-Caveat Lector- Lew Rockwell has on his web site posted the complete text of the letter that Brimelow sent, before editing and expurgation by the editors of Commentary. ================= To see in boldface the bolded sections to which Brimelow refers, go to http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/brimelow2.html KB <<The Complete Brimelow Letter by Peter Brimelow Note: I've bolded what was cut out - the attack on the neocons and a parallel with Pickett's Charge [!] They made some minor word changes which I represent with brackets - including cutting out the reference to National Review, oddly. To The Editor, Commentary Irwin Stelzer is to be congratulated on a remarkable review of a remarkable book: George Borjas' Heaven's Door: Immigration and the American Economy (Commentary, September 1999). Borjas' research has led him to astonishing findings: that the immigration wave accidentally unleashed by the 1965 legislation has not benefited Americans in aggregate; that lower-skilled workers in particular are being hurt; that the current system's paradoxical selection process is producing lower-skilled (and overwhelmingly Third World) immigrants; that these immigrants are disproportionately failing and going on welfare; that Americans are actually paying, through fiscal transfers, for the transformation of their society. Dr. Stelzer's handsome acknowledgement that "many of these findings are now uncontested" is entirely appropriate - but only for economists. In public debate, the conventional wisdom is still entirely the opposite. I must gently point out that this unfortunate situation is, in a small way, Dr. Stelzer's fault. In 1995, I published Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster. It anticipated Borjas' conclusion that U.S. immigration policy is broken and must be fixed - although reasonable people can certainly disagree on how to fix it - for the simple reason that my book [a book that was] in large part an explicit popularization of Borjas' work. But Dr Stelzer, in his New York Post column (April 13, 1995), brushed aside the very evidence that he now finds so compelling as a "narrow-minded statistical compendium." He completely ignored my exposure of the paradoxical selection process that he now describes as "one of the besetting sins of the present system." Instead, his point was purely emotional: that my argument was rightly "falling on deaf ears in the neo-conservative community" because "they well remember their parents' tales of the contempt in which they were held by earlier immigrants and nativist WASPs..." Naturally, I rejoice at the return of the Prodigal Stelzer. Needless to say, I look forward to being enlightened by him, in the best tradition of Commentary's correspondence columns, as to which of my personal failings so blinded him, happily for a mere four years, to the facts. But ideas, and emotions, have consequences. The year 1995 was a brief shining moment of hope for immigration reform. The landslide victory of California's Proposition 187, cutting off certain tax subsidies to illegal immigrants, had gotten the attention of the Washington elite. The bipartisan Jordan Commission, appointed by Congress and headed by the late black Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, had provided perfect political cover with its recommendation of significant immigration cutbacks. Legislation embodying these proposals, the Smith-Simpson bill, had the support of the leadership of the Republican majority in Congress. It took a ferocious campaign of special-interest lobbying to intimidate the Republican leadership and derail the Smith-Simpson bill. Playing a critical fifth-column role in that campaign were the neoconservative-dominated media ? notably the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Dr. Stelzer's own Weekly Standard magazine. They amply demonstrated that he was right to predict they would have "deaf ears" to facts and logic about immigration. Sadly, however, he had helped stop those ears. Today there is no immediate prospect that the present system, with all its "besetting sins," will be reformed. I think the failure of Smith-Simpson was disasterous for the American nation. Apparently this unit of analysis makes Dr. Stelzer uncomfortable. But perhaps he could be interested in the fate of the American conservative movement, and of the Republican Party, to which the neo-conservatives have allied themselves. One part of Alien Nation that Dr. [What Mr.] Stelzer still has not reckoned with is its discussion of the level at which immigration should be set. I pointed out that because Americans of all races have brought their families down to replacement level, the demographic impact of immigration is much greater than it was during the last great wave in 1890-1920, when the native-born population was still growing rapidly. Combined with the system's paradoxical selection process, which has favored the Third World and choked off Europe, this means the U.S. racial balance is being shifted rapidly. Thus whites have gone from being about 90% of the population in 1960 to 75% in 1990. They are projected to go below 50% in the mid-21st century. Ethnic identity and partisan affiliation are closely correlated in American politics, changing only slowly if at all. Elsewhere [National Review, June 16, 1997], Edwin S. Rubenstein and I have shown that, if this racial shift continues, the Republican Party can reasonably hope to win just two more Presidential elections. After 2008, they will go decisively into a minority. After 2025 or so, even a sweep among whites of Reaganesque proportions will not outweigh the effect of imported Democrats. The inexorable logic of the situation is that, If the present U.S. political order is to survive, either immigration must be made proportionate to the racial groups already here, or it must be reduced low enough not to disturb the racial balance. I think the latter is more practical. But, again, I await enlightenment from Dr. Stelzer - when he decides to think about it. But he had better not take another four years. It has been said that the catastrophe of Pickett's Charge, and the loss of the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, was the price that the South paid for Robert E. Lee. The contribution of the neoconservatives to American conservatism is an oft-told tale. Tragically, their price - missing the chance to reform immigration - may prove equally fatal. December 1999 PeterBrimelow is Senior Editor of Forbes. 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