Tag: immigration

Yes, we noticed, actually

And yet, the Littlest Chickenhawk is very intent on making sure that Arabs don’t outnumber Jews in Israel. Color not only matters, it matters more than ideology does. It matters more than religion does. The civic nationalists, the cucks, and the conservatives can preen and posture nonsensically about a) how they don’t see color, b) how color doesn’t matter, and c) how they would LOVE to vote for a black conservative all they like, but identity politics are here and they will be replaced by identity war sooner rather than later.

There is a reason that Poland is still Polish while America is no longer American. Equality is a demonic lie. Diversity is societal destruction. Everything the civic nationalists and multiculturalists and globalists taught you was false.

It’s easy to see who is lying and who is not. All you have to do is pay attention to their arguments and see whose positions are both internally consistent and consistent with reality. God created the nations. It is Satan and his servitors that are seeking to destroy them and recreate Babel.

Democrats double down on immigration

Andrew Sullivan foresees the coming Trumpslide in 2020. But one correction: it is not a question of “could”, but rather, “will”.

I don’t believe it’s disputable at this point that the most potent issue behind the rise of the far right in America and Europe is mass immigration. It’s a core reason that Trump is now president; it’s why the AfD is now the third-biggest party in the German, yes, German, parliament; it’s why Austria’s new chancellor won by co-opting much of the far right’s agenda on immigration; it’s why Britain is attempting (and currently failing) to leave the EU; it’s why Marine Le Pen won a record number of votes for her party in France this spring. A critical moment, in retrospect, came with Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to import over a million Syrian refugees into the heart of Europe. I’ve no doubt her heart was in the right place, but the political naïveté was stunning. How distant from the lives and views of most people does an elite have to be to see nothing to worry about from such drastic social and cultural change? Michael Brendan Dougherty elegantly explains here the dynamic that followed. There are now new borders and fences going up all over Europe, as a response to Merkel’s blithe misjudgment.

You would think that parties of the center-left would grapple with this existential threat to their political viability. And some have. One reason Britain’s Labour Party has done well in the last couple of years is that it has recognized the legitimacy of the issue. During the Brexit referendum, their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed ambivalence toward remaining in the EU, careful not to lose his working-class base to the Europhobic right, recognizing the fears so many of his own supporters had about the impact of mass immigration on their lives, jobs, and culture. Even someone as leftist as Corbyn chose to be a pragmatist, trying to gain power, rather than a purist who might otherwise condemn his own voters as deplorable. And this is one reason why I have dwindling hopes that the Democratic Party will be able to defeat Trump in 2020. Instead of adjusting to this new reality, and listening to the electorate, the Dems have moved ever farther to the left, and are controlled by ever-radicalizing activists.

You saw it here first. You even saw us wear it here first. None of this should be surprising, because it’s all playing out as it has been described here concerning the inevitable division into American and Not-American parties, or if you prefer, White and Not-White parties.

And before anyone is tempted to sperg, the names refer to prioritized interests, not absolute demographics. There will be Indians and Asians and Blacks who will side with the White party out of enlightened self-interest, as I do (I am fundamentally pro-interior plumbing), and there will be whites who will side with the Not-White party out of stupidity and a suicidal desire to virtue-signal.

All cultures are equal

I fail to see why we shouldn’t take the good people of Malawi at their word.

Doctors in Malawi have been beaten for carrying stethoscopes by vigilante mobs who believe they are vampires using the instruments to suck blood. Medics have also been robbed and had their vehicles smashed, while ambulances have been attacked as patients were taken to hospital, a doctors’ association said.

The Society of Medical Doctors in Malawi said a case of ‘mass hysteria’ sweeping the south of the country has led thousands of people to believe there are vampires in their midst. Nine people have been beaten to death after being accused of being a vampire, while 124 have been arrested for carrying out the attacks.

Who are we to say that the doctors aren’t vampires, after all?

The promised rise of nationalism

It is here. It is now. You may recall that I was one of the very few observers of European politics who predicted this years ago. I said it would take two election cycles for the nationalists to come fully to power. We’re still in the first one.

  • In a recent poll by the Czech Academy of Sciences, the ANO scored 30.9 percent, more than the two traditional heavyweights in Czech politics — the Social Democrat CSSD and the right-wing ODS — combined, who scored just 13.1 percent and 9.1 percent respectively.
  • The takeover of the OeVP in May by “Emperor Kurz” was as swift as it was radical. First he ended the decade-long unhappy coalition with the Social Democrats (SPOe). Then he rebranded the OeVP and its black party colour as a turquoise “movement” tough on migrants and easy on taxes. The strategy of “putting Austrians first” propelled the sluggish OeVP to pole position in opinion polls and Kurz to near-rock star status.
  • The People’s Party (OVP) got 31.6 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls from pollster SORA. Mr Kurz’s party is tough on migration, easy on taxes and widely Eurosceptic after rebranding itself over the last few months to propel its popularity in the wealthy Alpine nation. The 31-year-old is expected to form a coalition with the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPO), who got 26.9 per cent of the vote, according to the latest projections. 
Of course, as with Brexit, the nationalists still have to deliver and free their nations from both the migrant invasions and the chains of the European Union. But be that as it may, it is clear that they have the democratic mandate of their nations, as well as the duty, to do so.

An obligation

James Kirchick explains why Jews residing in America have an obligation “to pay it forward by supporting a liberal immigration regime” in an article entitled “Can American Jews Be White Nationalists?”

Nobody’s politics or worldview should be determined by their racial, ethnic, or religious background—certainly not in a country as big, diverse, and welcoming as America. But if there’s an issue that should be at least influenced by one’s American Jewish identity, it’s immigration. And that’s because America, quite simply, has been great for the Jews, whose forebears in the shtetls of Europe spoke about it as the goldene medina, a golden land. Enslaved, ghettoized and murdered throughout our history, Jews have been welcomed by America with open arms.

Of course, that has not always been the case. During the Jewish people’s most desperate hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt slammed the door shut on migrants from Nazi Germany. And it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that institutional discrimination against Jews, in the forms of university quotas and the like, came to an end. But few other nations have been so hospitable to Jews as the United States. Indeed, it’s hard to think of any other minority group that has succeeded so much thanks to America’s generosity and openness. The American idea allowed us to flourish to the point where we are the most widely admired religious group in the country. That is not a condition, to say the least, with which Jews have been much familiar at any other point in our long and beleaguered history, anywhere else in the world.

American Jews, then, have something of a communal obligation to pay it forward by supporting a liberal immigration regime. And by and large we have: Jews and Jewish organizations are very pro-immigration. This implied social responsibility doesn’t necessarily entail support for open borders. Nor does it apply to other parts of the world; continued mass Muslim immigration from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe, for example, is a portentous development that will make Jewish life there, already difficult, increasingly so. But an American Jew calling for a drastic reduction in legal immigration to America is unseemly. 

Any group of U.S. residents whose first and foremost question is “is it good for our little group” rather than “is it good for America” is not permitted to use the phrase “fellow Americans”. Because they are nothing of the kind.

A man cannot serve two masters. And while a man can collect as much paperwork as he likes, he can never be member of two nations. Jesus Christ himself told Christians they were to be in, but not of, the world, which is why Christians have been considered a threat by governments everywhere since the days of the Emperor Augustus.

But a nation is neither a state nor a government. Much mischief has been committed, and much confusion has been sown, by those who insist on conflating the nation with the state.

You’re not one of them

And also, you have to go back.

Hats, as Racked explored earlier this year, have historically signaled that the wearer is part of a team — and when is the desire to belong more acute than in middle school? Of course, teams don’t exist without opponents, and for some to feel like they’re on the inside, others need to be left out.

It was clear to one mother, who asked to remain anonymous, who fell into the latter category and who didn’t when she picked her son up from his middle-school trip to DC: “Our school district has a good amount of minorities in it, but we were all stunned. Every single white kid besides maybe one or two walked off the bus with a red hat on,” she said.

While she, her husband, and their children were all born in the United States, they are Muslim-American and not white, and the hats were just the most recent and most visible symbol of a racial divide that, she says, her son has seen escalate since November.

“I think 12-year-old boys use it as a form of bullying — identifying themselves as part of this group to the exclusion of others just for the fun of it. That’s what it seemed like to me,” she says. “Us over here with the red hats, and you over there… you’re not even an individual anymore. Now you’re just one of the brown kids and you’re not one of us.”

The God-Emperor’s winning never ends. The Red Hats are the sans cullottes of the 21st century. Never forget that homogeneous nations are usually derived from heterogeneous empires.

You may not like these developments. You may think that they are cruel, racist, and wrong. And your opinion of that matters about as much as your opinion of a melon striking the pavement after being dropped from 100 meters high. Civic nationalism has observably failed. The melting pot was always a propagandistic lie. Human nature did not change when the Declaration of Independence was written, and in any event, it was not written for the 80 million post-1965 invaders of America.

So what is the matter with that?

In 2008, the Dalai Lama warned of the “danger” of one million Chinese immigrants increasing Tibetan GDP and enriching Tibet’s culture:

The Dalai Lama claimed yesterday that Beijing was planning the mass settlement of 1 million ethnic Chinese people in Tibet after the Olympics with the aim of diluting Tibetan culture and identity.

Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader also claimed that some of Asia’s most important rivers which flow from the Tibetan plateau are being polluted and diminished by careless industrialisation and unplanned irrigation.

The Dalai Lama made the claims in an interview with the Guardian after a meeting yesterday with Gordon Brown at Lambeth Palace. He said the talks had been detailed and the prime minister had been helpful “in spite of his difficulties”. The Dalai Lama said: “He met me and he showed genuine concern and he wants to help.”

Downing Street said the discussion focused on talks due next month on Tibet’s future between Tibetan representatives and Beijing officials. The prime minister is said to have stressed the importance of the Dalai Lama’s pledge to oppose violence, not seek Tibetan independence, nor support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

The Dalai Lama said he feared the Chinese authorities could take a tougher line on Tibet after the Olympics, and possibly flood it with Han Chinese, the world’s largest ethnic group.

The Dalai Lama said he had been informed by Tibetan residents that large areas of empty land had been marked out, as if for construction, in the past two years. “Then last year we received information – after the Olympics 1 million Chinese are going to settle in the autonomous region of Tibet,” he said, adding the information came from a “military source” in Tibet.

“There is every danger Tibet becomes a truly Han Chinese land and Tibetans become an insignificant minority. Then the very basis of the idea of autonomy becomes meaningless.”

What was the matter with that? Is Tibetan dirt any less magic than American dirt? Won’t those Han Chinese become true native Tibetans, just indistinguishable in every way from other native Tibetans, in precisely the same way that a Han Chinese immigrant is every bit as American as the Daughters of the American Revolution?

I just don’t see any problem here. We’re are just one human race. Everyone is equal. What on Earth was the Dalai Lama complaining about?

The morality of immigration

Correcting the common confusion of Churchian dogma with actual Christian philosophy:

In looking at the debate over immigration, it is almost automatically assumed that the Church’s position is one of unconditional charity toward those who enter the nation, legally or illegally.

However, is this the case? What does the Bible say about immigration? What do Church doctors and theologians say? Above all, what does the greatest of doctors, Saint Thomas Aquinas, say about immigration? Does his opinion offer some insights to the burning issues now shaking the nation and blurring the national borders?

Immigration is a modern problem and so some might think that the medieval Saint Thomas would have no opinion about the problem. And yet, he does. One has only to look in his masterpiece, the Summa Theologica, in the first part of the second part, question 105, article 3 (I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). There one finds his analysis based on biblical insights that can add to the national debate. They are entirely applicable to the present.

Saint Thomas: “Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful, and hostile: and in directing both kinds of relation the Law contained suitable precepts.”

Commentary: In making this affirmation, Saint Thomas affirms that not all immigrants are equal. Every nation has the right to decide which immigrants are beneficial, that is, “peaceful,” to the common good. As a matter of self-defense, the State can reject those criminal elements, traitors, enemies and others who it deems harmful or “hostile” to its citizens.

The second thing he affirms is that the manner of dealing with immigration is determined by law in the cases of both beneficial and “hostile” immigration. The State has the right and duty to apply its law.

Saint Thomas: “For the Jews were offered three opportunities of peaceful relations with foreigners. First, when foreigners passed through their land as travelers. Secondly, when they came to dwell in their land as newcomers. And in both these respects the Law made kind provision in its precepts: for it is written (Exodus 22:21): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [advenam]’; and again (Exodus 22:9): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [peregrino].’”

Commentary: Here Saint Thomas acknowledges the fact that others will want to come to visit or even stay in the land for some time. Such foreigners deserved to be treated with charity, respect and courtesy, which is due to any human of good will. In these cases, the law can and should protect foreigners from being badly treated or molested.

Saint Thomas: “Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1).”

Commentary: Saint Thomas recognizes that there will be those who will want to stay and become citizens of the lands they visit. However, he sets as the first condition for acceptance a desire to integrate fully into what would today be considered the culture and life of the nation.

A second condition is that the granting of citizenship would not be immediate. The integration process takes time. People need to adapt themselves to the nation. He quotes the philosopher Aristotle as saying this process was once deemed to take two or three generations. Saint Thomas himself does not give a time frame for this integration, but he does admit that it can take a long time.

It takes at least four generations, and even that is not enough when people have a strong tribal identity that supersedes their residence du jour. Regardless, the reasoning of Thomas Aquinas is a powerful rebuke to the Churchians appealing to false teachings in the name of Christ.

The dark side of entrepreneurial genius

Many will rightly look at this as a wonderful example of the sort of energetic immigrant entrepreneurialism that they believe to be of great benefit to America. But, as it happens, there is a very real and substantive downside to it as well:

The Uberpreneur: How An Uber Driver Makes $252,000 A Year. Uber may not just be a disruptive platform for transportation, but one for small businesses.
 
“Absolutely,” Uber spokeswoman Kristin Carvell says. “One of the greatest things about the Uber platform is that it offers economic opportunity for a variety of drivers — full-time, part-time, veterans, teachers, artists, and students — in more than 260 cities around the world.  Supporting and fueling the local economy is important to Uber and our driver partners help us to achieve this goal.”

His passengers seem to agree. Gavin’s ratings are 4.85/5.00 on Uber Black, 4.87/5.00 on UberX and 4.95/5.00 on Lyft, which he also uses. Those ratings have held up over time; Gavin drove over 3,829 passengers in the past 18 months.

These passengers include “executives who people pay thousands of dollars to meet at networking events,” Gavin says. He’s met Vogue fashion editors and Silicon Valley’s top brass, including legendary investor Shervin Pishevar.

“I’ve had a lot of amazing drivers, but Gavin is one of the best,” Shervin told me. “I was in his car with my daughter when I saw his jewelry designs. I thought they were wonderful and gave him a lot of encouragement to pursue his dreams.”

It’s these tactics that translate to sales. In the past year, Gavin designed many jewelry pieces for passengers, averaging $18,000 in transactions per month. Adding the $3,000 monthly gross earnings from Uber, he made $252,000 last year. Gavin used the income to expand his business, buying three more cars and hiring six new drivers.

It’s an absolutely brilliant idea. This guy is advertising far more effectively than any social media or Madison Avenue campaign, taking advantage of the direct one-on-one time he has with his riders to let them know about his business, which quite clearly is a genuine interest to a sufficient percentage of them. This guy is a bona fide entrepreneurial genius.

However, it’s not all rosy good cheer and future GDP growth on the horizon.

But Gavin’s growing business doesn’t tell the full story. As he’s become more successful, he hasn’t forgotten about his fellow Filipino immigrants. “I reach back to my roots,” he said. “When hiring new drivers, I find underemployed Filipinos and give them the jobs first. Most don’t know much about smartphones — and that’s okay. I teach them about Uber and Lyft. I teach them how to use the internet so it can help their lives in other ways, too. I let them use the cars to run errands and pick up their children. It’s not about squeezing every dollar from them. It’s about empowering the community that you came from.”

So much for American meritocracy. Gavin is so grateful for the opportunity that America has given him that he’s actively helping his fellow Filipinos in preference to Americans, even when they are massively less-qualified.

This is precisely why the civic nationalist notion of only bringing in the best and most productive foreigners is as harmful to the nation, and arguably more insidiously so, than importing a parasitical class of welfare recipients.

Making America Employed Again

The God-Emperor strikes again:

The Department of Justice announced Thursday it has filed a lawsuit against a Colorado corporation for allegedly discriminating against U.S. workers.

The complaint alleges that in 2016, Crop Production discriminated against at least three United States citizens by refusing to employ them as seasonal technicians in El Campo, Texas, because Crop Production preferred to hire temporary foreign workers under the H-2A visa program.

“In the spirit of President Trump’s Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American, the Department of Justice will not tolerate employers who discriminate against U.S. workers because of a desire to hire temporary foreign visa holders,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “… Where there is a job available, U.S. workers should have a chance at it before we bring in workers from abroad.”

This is great. This is excellent. Now, BUILD THE WALL!