Immigration

I am generally very pro-immigrant. In fact, I am so pro-immigrant that I believe in displacing and subjugating the Indignant Peoples who were not doing their share of defending their homeland. Thus, when Magyars immigrated to Hungary without proper visas, it was their right and duty to simply take over from the weaker Slavs. When Europeans discovered vast, resource-rich lands that were barely occupied by some Asiatic shamanists, it was their duty to bring civilization and to protect the little fellows who could not have defended their land. You see, the next invaders would not have had nearly the decency or compassion as the Europeans.

Now, this sounds to your modern, liberal ears, like the spew of some KuKluxery at worst, or, at best, like the quaint "white man's burden" rhetoric of Kipling. And, the latter is correct. In universities where one is told to question everything, questioning the equality of all cultures tends to be frowned upon. So I am offering a restorative:

Imagine that your little tribe of indians has the misfortune of living next to the Aztecs. It is the early sixteenth century. You are going to be invaded tomorrow. You get to pick the invaders. Obviously there is going to be some friction, and some heartache. One way or another some of you will die, and some of you will be enslaved. Now, do you want the invaders who will err on the side of concern for your immortal soul or the ones who will gleefully pluck your still-beating heart out and chuck your head down the side of a pyramid?

Or try this little game: Which people subjected to Attila the Hun were able to go to avoid a life of menial labor or sex slavery to go to University of Hun and write books about their oppression?

The possibilities are endless. In fact, being invaded by ANY non-Western power was infinitely worse than being invaded by ANY Western power (at least until Marxism came around).

But this is invasion. It is only one of the modes of immigration. It is the mode that most people like to hysterically bat around. We are being invaded by the brown people! We must defend against the menace. But we are not really being invaded.

Of course there are other modes of immigration to think about, as well, such as the one where one population is too low to sustain its economy. When this happens, you have to import people. You can do it completely on your own terms, and go to the Arabs and buy some hapless folk who happened to get conquered by that lovely non-Western power (yes, there were examples of enslaving Indians, which, as we all know, was a complicated and not nearly so mono-lithic practice among the Iberians, but the main way of getting dark-hued slaves was to buy them from other dark-hued people). This leads to problems, especially if you color code your slaves. If, for instance, we were to bring in Englischers as slaves, when slavery was abolished, they could blend right in the general population. But when you enslave black folks, there is always the stigma, the unspoken family history, the tragedy that faces you. It is why, unless we have such thorough intermarriage that race becomes totally negligible, there will probably never be comfortable race relations in this country. I can look to a Greek and know that perhaps his ancestor owned mine, or maybe mine owned his, but the possibility is two-way. When a black person looks at me, he knows that it could only have been a one-way possibility.

Do I have the solution to race relations? No. I tend these days to think that, very generally, perhaps folks should stick to their own, with lines, but not legally defined lines, and, these lines should certainly be blurred. Jazz, for instance, is a great example of why the lines ought to blur once in awhile. And if there are no legally enforced lines, there should also be no legally erased lines, either. Don't make an Italian neighborhood accept an Englischer. If the Englischer really wants in, he can work to gain the acceptance of the Italians. And likewise, don't make the WASPS take in an Italian family. If some misguided Italian wants to become one of them, at the risk of his eternal soul, then he can bargain with those people any way he wants. They are notoriously easy to win over with little trinkets and an imitation of their own accent. That is his business, and theirs. Forcing them to accept an Italian family in their enclave will not help either side.

So, we see the problem with slavery (besides the fact that it is morally unacceptible, although we could certainly craft some sort of indentured servitude that would preserve the dignity of the human person, in fact I am working on it, as we will need something to do with the Englisch after the war), and that leaves us with the huddled masses: the folks who see which side of the border their tortilla can be buttered on.

Now, some huddled masses are in such a state that they will become slaves, because it is better than what they are leaving. You have the situation with Exodus of old, and you have the Chinese of today who are willing to risk death and slavery to get out of the Middle Kingdom. Now, the obvious thing here is to let them in and imprison the slavers. These people so determined to come here are going to be good workers. Yes, there is the risk that if they do not assimilate, they will become an invading force, but that is where the superiority of our culture comes in, as well as our own will to dominate.

Certainly there are some wortwhile things to learn from other cultures: some techniques of medicine, some knowledge of botany, some food uses for things, perhaps even a poetic or artistic trick, certainly music, etc., and there is no need to worry about that. Things of a utile nature will be absorbed or rejected based on their utility. What we need to preserve is the fundamental cultural matrix, the philosophy, the religion, to some degree the language, although any Western language will do (obviously it would be best for everyone to speak good, old fashioned German, but I have no objection to one of the modern Latin dialects taking over), and the understanding of the common good and the relationship of the individual to that common good.

So, here is my proposed Immigration Policy. It, of course, violates the standing policies of the Endarkenment Government of our time, but it will go into effect within the first month of the Keilholtz dictatorship. For those of you who wish to craft some better policy in the meantime, you can borrow from it.

Anyone who is willing to accept and absorb these critical points: the orthodox Catholic Faith, Western language, Western concept of law, etc., ought to be fully accepted as a new resident, and should be held accountable to the law of the land to the exact same degree as anyone else, with one exception: if it is determined that he never held the essential core culture, that it was nothing more than a sham, he should be stripped of everything but the clothes on his back and a hundred dollars and deported. Otherwise, he should be considered a fast track candidate for citizenship.

Now, a second category are those who refuse Western culture and religion. Insofar as they are willing to abide by our rules, which we may set for them at our convenience, they may remain as Guest Workers for a fixed period of time. If, during that time they become won over to our Culture and Civilization, they may begin the process of moving into permanent residency. If, on the other hand, they transgress any of our rules, they go back, with fifty dollars in their pocket and absolutely nothing else. If they speak ill of our culture, they go back. If they participate in any politics beyond the Syndicate of Guest Workers and Employers, they go back. If they are sent back and return without authorization, they are to be executed.

Now, the other side of this coin is that those who leave the good graces of Western Culture, no matter their race, their place of birth, their ethnicity, are to be given one chance at re-education. If they relapse, they shall be stripped of their citizenship and their goods, and deported to the place of their new-found fondness. So a convert to Mohammedanism gets to go to Arabia. A convert to Marxism gets to go to North Korea. A convert to neo-paganism gets to go to Africa. If he reenters without leave, he shall be executed.

Mormons, since they have no true homeland, shall be sent to sex-segregated camps in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, where they should be allowed to live in peace, prosperity and relative isolation (of course they will have regular visits from Dominican friars to help them see the error of their ways) until the cult has faded away on its own.

But that is then. Now we are in a different situation, and it is a situation so dependent on immigrant labor that most of this debate is pointless and stupid.

Go ahead, ship all the illegal aliens back, if you could. See what will happen to the economy.

Better yet, make them legal as John suggests.

And then we can adopt one of my future solutions, to fit our current liberal democracy: only print our ballots in Western languages. German, Spanish, English. If enough Basques come here, then add Basque. But never print a ballot in an Eastern language, never in Arabic, never in Chinese. It is not that we want to exclude the Arab or the Chinese, but that we recognize that there is a gulf in their notions of the common good and ours, that cannot be mutually observed.

Anyway, enough of this. Amalia has finished her math final (97%), so that she will begin second grade math in January, and I need to get back to the Keilholtz Academy. There are cricket larvae to study.

Meanwhile, amuse yourself with thism via Mr. Salmon.

Posted by erik at December 21, 2007 9:54 AM