“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted”: NYT Op-Ed Presents a Cleverly Deceptive Case for a... Nation-Breaking Amnesty!

[N.S., postscript, november 21, 2024: Peter Brimelow published this ms. circa february 5, 2020 as a "front-pager" (featured article), to my surprise, and paid me for it. I had submitted it as a blog article, for which he rarely paid. As was my usual practice, I posted it at this blog, only to later see that Peter had published it as an article. He claimed on the telephone that we had discussed it as an article, but that wasn't true. I would have pitched it as an article, which I didn't do. I didn't need to pitch blog articles. Meanwhile, I would pitch articles, like the one on "Hellscapes," Peter would greenlight them, I would research and writer them and send them in, and he would lie and deny that I'd ever pitched them. This was part of Peter's death-of-1,000 cuts strategy. So, I reverted the article below to "draft," and Peter paid me.]

“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted”: NYT Op-Ed Presents a Cleverly Deceptive Case for a... Nation-Breaking Amnesty! By Nicholas Stix

Numerous friends and colleagues have sent me the January 16 New York Times op-ed by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jerry Kammer excerpted below. Some of the hardest men I know are going ga-ga over it. Old immigration hands, who were breaking bread with the late John Tanton (1934-2019), may he rest in peace, when I was barely out of diapers. Friends of mine who have seen the border.

When you see that someone has managed to get a piece of the Times’ op-ed page, what should your initial response be? Right. Reach for your wallet with one hand, and your gun with the other. What should your second response be? Fire!

Ask yourself, Would the Times ever run an op-ed by Peter Brimelow on immigration? Did it ever run one by John Tanton?

What do you think of “compromise” on immigration “reform”? What sort of thoughts do claims that there are “11 million” illegal human beings, make that “unauthorized immigrants,” presently residing on American soil inspire in you?

The real numbers of illegal human beings on American soil are between 24 million and 55 million.

A 2018 Yale University study concluded that there are roughly 22 million illegals on American soil. In a 2014 interview I conducted with Fred Elbel, the old immigration hand who runs the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIRCO), Elbel guesstimated that there were already at least 50 million illegals here. The thing about such estimates is that if you overestimate the number of illegal human beings in your country, there’s no cost, but if you underestimate them, it could cost you your country. [“Yale study: Illegal immigrant population likely double, possibly triple previous estimates,” by Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, September 24, 2018; “The Myth of the 11 Million: Wall Street Analyst Estimates 21-25 Million Illegals Now in U.S., by Nicholas Stix, VDARE, November 23, 2014.]

Kammer writes as if this were 1985, or even 1964, and he’s Ted Kennedy.

Granted, he does recount his experience in 2001 of being present at a soiree in which Left and Right were gleefully conspiring to destroy the country through mass third-world immigration.

He recalls statements made years ago by leading Democrats like Walter Mondale and Hillary Clinton about how impoverished, Third-World immigrants were bringing mass poverty to America.

And he says nice things abut the American working class.

He even notes that in the 1986 INA amnesty, the Open Borders Lobby got what it wanted, but the patriots who compromised with them got nothing.

“This mismatch of political influence, combined with the social and fiscal consequences of a wave of low-skilled immigrants, led me to believe that immigration should be restricted so that its power to invigorate our country is not eclipsed by its potential to harm workers. I think immigration, like capitalism itself, should be regulated in the national interest, not shaped to serve the free-market libertarianism of the right or the post-national humanitarianism of the left.

“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist.” [“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted”, by Jerry Kammer, New York Times, January 16, 2020.]

Here’s where things go off the rails. After Kammer admits that the 1986 compromise was a wholly one-sided deal, and emphasizes his support of the American working class, he calls for…another amnesty dwarfing INA!

This is Lucy-Charlie Brown stuff here.

First of all, the Open Borders Lobby owes all American patriots an immigration moratorium, while the patriots owe the open borders zealots nothing.

The 1986 Reagan (Simpson-Mazzoli) Amnesty has cost white American taxpayers trillions of dollars, and will cost us trillions more in perpetuity; it has cost us the rule of law; and the economic dispossession and legal disenfranchisement of white Americans. We still have ever more chain migration and anchor babies.

“I disagree with some of the center’s [CIS’] hard-line [?!] positions. I favor a generous welcome for those who were brought here illegally as children and support comprehensive reform that would reprise the 1986 amnesty-plus-enforcement compromise. But restrictionists are right to insist that any new reform must guarantee work-site controls. They also make valid points in pushing for a system of legal immigration like the one developed by Canada, which favors people with education and skills.”

But Kammer’s “generous welcome” would go to at least ten million illegals, right off the bat, plus at least another 40 million of their “relatives,” through chain migration, plus millions of anchor babies. In other words, it’s a nation-breaking amnesty.

How could any immigration reformer fall for such a load of hooey?

Kammer’s essay runs 1,444 words, an eternity for an op-ed, much of which he used to build up his credibility as a restrictionist, only to smuggle in the big con. Maybe some of my friends read his thing superficially, after he threw them a bone or two, or even stopped reading at that point.

There are actually some great people at CIS, but I won’t praise them by name, because I don’t want them to get into trouble for being associated with yours truly.

The organization’s bosses, however, Mark Krikorian and Steven Camarota, are notorious for triangulating, in order to get table scraps from leftwing media organizations, but no matter how much they beg for respectability, treason groups like the SPLC will always whip them with the “hate group” label.

We don’t need another mass amnesty, we need a moratorium on all net legal immigration, a wall, and to send the criminals of all ages and their anchor babies home.