For the last few years, immigration has been thrust back into the limelight of politics. This is a move in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.
The debate is being driven by fake nationalists, aka “civic” nationalists (a literal contradiction in terms). As such, its proponents are squirming to make a case that may have some merit, but it ultimately distracts from the real issue, and in that way does a disservice to the opponents of unchecked immigration. They are shackling their argument to fleeting, transient facts and thereby implicitly suggesting that no better or more solid case can be made.
The most familiar argument about immigration is the “economic” argument. It’s a debate over whether or not immigrants are “good for the economy”. The pro-immigrant argument is always about how immigrants provide a net benefit in the form of cheap labor. The anti-immigrant response is about how too much immigration floods the job market and causes wages to collapse, leaving citizens poor and unemployed. There’s back-and-forth about this, like how making labor cheaper is actually a good thing because that makes goods cheaper (an argument the political Right can’t pretend to reject entirely, because it’s precisely their basis for objecting to minimum wage… then again, the Left can’t pretend to accept entirely because it’s precisely their basis for supporting minimum wage), and keeps businesses from going overseas, and so on.
It’s really sad that at no point does anyone chime into this bickering about how much stuff we can all afford maybe isn’t the most, or at least the only, important thing. What’s amazing is how pretty much the entire mainstream political spectrum fails to realize how inhuman it is to look at humans as labor commodities. Does the economy work for us, or do we work for the economy? So the fuck what if it’s “good for the economy”? Yes, wealth is good, especially for people who are starving. But just because no one is starving doesn’t mean everything is fine. There are other costs, intangible costs, to things like immigration, and especially at a time when most people in the West aren’t starving, ignoring those other costs is insane. This is something the more autistic “libertarians” don’t get. The success of a civilization is not measured by its GDP.
The stuff about straining the welfare state and overcrowding areas is still within the realm of economic arguments, although it’s bit more sensible. It’s more in tune with the fact that measures of economic success are only relevant if people are more comfortable. If I can afford more appliances and landscaping but there’s rush hour traffic all the time, lines spilling out the door and my kids are in schools with 1 teacher per thousand students (well, if my future kids were to go to public school, which they never fucking will), who cares? I’m actually worse off. One of the supreme ironies of economics is that “libertarians”, who profess knowledge of the broken window fallacy, commit it more than anyone else. What they don’t see is all the costs that can’t really (at least not straightforwardly) have a dollar value placed on them?
That leads into the other mainstream immigration debate, which we can say is about culture. This is the debate over whether the average immigrant is prone to violent crime or not, or if the arguer is more bold, whether or not he ever learns the language or customs of the country he’s immigrating to. Essentially, if we import the 3rd World, we will become the 3rd World. Why is Guatemala such a shithole? Because of the local environment? Because of the weather? No, it’s because of Guatemalans. If we don’t want the U.S. to start looking like Guatemala, then we better not import millions of Guatemalans into the U.S.
This is also where we start talking about Islam. The anti-immigration crowd must make the case that Islam is a backward barbaric culture and belief system. Their whole argument depends on it.
Now this is where the magic “r” word (racist) comes in. This argument is predicated on establishing that immigrants are from countries that are objectively worse off than the ones they’re trying to get into. But then that must mean, gasp, that everyone isn’t equal! But since mainstream conservatives live and breathe to avoid the dreaded labels of the Left, “racist” being the main one, they flex endlessly to assure us that they aren’t saying certain ethnicities are objectively better than others, it is just that certain cultures are objectively better than others. The implication is that culture and ethnicity don’t have anything to do with each other. Now Conservative Inc. can engage in their favorite pastime in the world: the game we call “Democrats are the Real Racists!” Hey, we’re just saying Western culture is better than other cultures. It was Western culture that created modern technology like airplanes and cell phones. It was Western culture that ended slavery. It was Western culture that gave women equal rights. It was Western culture that legalized gay marriage. It was, in fact, Western culture that invented the very concept that all men are created equal and thus there could possibly be something wrong with “racism”. So if you Democrats equivocate all that with being white, well then that makes you the white supremacists!
And nothing is less “progressive” than Islam, with its rape culture, wife beating, and throwing gays off of buildings. So take that Leftists! Conservatives are beating you at your own game of progressivism!
In case anyone forgot that “conservatism” is a belief system created by the Progressive Left as a desperate attempt to unquestioningly exemplify the moral principles invented to control people, especially straight white males. Whatever “racism” means exactly, “conservatives” exist to prove they aren’t that. The Progressive Left has the gun, shooting it at the feet of “conservatives”, while conservatives dance and dance. Conservatives buy hook, line and sinker all the moral principles of Progressive Leftism, and spend all their energy trying to prove they embody those principles better than the Left themselves. It’s almost like there isn’t any genuine opposition to Progressive Leftism and Social Democracy anywhere in the mainstream political arena!
The pro-immigrant counterargument, beyond just yelling “racist”, is quite interesting. This is where we get into the “melting pot” stuff. See, America is a “nation of immigrants”. Pointing out the high crime and gangs of Central America, or the rapiness of Islam is just plain bigoted. But furthermore, the notion that too much immigration could erode the culture of America and make it just not America anymore is mistaken. American culture is the culture of immigration. That’s what makes America America: that it is a destination for all sorts of people from all over the world, mixing together and creating a vibrant multiculture. That’s why we have California burritos and jazz music! That’s why it’s just plain racist to suggest that the national language of the U.S. is English and immigrants should learn it. What’s so great about America is you can walk down a block in NYC and hear dozens of different languages being spoken!
(I laugh when I hear tourists make this argument. They took a 3 day trip to walk around NYC and love the fact no one can understand each other. Because they aren’t residents. They don’t live in that. For them, NYC is just a human zoo for them to walk through and take pictures of all the exotic people).
And that’s where the mainstream debate basically gets stuck. We don’t want to import the 3rd World lest we become the 3rd World, but it’s racist to say the 3rd World is the 3rd World, but no we’re talking about culture, not race, and on and on. It’s ultimately an argument set up for “conservatives” to lose. Their case depends critically on making certain cultures out to be objectively better than others, then strain to argue that culture and ethnicity are totally detached from each other, despite highly coinciding throughout history. But the Left has already imposed the moral framework of egalitarianism on conservatives, which conservatives must prove they embody to come out victorious. Of course the Left does not and never has abided by the principle of egalitarianism. Their whole world view is that white people are evil slave-master colonizers and cause all the suffering of everyone else, and that men are insecure patriarchal warmongers. The rules aren’t for them to follow. They are for you, the gullible “reactionary” “conservative”, to chase your tail trying to embody and then prove the Left isn’t embodying. Conservatives accepted this challenge: prove they are the true egalitarians. And with that, their anti-immigration argument, whose foundation is explicitly un-egalitarian, fails before it even begins. The attempt to mischaracterize the inequality of ethnicities as the inequality of free-floating “cultures” just makes conservatives look like the slimy grifters they so often are.
This all boils down to the fact conservatives are fake nationalists. Conservative Inc. is the champion of the notion that being an “American” is defined by what you believe. If you love the Constitution, baseball, apple pie and AR-15s then by God you’re an American! Just apply for an “American” card (aka citizenship) and you’re good. Hence, conservatives remind us they only oppose lllegal immigration! That gives them a bit of legalese cover. After all, they just want to enforce existing laws. How could you object to that!? Well, the answer is the same way conservatives can object to gun laws and support sheriffs who promise to not enforce them. So what if it’s the law? Why is it the law? Why do we have immigration laws? That’s the obvious question. The conservative answer is what I laid out above: we need to vet immigrants and make sure they plan to learn English, learn about the Founding Fathers, love baseball, aren’t Muslim extremists, don’t have a history of violent crime or gang activity, and most important of all: will contribute positively to the economy! That’s why we need a border: so we can intelligently select who gets to come to our party.
Now, that is a perfectly reasonable argument. Even a true nationalist needs to have an immigration policy. If we are such a great country that everyone wants to get into, then we’re going to attract all the garbage people in the world. Anyone who has thrown a big party at his house knows this. If your party is the best party, all the weirdos want to get in, and if they do get in, it won’t be the best party anymore. So you need a bouncer.
But this is still missing the point. By this argument, there’s really no problem, in principle, with having more legal immigration. We can filter out the crazies, but surely there will still be millions upon millions of eligible candidates who will serve as cheap easily exploitable labor and pass a U.S. history test. Are conservatives okay with that? Well, Conservative Inc. certainly is. But is the average American okay with that? And what is their response to the “melting pot” argument? Do conservatives agree with that? Is America a “nation of immigrants”? Is American culture defined precisely by the mixture of various foreign cultures? If we only let in immigrants from other 1st World countries would that be just fine?
Conservatives don’t know how ridiculous the phrase “nation of immigrants” is, because they don’t know what a “nation” is. They, as the quintessential civic nationalists (another contradiction in terms), think “nation” means “government”. This, curiously enough, appears to be a primarily American phenomenon, to regard “nation” and “state” as synonyms. Americans tend to think “nationalism” means furious support for one’s government. That’s why it tends to come up when talking about war. You’re a “nationalist” if you always defend the U.S. Government’s wars. But this is not what nation means. A nation is a people. It is, essentially, a subset of ethnicity. “The French” are not defined by the government of France, nor by the land over which that government is currently sovereign. The French are a people. If you want to find out if (or how much) you are French, you don’t go to a government or check your address. You analyze your DNA.
So then what is “nationalism”? It is the belief that nations, i.e. peoples, have a right to self-determination, and a right to a homeland. And thus we come to the true argument against immigration. What is the basis of arguing that immigrants don’t have a right to reside in a country? Simple. Because that country is not their homeland. Period, end of story.
It has nothing to do with whether or not he will be a net economic positive. It has nothing to do with whether his culture and people are “better” or “worse” than the host culture and people. It is simply the fact that the country he’s trying to enter is the homeland of the X people, and he is not an X person. Why does France have immigration laws? To keep France French. If France lets in tons of non-French people, then the French lose their homeland. Worse yet, with enough interbreeding, the French people themselves will disappear.
This is all anathema to mainstream conservatives because it explicitly rejects the Leftist narrative that it is horrible and wrong for peoples, defined ethnically, to wish to preserve themselves and their homeland, meaning to keep themselves as the demographic majority in some part of the world. “Oh no!”, conservatives think. “If I say that, I’ll be called racist! Oh my God, it’s worse than that. I’ll be called a… a… white nationalist!” But that’s ironic, because only the true nationalist has an anti-immigration argument that is entirely independent of the supremacy of his own people and culture over that of others. True or not, I don’t need to argue that 3rd Worlders or Muslims are barbaric, or that blacks have lower IQs and commit more violent crime, because my argument doesn’t derive from these things. Ultimately the Progressives are right: the tradcons have based their immigration argument on a racial supremacist position (once you realize culture is just as biological as gender is), and they’re being slimy grifters by denying it. But the “Far Right”, who tradcons smear as “racists”, have the immigration argument based on the universalizable principle of the right to self-determination. Every ethnicity has the right to self-determination, and that alone justifies them closing their borders. Tradcons call this “racist” because they adopted the weaponized term to its full extent, meaning simply any acknowledgement that divergent strains of human DNA exist.
I’m not a white nationalist, but for the opposite reason than I’m “supposed” to be. White is not a nation. It’s too broad. There is too much diversity among all the different white people for them to conglomerate into one homeland. To do so would destroy the diversity of white people. French have a right to preserve themselves. Germans have a right to preserve themselves. Even the various flavors of Slavs like Serbs and Bosnians have a right to preserve themselves, which is why Pan-Slavism was such a disaster.
But you know what? I don’t fucking care what Leftists call me. The word “nation” literally means “by birth”. Whether it’s right or wrong, conservatives are simply full of shit. They took an already existing word, “nationalist”, and turned it into something completely different; something based on “ideology” or government papers. If it’s so bigoted and horrible to be what “nationalist” actually means, then why are they calling themselves nationalists and lying about what it means? Because “conservatives” are grifters. They have conserved nothing and have accomplished little more than to confuse people about what needs conserving in the first place. It’s their problem that they accept the rules the Left hands to them but doesn’t even follow themselves. No Leftist on the planet will deny the right of South Africans to preserve the ethnicity of South Africa by violently kicking out all the white farmers. No Leftist on the planet will deny the right of previously colonized areas of the Americas to repatriate the white colonizers and preserve their majority in their own homeland.
The problem, really, isn’t the Left. The Left will call you racist if you explain what nationalism really is, but they call you racist no matter what. They call everyone racist. That’s their version of “witch”, a catchall term to whip up a pitchfork and torch bearing mob against someone they don’t like. The problem is the mainstream Right. They are the ones who will pounce on you and help the Leftist Establishment take you down if you don’t preach their post-racial multicultural harmony bullshit where no one is allowed to take any interest in, let alone make any effort to preserve, their genetic heritage. Unless, curiously enough, you’re Jewish. No tradcon on the planet will the deny the right of Israel to preserve the status of Israel as a Jewish homeland; an “ethnostate”.
And that’s just another indication that Conservative Inc. is our true main enemy. The Left doesn’t actually believe this nonsense about everyone severing their ties to their past and acting like we are floating brains defined only by our “ideas” and not at all by our genetics, our tribe, and our people. They aren’t the ones attacking any form of “identity”, in some anti-human crusade to make every human being an exact copy of every other human, a perfectly replaceable economic unit measured by the dollar worth of an hour of their labor (which is corporate propaganda). The Left doesn’t attack identity, they use it. They use it for nefarious ends, to destroy Western Civilization. But Conservative Inc. “reacts” to this by trying to erase identity altogether and demand people define themselves entirely by their politics. They hate “identity politics”, and instead preach “political identity”.
Conservative Inc. are also the biggest liars when it comes to misrepresenting “far right” positions. The Left will call everyone who isn’t part of their cult “neo-Nazis”. Conservative Inc. will call anyone who doesn’t follow their weird post-racial floating brain concept of humanity a “neo-Nazi”, and lie profusely about how any acknowledgement of ethnicity, especially any claim that it is okay to feel a connection to one’s ethnicity in any way, makes you a genocidal supremacist maniac hellbent on mass-murdering anyone who doesn’t belong to your ethnicity. That is complete bullshit, and it is an expected pathetic straw man from a group of people arguing something as stupid as “nationality = citizenship”. They don’t have a leg to stand on, so expect them to sink to even lower levels than the Progressive Left to try to distract people from seeing the truth.
The real argument about immigration will begin when it is framed in terms of who people are and where they belong, instead of how “valuable” people are. Everyone is valuable. Everyone is created in the image of God and has a soul that only He can judge. And they all have a right to have in-group preference and preserve their heritage and homeland.
This is a great article. Very to the point!