America a century ago. But they are coming
to a very different America—one where changes in the
economy, society and government create fundamentally
different incentives for newcomers. In other
words, the America that many of our grandparents
came to no longer exists. And this simple fact must
become the new starting point for the explosive
debate about immigration policy.
Author Mark Krikorian (the grandson of Armenian
immigrants) argues that although mass immigration
once served our national interests, in today's America
it weakens our common national identity, limits
opportunities for upward mobility, threatens our
security and sovereignty, strains resources for social
programs and disrupts middle-class norms of behavior.
Before the upheavals of the 1960s, the United
States expected immigrants from around the world to
earn a living, learn to speak English and become
patriotic Americans. But since the rise of “identity”
politics, political correctness and “great society” programs,
we no longer make these demands.
So as the politicians argue about border fences and
amnesty, they are missing the bigger picture: the
harmful impact of large-scale settlement of all kinds
of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, skilled or
unskilled, temporary or permanent, European or
Latin or Asian or African.Modern America has simply
outgrown immigration, and we must end it before it
cripples us.
Hardback, 294 pages, #IM
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