And This Is Why Trump Is Popular

Submitted by Dave (United States), Oct 3, 2015 at 19:24

I agree that the pessimistic view is the correct one. Hart-Celler essentially opened up immigration to Third World countries, skewing the composition of our immigrants to be tilted far more towards cultures that are often backward, sometimes violent, and usually much less democratic. Also, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, immigrant families tend to use welfare at a much higher rate than the natives, and tend to have far lower skill levels. As though we need more entitlements given our obscene national debt levels!

Even our current level of immigration, at over one million per year - the most generous in the world - not to mention the copious flow of illegals, will hardly make a dent in world population growth, currently running at about 80 million a year, almost all of it from dysfunctional southern countries.

The US is currently succumbing to the classic delusion that so many successful civilizations have fallen prey to: The idea that we can simply extend our bounty to the rest of the world by putting out the welcome mat. The mistake is in forgetting that America is a lot more than a house in the burbs and two cars in the garage. It is rather an idea, a way of thought, painstakingly developed over the centuries in Greece, in Rome, then England, and finally forged in blood by the Founding Fathers and those who wrote the Constitution.

Yes, the Statue of Liberty welcomes the tired and the poor, but qualifies her message with those "yearning to breathe free". This means that we should require an understanding of what freedom means, and that can be a tough tutorial. It means that immigration must be gradual enough for us to make sure that the newcomers understand our system and can become a productive part of it, and not be a threat to its principles and resources by overwhelming them.

A lot of voters intuitively grasp the nature of the problem and want leadership. It's just too bad that it's been Donald Trump, so far, who has answered the call.

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