Malkin presents the cultural argument for restricting legal immigration

For the first time ever that I’m aware of, Michelle Malkin is making arguments—or rather, she is presenting well-known quotes from the Founding Fathers—that do not merely criticize illegal immigration, but address the larger question of whom should our country legally admit. The Founders all declared that we should only admit immigrants who could readily incorporate themselves into our society. This is a standard that goes beyond the need for immigrants to come to this country legally. It is saying that certain people and peoples, based on their cultural, religious, or political dispositions, should not be allowed to immigrate into the United States, period.

It’s not immediately clear, however, that Malkin understands the significance of the dynamite passages she has quoted, since she immediately returns to the no-brainer that immigration must be legal. “We are not a nation of immigrants. We are first and foremost a nation of laws,” she writes. But, thankfully, she doesn’t stop at that obvious point. She continues:

The U.S. Constitution does not say that the paramount duty of government is to “Celebrate Diversity” or to “embrace multiculturalism” or to give “every willing worker” in the world a job. The Premable to the U.S. Constitution says the Constitution was established “to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.”

As our founding fathers recognized, fulfilling these fundamental duties is impossible without an orderly immigration and entrance system that discriminates in favor of those willing, as George Washington put it, to “get assimilated to our customs, measures, [and] laws.” [Italics added.]

Discrimination in favor of the assimilable. This is no longer the language of right-liberalism, which assumes that all human beings from all cultures on earth are just like us, and should be admitted to America on an equal basis so long as they obey the law. It is the language of traditionalism, which recognizes that we have a distinct culture, and should only admit people who can reasonably be expected to become a part of that culture.

Whether she realizes it or not, Malkin has finally stepped outside the ambit of the 1965 Immigration Act, which extends U.S. immigration privileges on a non-discriminatory basis to every nation on earth.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 27, 2006 06:04 PM | Send