Thread: Navarrette: "you are all racists"

"Fear of foreigners drives immigration debate"

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN
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SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- This week marks the first anniversary of a series of major demonstrations over immigration reform. And while an entire year has gone by, Americans really haven't learned that much about the subject matter.

For instance, some immigration restrictionists are still playing pretend. They are still insisting that the only thing that people are concerned about is illegal immigration and that, with regard to legal immigration, America is as welcoming as ever.

What? Maybe that's true ... if we agree that -- despite the brochure -- America has never really welcomed immigrants, even the legal kind.

Those who insist otherwise point out that the United States takes in about 2 million legal immigrants annually.

Big deal. In a country of 300 million people that bills itself as the land of immigrants, taking in less than 1 percent of your population in legal immigrants is nothing to brag about.

Besides, the history is clear. In the late 1700's, Benjamin Franklin fretted over Pennsylvania becoming "a colony of aliens" thanks to German immigrants. In the mid-1800's, concerned that immigrants from the Far East wouldn't assimilate, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to keep out ... guess who. And in the early 1900's, Congress targeted Italians, Jews and Greeks by creating quotas that limited immigration by country of origin.

In each of those cases, those who tried to shut the door didn't care a whit that the people they were keeping out were coming legally. All they cared about was that the immigrants on the other side of that door were foreigners with weird languages, strange religions, and peculiar customs.

Not much has changed. Much of what's driving the current debate is the same fear of foreigners and the changes they bring.

Some groups pushing the restrictionist agenda -- such as NUMBERS USA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies, all of them started with the help of nativist John Tanton -- want to limit legal immigration as well. And Congress can't seem to debate immigration reform without declaring English the national language, even though one has nothing to do with the other.

In public opinion polls, a majority of Americans now say they want to limit all immigration, including the legal kind.

Some pundits claim that legal immigration leads to illegal immigration because, once people come to the United States legally, their relatives will follow even if it means coming illegally. On the flip side, there are those who oppose offering illegal immigrants a path to legal residency because it could make it easier for millions of additional immigrants to come into the country legally through policies that push family unification.

Others insist that the cultural concerns that come with having too much immigration -- people not learning English, changing neighborhoods, etc. -- don't go away when the immigrants in question come legally.

So let's stop pretending that it's only illegal immigration that has Americans worked up. It's immigration -- period. Along the way, we should have at least learned that much.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist. You can read his column here.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Date of release and link please.

W

Those who insist otherwise point out that the United States takes in about 2 million legal immigrants annually.

Big deal. In a country of 300 million people that bills itself as the land of immigrants, taking in less than 1 percent of your population in legal immigrants is nothing to brag about.

All other nations combined accept less than the 2 million that the United States take in annually. Actually, I think we are very generous.

Heres the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/01/navarrette/index.html

POSTED: 10:31 a.m. EDT, May 14, 2007

I wish he'd shut up.

What a waste of ban width and ink. Why do we even bother publishing his crap on Alipac? He can't even formulate a descent argument.

I bet he saw how much attention Graham was getting by calling us bigots so he decided to jump in for some spot light by calling us racists. We should just stop paying attention to him.

Really, he's so OBL I bet his tail hurts all the time.

Dixie

in the early 1900's, Congress targeted Italians, Jews and Greeks by creating quotas that limited immigration by country of origin.

Setting quotas by country of origin assures that there is some degree of "diversity" in legal immigration, rather than having the majority of immigrants coming from one or two countries, stifling assimilation. Clearly there are some who think that Mexicans have some special entitlement to migrate at will.

As an immigrant myself, I strongly disagree with Mr. Navarette.

What made me come to the US was its way of life, culture, land, language and its history.
I learned English before coming here. I assimilated the culture and left my old country behind for good.

Why does this wave of new immigrants want to make this country just
like the ones they left behind? It beast me.

odiesback wrote:

Why does this wave of new immigrants want to make this country just
like the ones they left behind? It beast me.

Because, aside from being extremely racist, they are too stupid and lazy to make the effort to assimilate. The problem is, they are here in such great numbers they do not have to assimilate in order to survive as did earlier legal immigrants.

This moron seems to forget the name of this country is the "United" States, and has obviously never heard of e pluribus unum.