Conservative editor wants U.S. to take in three million immigrants per year

In his January 25 column, NewsMax editor-in-chief Christopher Ruddy (for whom I wrote a number of articles in 2000-2001) strongly criticizes the Kennedy amnesty bill, which, he points out, is even more irresponsible and radical than last year’s Senate bill. Then he continues:

Only after the United States gets a firm grip on border control should Congress even consider an amnesty program. And once the borders are secure, I believe we should increase legal immigration. America needs immigrants. We should open our doors to the best and brightest from every continent rather than primarily from just one region.

I wrote to Ruddy:

Current legal immigration, meaning the number of people granted legal permanent residency, is over one million per year. How much do you think it should be increased by? “Open our doors to the best and brightest from every continent” sounds as though you want no numerical limits at all.

By the way, do you think that by bringing the best and brightest from every country to America we are helping those countries?

He replied:

Three million per year. It probably undermines other countries but keeps the U.S. on top.

I replied:

I had no idea these were your views. I’d like to write about this at my site. Have you ever written about this before, saying that you want to increase legal immigration by three million per year and giving your reasons why?

He replied that he has advocated increasing immigration in the print version of Newsmax, but is not sure if he has written about it on the Web. I haven’t been able to find anything else by him on this online. So this may be the first time it’s been stated on the Web that Christopher Ruddy wants the U.S. to quadruple annual legal immigration from the current one million to four million.

UPDATE: After I posted the above, it occurred to me that though I had asked Ruddy by how much he wanted to increase immigration, to which he answered three million, and I had then asked him if he had previously advocated increasing it by three million, and he answered in the affirmative, he may nevertheless have been thinking about total immigration, not about an increase in immigration. So I wrote to him again asking him to clarify whether he wants an increase of immigration by three million, or a total immigration of three million. He replied that he wants to triple legal immigration, to a total of three million.

It must be said, however, that once you start throwing around as grandiose a proposal as a tripling of U.S. immigration, the precise figure you use becomes virtually a matter of whim.

- end of initial entry -

Howard Sutherland writes:

Just another propositionalist, after all?

LA replies:

No, not a propositionalist, it’s worse than that. He’s a mainstream American conservative patriot who thinks that the annual immigration of three million of the best and brightest would strengthen America vis a vis the rest of the world. He has never used propositionalist, neocon-type rhetoric. Also, he opposed the invasion of Iraq before it occurred.

Mr. Sutherland replies:

One thing I really dislike about certain American patriot types who measure American greatness by the size of our economy and the size of our arsenal (I’m not unpatriotic, I just don’t believe America is the world’s only worthwhile nation) is this two-part assumption so many have.

One, that America has some divine right to cherry-pick the world’s best and brightest, who belong in America and are somehow squelched by being “forced” (by restrictive U.S. immigration law, presumably) to make their way in their own countries. There is an unpleasant American nationalist selfishness about this attitude; that foreigners might have duties of their own to their own countries never enters their minds. Along with that often goes an assumption that immigrants are somehow more worthy than born-Americans: scrappier, more entrepreneurial, harder-working… they somehow deserve to be in America more than Americans do. That most Americans like America American rarely enters their minds; when someone says America doesn’t need to be changing incessantly, that “growing the economy” is not the summum bonum, he is shouted down as a selfish racist.

Two, that America (whatever they think America means) is SO GREAT, SO STRONG that an unlimited number of anyones from everywhere can move in (so long as they get government approval) without changing the place at all. Or only in good ways, like those ethnic restaurants we all love so much that weren’t around when we were kids. (I heard that line from someone recently when I ventured a reservation about mass immigration: “Hey, the only ethnic restaurant in my neighborhood when I was a kid was a pizza parlor; that America was really boring.” Then he went on to tell me about all the wonderful, diverse, enriching experiences his young WASP son was having with his rainbow of schoolmates. I then asked if, in affirmative-action-America with all those “diverse” kiddies about, he thinks young WASP son will be allowed into the ivy league college daddy went to. That did give my friend pause, but only for a second. Liberals, even GOP-voting like my friend, are very good at suppressing proscribed thoughts.)

I respect Ruddy’s opposing invading Iraq, but I can’t get behind anyone who wants to increase immigration into America today.

David B. writes:

I just read that Ruddy wants to raise legal immigration to 3 million a year. Leaving that aside for a moment, I would like to comment on his statement that “Clinton was a good President in some ways.” During the 90’s. we didn’t see anything “good” about Bill Clinton. Despite signing a few bills, the thrust of his Presidency was very much in a liberal direction, especially in cultural terms. This is what has counted in the long run.

Ruddy’s saying some good things about Bill Clinton is something you see conservatives do very often. They want to appear respectable to liberals, so they bend in their direction. Now, Ruddy wants to triple LEGAL immigration. This is a continuance of his favorable view of Clinton.

Several others have done this. A GOP consultant who did the anti-affirmative action ad for Jesse Helms some years ago, said back around 2003, “I would never do that ad now.” These “conservative patriots,” as Mr. sutherland calls them, want badly to be on good terms with liberals. Being a “pro-immigration conservative” has been the way to do that.

Jim Kalb writes;

He thinks of America as a team. That’s typical of vocal mainstream American conservatives today. America is a team, the Republicans are a team, the conservative movement is a team. That’s why they’ve have been such cheerleaders for Bush.

LA replies:

That’s a point I’ve often made about today’s mainstream conservatives, but never before in the context of immigration!

So Ruddy sees America as a team competing with other teams (see, he’s a traditional nationalist, not a universalist), and stealing talent from other teams is a smart move that strengthens our team and assures our continuing domination of the World League.

Further, since Ruddy’s paradigm is teams, and since actual sports teams today are not limited by race, culture, and language but seek talent everywhere, the same applies to our national team. Therefore adding three million talented non-Europeans to America’s team every year makes total sense.

This shows how one can believe in the concrete nation, and in that sense be a traditionalist conservative, but nevertheless define the nation in such a reductive manner (as a team, rather than as an actually existing historic culture and way of life), that one ends up supporting policies that are fundamentally indistinguishable from those of the nation-hating left and the universalist “right.”

Mark A. writes:

You bring up a good point about the paradox of Ruddy’s position. He supports something that he thinks is good for his “team” but it is also something that may destroy the country. But I disagree with the term Team-cons because it implies that people like Ruddy are pushing for anything greater than their own selfish interests. Mr. Sutherland’s post was outstanding and I’d like to add something to it. His post shows what I believe is the driving force behind Republican politics today: how can we get as many new workers into this country as possible. It is the dream of every plutocrat.

Ruddy, Bush, and Cheney only believe in Teams in the sense that the Team is a vehicle that they can use to promote their own selfish interests. The notion of America as an abstract entity in itself that needs to be nurtured is lost on them. Bush has oil interests. Cheney has Haliburton interests. Lord knows what interests Ruddy has. Many a member of the open-borders people sit or have sat on the boards of many large businesses. This is about lining their pockets. Mr. Sutherland brings up the tragic problem of all this: they are so blinded by their own greed that they refuse to see the dangers of this immigration scheme. Of course, they would see the dangers of the immigration scheme if they really cared about the United States and its citizens. They don’t.

LA replies:

I would ask Mark A. this: What—apart from the fact of Ruddy’s support for three million immigrants per year—persuades him that Ruddy is motivated by selfish interests rather than by (hideously misconceived) patriotic interests?

Mark A. replies:

Perhaps I shouldn’t have included Ruddy with Bush and Cheney, but the fact remains that big business plays a big role in the GOP. More than once have I heard friends of mine argue that voting Republican was going to help their stock portfolio. This appears to be a common belief among many GOP voters: the more jobs we outsource, the more wars we fight, the more immigrants we let in, the richer and fatter we’ll be! Not once in these discussions do I ever hear anyone ask what effect this will have on the country or our fellow citizens.

It may be a leap, but I think Ruddy’s support for three million immigrants is a fact that speaks for itself and is evidence that he has selfish interests. I can only come to that conclusion because I can’t possibly see another reason for his affirmative support for this. Ruddy isn’t just turning a blind eye to immigration, he wants MORE! Why would he want this? More immigration, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, is going to hurt the Republican party as people from the third world rarely vote Republican. It will increase the size of government. It will make affirmative action worse. Real estate prices are already through the roof. Public services are over-burdened. I’ll admit I probably jumped to this conclusion too soon, but I just can’t think of how someone who appears to be as intelligent as Ruddy could think this would be good for America the nation-state and her citizens. I think he thinks this is good for Ruddy Inc., whatever business he may be in.

Larry G. writes:

Sigh. It is because of attitudes like this that the software industry, where I attempt to make a living, has seen wages steadily decline over the last 20 years. Basically the practice has been to send as many jobs as possible offshore to places like India, and for those jobs that require a physical presence in the U.S., bring the Indians here. Loyalty to your own people never enters the picture.

I don’t know how many new jobs are produced in the U.S., but it isn’t three million per year. In fact it was about two million jobs total between 2001 and 2006. Even if it was three million jobs per year, all those jobs would go to Ruddy’s immigrants—because unlike baseball players they undercut the Americans on the “team” and drive down wages—leaving nothing for natural born American citizens. We would need levels of economic growth that rivalled China’s to accommodate that kind of immigration.

And so every 30 months we would add the population equivalent of New York City, or the entire state of New Jersey. Where, pray tell, is he going to put them? Last time I checked, aside from some lava beaches in Hawaii, the land area of the United States was not increasing. Every new immigrant needs a place to live, a place to work, roads to get from here to there, parking, food, water, sanitation, and energy. Adding to the human space generally means taking land away from the non-human space, such as a farm, a wetland, a wilderness area, a desert environment. Reducing farmland while increasing the number of mouths to feed is a recipe for disaster. Think of adding three million more cars to our traffic-jammed roads at rush hour, every year. More oil consumption. More electricity used, and we aren’t building enough power plants to keep up with the need now. More greenhouse gasses and air pollution. More stress on the water supplies, and water pollution. More destruction of the environment.

When do we say “enough”? Population has more than doubled in my lifetime with “only” a million legal immigrants per year. How large does Mr. Ruddy want our “team” to be? 500 million? With whites just under 50 percent, it won’t be “our” team anymore. How about one billion, 25 percent white? Two billion, 12 percent white? Four billion, six percent white? Does he really want to live in a country like that? I sure don’t.

Gary M. writes:

Obviously Mr. Ruddy has not considered the following:

 Thanks to our current immigration policies, most new arrivals will continue to come from 3rd world countries, especially Mexico.

 There is no way either political party is going to tamper with the current formulas either, or get rid of family reunification as the primary determinant of who gets in. A merit based system? Forget it.

 Even if we could cherry pick the “best and brightest,” what does Ruddy think that will do to the countries that lose them? That’s right, they’ll become even bigger 3rd world toilets, and their people will be clamoring to get out. And where will they go? Of course, to the place where they’ve got relatives who can sponsor them as immigrants.

I am skeptical also that we could even find three million high IQ individuals every year that would be willing to uproot themselves. In most countries, the educated, moneyed elite are pretty comfortable, and have no reason to leave, absent a cataclysmic event like a war or a revolution.

Mark P. writes:

“Team” is an interesting analogy, but if you carry the analogy further, it should give even this type of conservative pause: What happens when all of the non-European talent goes free-agent? What happens when they decide to play for other “teams” like the Democrats or the nations they happen to come from? Then what?

This is similar to the problems liberals face when they insist on treating the war on terror as a legal matter. Instead of invading countries, they argue, legal processes will be used to settle these problems. What they ignore is that legal processes include controlling crime scenes so that investigations can be performed in a controlled environment. Therefore, any application of the legal process to a place like Iraq requires that invasion (i.e. police control) be performed.

LA replies:

I don’t quite get Mark P’s analogy between teams and a legal process against terrorism. However, I am reminded of the way neocons will line up on the same side of some issue as the left, say immigration, and they will just assume that their own idea of immigration (that it will result in assimilation) will win out rather than the left’s idea of immigration (that it will result in more multiculturalism and the disintegration of the nation). Similarly, Ruddy thinks of the nation as a team, but it doesn’t seem to occur to him that teams can take many permutations, some of which will result in the opposite of what he wants.

Robert in Nashville writes:

Re the proposal for three million legal immigrats per year, I am reminded of the ex-Tennessee Senator Frist’s early bill. As a contrast to the President’s he advocated that we needed to increase LEGAL (diverse of course) immigration by one million per year. That would take care of the problem. As for the illegals, he never did deal with that and finally got behind W’s bill, dropping his own.

I could not resist faxing his office that I considered him to be the second biggest traitor ever, second only to our President. No response. Maybe I should be grateful—no knock on the door either.

Bruce B. writes:

I’ve encountered this type of attitude before and I’m not surprised. Some upper-middle class Republicans think the greatest thing about America is meritocracy. So it’s the same pattern as usual. Some “higher” value cannot be subverted for traditional understandings.

I don’t see why he’d be considered traditionalist in any way. I don’t see anything concrete in his nation. Maybe his higher value isn’t liberal, but economism isn’t conservative or traditional.

His was the general attitude of a Ayn Rand loving Bush-cheerleader I once knew.

This shouldn’t be different than your other analyses. Just replace “liberalism” with “economism” or “meritocracism.”

LA replies:

When I said that Ruddy is a traditionalist, I meant it in the limited sense that he believes in America’s interests and security as a country, has an instinctive dislike of those who subvert them, believes in a strong military, and does not sound neocon-universalist notes. So he’s what I would call a regular American patriot. It’s true that there is very little intellectual and cultural content to his conservatism. I was not calling him a traditionalist per se, but someone who has an element of traditionalism, an adherence to the nation as a concrete thing rather than as a liberal project.

At the same time, I admit it gets harder to maintain that view of Ruddy in light of his extreme immigration proposal, not only because support for three million immigrants per year is impossible to reconcile with any kind of solicitude for the well-being of this country, but also because of his expressed indifference to the well-being of other countries. A traditionalist or a patriot cares first, second, and third about his own culture or country; but, recognizing the importance of tradition in ordering human life, he respects other people’s cultures and countries as well. Ruddy’s callous disregard of the harm his proposals would do to other countries suggests a Machiavellian rather than a traditionalist mindset, i.e., a mindset focused on the acquisition of power, rather than on the good.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 26, 2007 02:44 PM | Send