Tough Questions

Source: view from the right

If America had known when admitting Jewish immigrants between 1880 and 1920 that the descendants of those immigrants would oppose America’s right to have any future control over immigration, would America have admitted those immigrants in the first place?

I say that this is a legitimate point to make to the open-borders Jews and Catholics. “Was this part of the deal when your grandparents were admitted into America? That the very fact that America let your grandparents into this country requires you to subvert America’s national existence? In that case, your grandparents shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place.” If people started saying these things to the open-borders Jews and Catholics, it would shock at least some of them into realizing how offensive their position is to other Americans, and they would shut up.

Now add this...

I did a search to find out if Larry Craig is a Mormon, as southern Idaho is essentially an extension of open borders-friendly Mormon Utah. As I learned at Wikipedia, he’s not. Harry Reid is a Mormon, and Senate Mormons voted 3-2 in favor of the bill. However, by cross referencing the Wikipedia list of senators by religious affiliation with the Senate vote tally you posted at VFR, I found that Catholics voted 19-4 yes, with Bunning, Santorum, Sununu and Vitter voting no (Salazar did not vote). Jews voted 11-0 yes. The combined Catholic-Jewish vote was 30-4 in favor. Subtracting those 30 yes votes and 4 no votes from the 62-36 vote of the entire Senate leaves the remaining Senators voting 32-32. *snip*

To sum up James’s findings, it was the Catholic and Jewish contingents that made the vote lopsided in favor of this bill. At the same time, the Protestants (and the Mormons—I had no idea there were five Mormons in the U.S. Senate) are not off the hook either, as half of them voted for S.2611 as well. Still, the message is striking. Senate Jews (unanimously) and Senate Catholics (overwhelmingly) are pro-open borders and turn the Senate from what would otherwise be an evenly divided body into a heavily open-borders body.

All of which leads to the question: Can immigration restrictionists make any headway against the open-borders ideology without addressing the ethno-religious components of the support for that ideology? For example, let’s say we find ourselves, as I found myself recently, in a meeting where the immigration of Muslims or Mexicans is being discussed, and it turns out that the people at the table who vociferously object to any immigration restrictions, who indeed say that the very idea of excluding any group is immoral and illiberal, are all Catholics and Jews. Could one civilly point this fact out? Could one say that the Catholics and Jews in that discussion are pro-open borders because they think they are religiously obligated to support open borders, or because they still identify too much with their families’ immigration background, or because Catholics want to bring in lots of Catholic Hispanics? Could one legitimately say that this shows that they are thinking too much in terms of their own group and not of the well-being of the society as whole?

I think the answer is yes. If Catholics and Jews are resting on their Catholicism or Jewishness to support policies ruinous to our society, while using highly emotional and moralistic arguments to silence disagreement, then that ought to be discussed.

This is not a call for ad hominem or bigoted arguments. If an entire group is lopsidedly on one side of an issue, then clearly the opinions of the individual members of that group are not determined solely by a rational concern for the common good leading to logical conclusions individually arrived at (since, if they were so arrived at, the distribution of opinions in that group would be similar to that of the general population); they are determined by something about the group itself. So the group’s history, beliefs, and motives become a legitimate part of the debate. If we can publicly discuss why liberals as a group or agribusiness interests as a group are in favor of open borders, we should be able to discuss why Catholics as a group or Jews as a group are in favor of open borders.

Thought provoking stuff, and for the idjits out there, no, I'm not calling for a pogram, I'm calling for a discussion. If someone feels it is their religious duty to pursue something that I think will destroy this country, how do we approach that, how do we talk about that without terms like bigot being thrown around?