White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Immigration: Hard Heads and Bleeding Hearts Don’t Align

October 16, 2021 by Llewellyn King 1 Comment

The American head and heart aren’t in alignment on immigration. They are savagely apart.

The head argues that all those people amassing on the U.S.-Mexico border, or living in camps across the English Channel, or trying to get into Turkey from Syria should be sent home. The heart argues that people anywhere denied a reasonable life in the place in which they were born are entitled to find what they seek: freedom from want. It argues, too, that immigrants have made us wealthy down through the centuries.

The head is adamant: Unfettered immigration is conquest one person at a time — one ragged child, one desperate mother, one hopeful man. Immigration is destabilizing much of the Middle East, particularly Jordan and Lebanon. It is threatening Europe and is changing the face of the United States.

Bad governance has an impact beyond the borders of the badly governed country.

Small stretches of the Mediterranean Sea which separate Malta, Greece, Italy, and Spain’s Canary Islands from Africa haven’t deterred migrant crossings. If these migrants are accepted by European countries, they will bring with them their religion, their language, and their loyalty to the culture which they left behind.

Before the jet age and the communications revolution, an immigrant sought to be a new American, a new Briton, or a new Frenchman. Many of today’s immigrants don’t feel compelled to assimilate and can reside in North America or Europe but retain the aims and culture of the country from which they came.

I know Koreans who have lived in the United States for decades and speak no English — and have no need to. All their wants are met in Korean, from banking to television to shopping. I also know U.S.-born Salvadorans who talk about El Salvador as “my country.” The wheels have come off assimilation.

The receiving countries deserve some blame for those who remain alien. The prevailing identity politics doesn’t meld a nation. The “woke” reverence for every culture except its native culture and language is destructive.

The immigrants who flooded the United States in the 19th century and the first half of the last century came to assimilate, refusing to teach their children their native tongues. Now immigrants think and feel as though they are the citizens of other countries. It is easy to do, and “multiculturalism” is the facilitator.

American hearts go out to those who are living in hell on the southern border: Frightened, in need of food, in need of places to sleep and to defecate, often sick, preyed on by criminals in their own number, and believing myths — especially the myth that when Donald Trump lost the presidential election, they would be welcome in the United States.

The heart says immigration is good for us and that we are all immigrants; that our generous inheritance, from the genius of the Founding Fathers to the syncopation of jazz and the blues to the techno-wonders of Elon Musk, is the product of immigration.

But my heart and my head, and those of many Americans, align in believing that we have to stop identity politics, treasure our American identity, and explain to the world that the United States isn’t open to all, otherwise all would come.

The Trump administration failed to end illegal immigration with its incompetence, its bluster, and its wall. So far, the Biden administration has done worse. It has allowed a myth to circulate around the world that if you get to Latin America, even to faraway Chile, you can get into the United States.

President Biden should demand that Vice President Kamala Harris, who he put in charge of the border, do her job and produce some ideas. Her declaration that she will work to strengthen the countries of Central America so that their people stay home is fantasy.

Even if Harris could do that, she should note that the new flood of migrants is coming from across the world — from Haiti to Pakistan and other parts of Asia. U.S. intelligence has failed, and the vice president fails daily to address this global problem, which will only get worse as the climate changes and the seas rise. The brain reels and the heart bleeds.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Filed Under: King's Commentaries

Comments

  1. Edgar Boshart says

    October 16, 2021 at 1:40 pm

    I agree with you completely, but the American leadership and general population is mostly distracted by knee-jerk infantile media (always with an eye on celebrity and money) or focus groups on consequences and not on changing global geographical and political dynamics. Also assimilation and respect for and preservation of the most aesthetic qualities of imported cultural sensitivities is a very fine thread to weave. It takes serious courageous leadership and global size intelligence, both of which are seriously lacking in the US, and perhaps elsewhere. I myself am very pessimistic about the coming decade.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Censorship Isn’t the Solution to Social Media’s Ills

Censorship Isn’t the Solution to Social Media’s Ills

Llewellyn King

Technology is tampering with freedom of speech, and we don’t know what to do about it. At issue are the global platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and the disturbing propaganda, disinformation and lies propagated on them. The inclination, on the left and the right, is to censor. It is a terrible solution, more toxic and […]

Many Newspapers Are on Death Row; Will They Be Reprieved?

Many Newspapers Are on Death Row; Will They Be Reprieved?

Llewellyn King

Newspapers are on death row. The once great provincial newspapers of this country, indeed of many countries, often look like pamphlets. Others have already been executed by the market. The cause is simple enough: Disrupting technology in the form of the internet has lured away most of their advertising revenue. To make up the shortfall, […]

Fighting Wildfire With Fire, Lessons From Georgia and Florida

Fighting Wildfire With Fire, Lessons From Georgia and Florida

Llewellyn King

Did the fire at the end of Walt Disney’s iconic animated movie “Bambi” prejudice the country against forest management with controlled burning? Maybe so. The U.S. Energy Association in February presented a virtual media briefing on the fire threat in the West and the Southwest this year. The prognosis, especially from the weather forecasting company […]

Dark Clouds on the Horizon for Electric Vehicle Batteries

Dark Clouds on the Horizon for Electric Vehicle Batteries

Llewellyn King

The move to renewable energy sources and electrified transportation constitutes a megatrend, a global seismic shift in energy production, storage and consumption. But there are dark clouds forming, clouds reminiscent of another time. The United States has handed over the supply chain for this future to offshore suppliers of the critical materials used in the […]

Copyright © 2022 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in