October 14, 2024 • 34 mins
In this episode of "The Fourscore and Seven Project," Roger Clark interviews Jeremy Carl, a fellow at the Claremont Institute and author of "The Unprotected Class," to discuss the contentious and highly politicized issue of immigration in the United States. The conversation begins with a comparison between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the current immigration challenges faced by the U.S., exploring the potential consequences of uncontrolled immigration. Carl provides insights into how historical precedents can inform contemporary policy, emphasizing the importance of cultural assimilation and the risks posed by demographic shifts. The episode also addresses the broader implications of immigration on American identity, the role of political ideologies in shaping immigration policy, and the ongoing debate over whether diversity is a strength or a challenge for the nation. This thought-provoking discussion challenges listeners to consider the long-term impacts of immigration on American society.
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(00:21):
Welcome to this episode of the Fourscore
and Seven Project, a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark. Your host.
Today, our subject iswhat is possibly the most contentious
and controversial topic in Americathe immigration crisis.
And we will attempt to peel backthe bewildering onion
layers of this complexand politicized issue
(00:44):
to better understand the causesand implications of just what might be
the most profoundis a transition of a single civilization
because of uncontrolled immigrationin almost 2000 years.
We are pleased to have as our guestthe eminent scholar Jeremy Carl,
currently a fellow at Claremont Institutein Southern California,
(01:04):
a past research fellow at StanfordUniversity's Hoover Institution
and a former deputy assistant secretarywith the Department of the Interior.
Jeremy is a graduate of Yale Universityand the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, and he isthe author of the bestselling book
The Unprotected Class.
Welcome, Jeremy.
(01:25):
Thanks so much for having me on.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Good to see you.
So coming back toto the proposition in your book,
you make the propositiona comparison that the fall of the Western
Roman Empire almost 2000 years agowas because of uncontrolled immigration.
And you can comparewhat's happening on our borders today
with what happened in the WesternRoman Empire so long ago.
(01:48):
Can you explain what you mean by that?
Sure.
And I should add, this is I'mnot a Western Roman Empire specialist,
so I'm really reliant, asI note in the book, on the work of those
who are and primarily a couple of booksby a scholar named Peter Heather, who's in
the United Kingdom, who has writtenwritten on the fall of the Roman Empire.
And he basically traces it.
And by the way, this is not unique to him.
(02:10):
So it's not like he thinks thisand nobody else thinks that.
I just think he's done the best kind ofcomprehensive explication of what it is.
But he essentially kind of tracesthe fall back to in, I think 376.
You have some visigothic tribesthere running away from the Huns
who were sort of pursuing them.
They're actually people
with a legitimate asylum claim,unlike a lot of the claims today.
(02:32):
And they sort of appeal to the Romansfor asylum, and that's granted.
But things don't end upkind of working in the way that they do.
And it used to be in earlier Roman historythat immigration had been
even though was a very multiethnic empire,
but it had been strictly controlled,particularly sort of
who lived in the core Italy and underwhat circumstances they could do so.
(02:54):
But in this case, they sort oflet them in.
And then a couple of years later,the kind of people they'd granted asylum
to turn on them with force of armsand win a big battle against the Romans.
These these so-called barbarian tribes,as the Romans would have referred to them.
And this leads to less than 100 yearslater, the fall of the western
Roman Empire,which most historians would date to 476.
(03:18):
And so really, the collapse of what hadbeen the greatest ancient civilization.
Well, I'm a amateur historian.
Love ancient Roman history,both the republic and also the empire.
And this is interesting to hear this,because to me, I've always
been able to understandthe fall of the Eastern Empire
because the people who assault
in Constantinoplecame over the walls that I understand.
(03:42):
But to me, the Western Roman Empirejust kind of melted away.
I think you make the pointthat as a result,
there was a new civilization in WesternEurope as a result.
And can you elaborate the processesby which that that occurred?
Sure.
So you had the collapse of any sortof centralized Roman authority.
And eventuallythis led to the rise of the church
(04:06):
as the kind of most powerful institutionin the Middle Ages.
But this was a very distinct and differentand in many ways,
for hundreds of years,a lesser to the extent that we can talk
about those sorts of termswithout being too provocative.
Civilization than what had preceded it.
I know my father used to always tell meas a when I was a kid,
(04:27):
you know, he would talk abouthow the people would sort of
in the Middle Ages,they would look at some of the
engineering, architectural or whateveraccomplishments of the ancient Romans,
and they would almost be likeit was a race of aliens that had done it.
They couldn't even imagine itbecause the entire civilization,
the organization of the civilizationand I'm not just being rhetorical there.
(04:47):
I mean, scholars have ways that they,you know,
choose to use empiricallyto kind of measure sort of how advanced
and centralized and sophisticateda civilization is
when under utter collapse,once the Roman Empire collapses.
And it's really not for maybea thousand years, you know, or whatever,
till the beginning of the renaissance,that you begin to really come out of that.
(05:10):
Not that,of course, there weren't very worthwhile
and useful things that happenedfrom this new civilization,
But it was really a dramatic departureonce the Roman Empire falls.
Well, I know when I.
Was growing up, I think the popular phrasewas the Dark Ages.
I think that that's kindof become a disfavored term these days.
And they say, well, it really wasn'tquite so dark, but it was in
(05:31):
deep twilight, at the very least,because literacy rates dropped.
Books were no longer common.
The engineering you talk about roadmaking stopped
governmental buildings as opposed toreligious buildings were no longer erected
and everything just went back into reverse
because of the collapseof that civilization.
With your comparison with what's going onnow, bring bring it up to the current
(05:53):
date, with what's going onwith immigration on our borders today.
What's what's comparable to what happenedin ancient Rome and what's different?
Yeah, and I don't want to be too facile.
And in the book, I'm not too facileeither about trying to make
this direct comparison of,you know, we're ancient Rome,
and because people are immigrating here,we're automatically going to collapse.
(06:15):
And I mean,there are a number of differences.
I would say the similaritywas that a lack of control
and in our case, a little weirdly,
because I think what we have right nowis a willful lack of control
and a very organized lack of control,particularly under under Biden.
I mean, he's taking it to extreme levelsthat even a cynic
such as myself did not thinkthat we would get to for political reason.
(06:38):
But even among some of his more recentDemocratic predecessors,
there has not been a particular eagerness
to enforce our borderas if it is something that really matters.
So that that's actually pretty differentbecause the Roman Empire,
even though they kind of lost control,but they were certainly
they thoughtthis was a very serious question
and they thoughteven though they had a very expansive view
(07:01):
of who could become Rome and over timeand I think we have that same
vision as Americans,but they certainly had a lot of hoops
that you had to jump through to do that.
So you have that.
You also have it being it'smuch more of a global flow.
I mean, as expansive as the Roman Empirewas by the standards,
particularly of its time,there were sort of limits.
(07:23):
I mean, you didn't have peoplefrom the southernmost reaches of Africa.
Obviously, you didn't have nativeAmericans showing up in the Roman Empire.
This was kind of primarilynot exclusively, but it's primarily
a European North Africaand maybe the periphery of Asia
type migration patternthat you have going on.
(07:45):
Whereas truly in the U.S.,particularly in the last few years,
we've had a global pattern of migration.
And in fact we even have visas,the so-called
diversity visathat the Democrats have refused.
Unfortunately, to get rid of thatwe are letting people in precisely
on the basis of the countrythey're coming to.
Having very limitedprevious immigration or interaction
(08:08):
with America's culture and civilization.
I just find that to be profoundly oddand I find the ideology that leads
that to happen to be profoundly odd
in a uniquely modern way that certainlythe Romans would not have understood.
So, Jeremy, this raises the question,and you actually posed it in your book.
(08:29):
You said it's a choiceand the Romans made a choice.
And this country right nowis engaged in a great debate
about what that choice should be in 2024.
It's obviously a very hotly contestedpresidential election.
And front and centerin this particular election is what will
our choice be abouthow to deal with immigration,
(08:49):
which and then raisesthe question is demography, destiny?
That's a phraseI think, that shows up in your book.
Tell us a little bitabout your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I mean, there are certain levels inwhich I would say demography is destiny.
But I think the good news is thatdemography is also a little bit arbitrary.
I mean, a lot of people try to pretendthat our racial and ethnic categories are
(09:11):
things that are just kind of descendfrom God on a high and a given to Moses.
And with the ten Commandments.
And what I would suggestis that, in fact, the good news,
if we so choose to kind of goin this direction, is that
ethnic categoriescan actually be quite expansive.
And so there's a lot of groupsand really Hispanics,
(09:31):
and this is most relevant herefor a California audience.
You know, we've sort of chosento kind of treat them since 1980
when we put this in the censusas a different category than whites.
But this is a predominantlyit's four times more European
ancestry groupthan any other type of ancestry.
They have 30% of them intermarryingwith white non-Hispanics.
(09:52):
Really, the only reason you kind of have,
other than some of thesepolitical reasons,
to not kind of include themdemographically in what maybe would be
a future American majority is likea sort of racist one drop of blood rule
such as we had in the 19th centurywhere, you know,
if you had one drop of nonwhiteblood, supposedly.
Right.
Or some small quantity of youweren't considered white anymore.
(10:14):
So these are sort of arbitrary.
My kind of favorite exampleof how arbitrary
sometimes these categories can beis the Hungarians.
And I've spent some some time in Hungaryover the last few years.
They have a great traditionthat's really important to them,
and it gives themtheir very unique language,
which is not related toany of the other languages around them
(10:35):
of being kind of descendedfrom these Central European conquerors
who did in fact sweep in a thousand yearsago and ran Hungarian society,
converted Hungaryto Christianity over time, and kind of had
this whole profound effecton Hungarian civilization.
Yet if you actually, as
we've been able to domodern genetic studies on the Hungarians,
(10:56):
what we've discoveredis pretty much identical
to their Central European neighborsbecause the sort of Central Asian group
that kind of came in and swept inand conquered Hungary
and kind of gave Hungary its culturalidentity is essentially all wiped out.
They become the Hungarian nobility
and they're all wiped out by the Turksin the 14th century.
But even though geneticallythey're no longer the same,
(11:20):
they're no longer really presentas other than as a ghost
in the Hungarian population.
Culturally,they still have a profound effect on who
the Hungarians think they are and how theyperceive themselves in their culture.
And so I think it just shows thateven if you say things like
demography is destiny,how we see ourselves
demographically is really profoundlymalleable.
(11:40):
It's not kind of written in stone.
Well, that's an interesting point,because the example you gave in Hungary
suggests that the preexisting societyin Hungary prior
to the Turks had a powerful qualityof assimilation,
and so that the Turks assimilated
a lot of the preexisting culture,even though the genetics
are very different.
But the culture was passed down.
Sure. Absolutely.
(12:01):
And you see this you see this everywhere.
And you see this in the Americanizationprocess of white ethnics over
the last particularly 100 plus yearsthat I mean, one of the things
I kind of exploit as a myth inmy book is up until the 1880s,
from 1607 onward, when you have thethe the first settlements in Jamestown
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that are somewhat successful,
it's primarily at northwestern Europeanphenomenon and even primarily a British
phenomenon,you really begin to get other groups in
in really large numbers, only towardthe latter half of the 19th century.
And yet the 20th century is very muchabout assimilating these groups.
And of course, this doesn't mean they allcompletely lose their unique identities,
(12:44):
but they all become this American majorityto the point that to kind of go
into my book, you know, everybody's
complaining about white people nowand this kind of white monolith.
But in fact,these were all very different groups
that assimilated into a common cultureover a period of decades and time,
because that was something, at leastat the time in the 20th century America.
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We thought this was really good
and we were unapologetic about saying,hey, you're going to come to America,
you're going to assimilateinto our culture.
We thought that was a very good thing.
We've lost a lot of thatcultural confidence now.
Well,assimilation used to be a good thing.
Now, I think the counterpointto that, it's cultural appropriation,
which is a bad thing.
(13:25):
It seems to me that those two particular
things are very much in tensionin the current society right now.
There's a lot of pushbackagainst assimilation because that's a bad
cultural appropriation, which I assumethat presents a lot of problems too,
with a continuation of a of a transmissionof traditional values on all on its own.
absolutely.
I mean, and don't get mestarted on cultural appropriation, because
(13:46):
the story of civilization is ultimatelythe story of cultural appropriation.
Right.
I mean, it's it'staking something that you like
in any sort of global civilization,at least
from a different cultureand making it your own.
I mean, just to come upwith a trivial example,
I remember from my childhood, Lee Iacocca,who you'll remember
and I remember and maybe some ofthe younger visitors were not
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kind of an
iconic American executive and successstory, particularly in the 1980s.
He was sort of held up.
I remember reading his autobiographywhen I was younger,
and he describesas a youth having pizza parties
and how all of his non-Italian friendsjust thought, you know,
like what sort of, you know,ethnic slurs, Bing, is this this pizza?
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You know, this is absurd.
This is crazy. You know,you're not really an American.
Now, people would say, you know, like,what is more American?
I mean, obviously,we recognize it's Italian origin, but
but pizza is very American,right, like that.
And we've made it Americanin a variety of ways
that are very differentthan its Italian origins.
That type of story,that type of cultural appropriation
is really at the heart of whatwe used to think of as being American.
(14:53):
But now, you know, unfortunately,I think we take a very different view.
Any any speculation why that's happened?
Well, I mean, I'mnot sure how well out to be on this,
But I mean, I'll just say I think it'sunfortunately, it's been a really
negative side effect of the lefttaking over
the commanding heights of the culturein the way that they have
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and pushing an agendathat has not been kind of just hostile to
white people, but it's been been hostileto their culture and
and kind of history and trying to say that
everything that came before in Americais is really bad in some way.
And we have to kind of remake everything.
And so it's sort of been a long leftistmarch through the institutions
(15:34):
that's kind of led us to get to this pointwhere we are now.
And I think it's again, it's it'sunfortunately really regrettable.
I don't think that there'sany one kind of sharp point
where you can just say, well,you know, there everything changed.
But I think just over a time,we really kind of got to this point
where we really lost confidencein our culture and our civilization.
(15:54):
Well, you know, it's interestingthat you mentioned the pizza example.
Another great example would be hamburger,
which I believe comes from Hamburg,Germany.
We don't think of thatas being ethnic eating or what about beer?
I don't think this country drank
much beeruntil the German immigration in the 1800s.
It's another thing
that we appropriated culturally,but no one thinks about that anymore.
It's just part of our culture.
We have an infinite culturalappropriation.
(16:15):
Americais the land of cultural appropriation
and taking it and making it American.
And why we would want to dispensewith that in favor of having everybody
be really Balkanized is not a questionI am smart enough to answer, I guess.
Yeah.
You made the pointthat the only other area on the planet
besides the United Statesthat is encountering similar
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immigration issues is Western Europeor Northern Europe.
I believe similar immigration policiesand things of that nature.
And then you contrast it to other placeslike even like Mexico, where only 1%,
I believe, of the population is foreignborn, or China, which only allows several
thousand people a year
to immigrate into China or Japan,which almost has closed borders in a sense
(16:59):
very, very low foreign born population iswhat's going on in Western Europe, in the
in the United States, a functionof a declining population
that needs support of immigration to keepthe population growing and healthy.
Yeah, I don'tI don't believe that that. Okay, okay.
Let me back up. At a trivial level.
Our fertility is below replacement.
So, yes, if we didn't have anyimmigration, our population would fall.
(17:21):
The factthat this is some sort of huge crisis
that demands immediate amelioration is,I think, simply a political tactic.
It's a political statementthat lacks kind of empirical support
by one of the kind of reasons why is that?
There's a lot of datathat scholars have done.
When you have a lot of immigration, ittends to suppress native born fertility.
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So part of the reasonwhy we have such low fertility
is because we've got a lot of immigrationand those immigrants are taking
opportunities that, you know,might be there for native born people.
And so if I'm looking at that as a parent,I have five kids myself.
So I maybe, you know, I kind of ignoredthat in thinking about my own family size.
But when most people are thinkingabout the future for their family,
(18:05):
they're sort of looking to some degreeat least it plays in to like, well,
what sort of opportunitiesare going to be out there for them
When you have a lot of immigration,
those tend to be at leasta little bit suppressed.
So you've got you've got that going on.
But I think that the real keyis what you touched on,
which is America and Europe are reallythe only countries that are sort
of expected to do that, or Australiaand these other few European
(18:26):
derived countriesare just expected as a matter of course,
to have mass immigration, and that's fine,but nobody ever demands it out of China.
Nobody ever demands that of India.
Nobody ever demands that even if Mexicoright next door to us.
And so that's very curious that they don'tseem to think that immigration
is perhaps such an allied goodas we have to pretend it is in America.
(18:50):
And I'm you know,I'm obviously very skeptical of that.
At the same time, you know,I acknowledge that.
Well done.
There are certainly advantagesthat can accrue to immigration,
but I don't think we've been doing itin a very smart way for quite some time.
And we will certainly get into that.
But that kind of brings to the nextquestion immigration is one thing,
but the next questionwhich you raise, I believe,
(19:12):
is who joins the political communityand the joining the political community
to lead, from my point of view, meanshaving the right to vote, cast votes in
not only localbut state and also national elections.
And that raises anotherserious debatable issue.
Currently,I think there's a number of communities,
local communities in this country todaythat allow non-citizens to vote.
(19:32):
I believe that federal law prohibitsnon-citizens voting in federal elections.
But what are the factorsonce you get past the immigration,
the steps by which someone
becomes entitled to participatein the political community, which
I assume traditionally meansyou're getting a visa
or getting a green card,ultimately becoming an American citizen,
the steps and the hoopsyou have to go through to do that.
(19:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
And this is part of our general debasementof citizenship as a whole.
I mean, when you go backand you look at ancient Athens
and sort of thethe kind of cultural origins of the West,
you know, to become an Athenian citizen,
you had to accomplish all of these things.
You had to jump through all these hoopsto kind of prove your loyalty.
(20:14):
You know,now we have people who are citizens of
we have certain laws about being ableto speak English to become a citizen
that have only a very few exceptions,that we simply ignore
about not being dependentthat are required.
We just ignore these laws.
And so when we're told that in fact,
when Donald Trump tried to kind of say,hey, we should actually follow our laws,
(20:34):
and to me it just undisputablethat this was the law.
But we essentially had what was a judicialnullification of some of that. So.
Right.
Judges just said,
we don't care what the law is, you know,we're just going to to do it that way.
And as you point out, who forms thatpolitical community is really important
in the U.S.
right now because of illegal immigration,and particularly in California, this is
(20:56):
particularly striking.
We have a lot of what the British calledin the old days, rotten boroughs,
which were in the British contextin the 19th century.
These were electoral districtsthat for various reasons,
ended up having very, very few eligiblevoters relative to other districts.
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And so therefore, they were calledrotten boroughs because it was really easy
for powerful political actors to corruptthe electoral process in these boroughs.
And eventuallythe Brits did away with that.
But we have that because of how we doour congressional redistricting.
So, A, we reward states like Californiafor having a lot of illegal immigrants
by counting those illegal aliensin the census.
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And that determines both how many people,California, how many congressional
districts California gets, but also who'sin those congressional districts.
So you have some congressional districtsin California
that have a dramatically lower numberof eligible citizen voters
because you have all these illegal aliensin these districts
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and so they're not eligible to vote.
And so what happens, of course, isyou're giving, I would argue, illegally,
far more power to the eligible voters
in those districtsthan you are to those same eligible voters
in California who are in districtswhere more people are here illegally.
So that's a sort of of a backdoor forentry to joining the political community.
(22:24):
There's no direct
right of vote, but because of how we'vestructured the process in this country,
there is effective representation
because they're counted
for the census purpose and the divvying upof the various congressional districts
in the United States.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, California is fighting to enforceAmerican immigration laws,
and I don't think that's a stretchto describe California's
(22:46):
immigration enforcementstarting back in the days of Prop 87.
Right.
Which was the originalanti-illegal immigration bill
that was thrown out by a ratherdubious court judgment
by a fairly radical judge.
And despite the factthis had passed overwhelmingly
in California, I think 58,59% of the vote, the Democratic governor
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at the time just said, you know what, hey,we're not going to appeal this.
We're not going to defend California'slaw passed by the voters selectively.
Right.
And do we really want our governmentdeciding which ones of the laws we pass?
It's going to defend or not defend
the. They got a
free, free pass to dojust that back in the east.
(23:33):
And Californiawas fundamentally transformed as a result.
So let's let's pause for just a moment,put up a couple of definitions.
We're we're talking aboutuncontrolled immigration
as opposed to legalized immigration,if that's the right comparison.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, I do
I mean, I'm a pretty hawkish personon the question of immigration.
(23:55):
And we can get intowhy as the conversation develops.
But I think there's too much ofan emphasis sometimes on the right to say
legal, good, illegal,bad and well, illegal is certainly bad.
And while legal immigration certainlyis in a very different category,
because obviously our lawsare at least being respected,
(24:16):
but it's still fair to askin ways that I think we often don't
even for legal immigration,I would argue that the sole criteria
that we should use for illegalimmigration is what serves
the just interests of the peopleof the United States of America.
So we're not a charity ward.
We're not letting in immigrantseven legally
(24:38):
out of just some sort of sense of,you know, noblesse oblige.
It's like if we thinkthat having them here will serve America's
long term interests, well,then we should admit that immigrant
and if we don't think that way,then we shouldn't admit them.
And we should havethat sort of fundamental American interest
in mind with every immigration decisionwe make.
(24:59):
And unfortunately,I think we often don't do that.
Well, that doesn't that highlight anotherbattle line, the so-called culture wars,
because depending on where you fallon the culture wars,
on one side, there are people who believethat traditional American values
should be preservedand should be passed down.
And on the other side,
they believe there's somethinginherently evil about this country.
(25:20):
And the and this is the situationwhere we want to cancel
what's happened in the past.
And therefore, it would seem to methat you get into these political debates
and that directly impactswhat the policy on immigration is you
because if you think that there needsto be cancellation of what
all the bad parts in this countrythat have preceded us,
the only way to take care of thatand address
(25:41):
it is to change the cultureof the community or the nation as a whole.
Is that something you agree withor disagree with?
Yeah, I do actually agree,and I think part of the part of
have been part of the reasonwhy I am very skeptical of
the diversity is our strength ideology,let's call it.
And interestingly,as I point out in my book,
the phrase diversity is our strength,which you hear bandied about quite a bit
(26:03):
these days, actually originatesfrom a comment that then Vice President
Dan Quayle gives to a group of Japanesebusinessmen in the wake of the L.A.
riots in the early 1990s,where we might have thought that
perhaps it illustrated somesome problems with diversity.
And when the Japanesebusinessmen expressed that,
(26:24):
we allsaid, no, no, diversity is our strength.
So that's sort of wherethat phrase really comes from,
where I think the problemwith that ideology lies is that
I think all things being equal, diversityis is really a challenge and a weakness.
And I want to be very carefulabout what I mean when I say that.
I'm not suggesting that the diversegroups of people who are coming here
(26:46):
are bad people,that they don't want to be Americans,
that they don't even contributeto American society.
I'm not saying thatany of that is necessarily the case.
I'm saying that all things being equal,large amounts of diversity in society
and again, this is a very consistentfinding of social science research
make that society more difficultto govern, more fractious, less trust.
(27:07):
All these other things,even if the people you're bringing in
are sensational people,it's a challenge to be overcome.
It's not in and of itself an asset.
Well,it comes back to the point. It's a choice.
And, you know,
we canlook to our northern neighbor, Canada,
which has the political divisivenessbecause of the French
speaking Quebec and Englishspeaking the rest of of Canada.
(27:31):
I think that's your point.
No, absolutely.
And actually, right now, interestingly,Canada has an immigration system
that even compared to our own open bordersas a percentage of the population,
they are radically transformingtheir polity without even any vote.
We are at like 15.5% foreign bornright now as a country.
(27:52):
That's the highestit's been in American history.
I mean, as an independent nationsince we've been able to measure it,
Canada is 25% and climbing rapidly,so it's just a four.
But one of the interesting side effects,
by the way, of that is Quebecindependence.
Sentiment kind of comes very,very close to happening
and almost happensright before this immigration happens.
(28:14):
And as a result of the floodof immigration,
Quebec independence has actually becomea much weaker phenomenon
because the French speakingCanadians are just a smaller and smaller
percentage even of of Quebec,but but certainly of Canada as a whole.
And so it shows how when you haveeffectively uncontrolled mass immigration,
(28:34):
you weaken and attenuate
any of the previous political movementsthat may have been there.
Well, you know, I'm a big believer
in immigration.
I'm a product of immigrationfrom multiple sources.
I just want to go on recordthat I'm a big believer in immigration.
And but the question iswhether it's controlled and managed
(28:57):
properly versus uncontrolled immigration,
which is really the dividing pointwe're talking about today.
And it kind of brings that brings to mindthat I think you had mentioned
this in your book,the British playwright Ismail Zheng.
Well, in his 19 play Melting Pot,which melting pot itself
now is deemed to be racist because it'swe're really supposed to be a salad bowl
(29:18):
and sort of a melting point.
And this comes back to the cultural warsof patriarchy
and white privilege and all this stuffgets rolled into these debates.
But he wrotehe wrote some interesting thing.
He said, America is God's crucibleand God is making the American.
And that was in 19 wait,when that when that play came out.
And I think it was responding toat that point,
the immigration was primarily
(29:39):
from southern and Eastern Europe,which was a new wave of immigration
compared towhat had come before in this country.
So it was it was a compliment.
But, I mean, can we agreethat immigration is basically good,
but it's got some issues the way it'sbeing managed in this country?
Or is that somethingthat you and I disagree with?
Well, I think weprobably would not fully agree on that.
(29:59):
And again, you know, when I say thatI'm not a big fan of immigration,
at least as currently constituted,not saying that we should be
a zero immigration society,although I do call for a net zero pause
in immigration in my book in the same waythat I think it's not a coincidence
that in 1924 we passed the JohnsonReed Act, which is the
(30:19):
the most restrictive immigration actthat we've ever had in American history.
And I don't think it's a coincidencethat right toward the end of that time,
you kind of end up with the timethat is considered retrospectively
when we look back at it,it's almost this parody
of like the all-American Fifties familyand everything like that.
(30:40):
That's because you have,during this pause of immigration,
all these different ethnic groups,largely from Europe that have come in.
They meld into Americans during that time.
They do you have the melting pot at work.
And so that's where I feel likethe volume matters a lot.
And I say that againbecause I'm not trying to bash
individual immigrantsor immigrants for any particular country.
(31:03):
But it's simply to say thatwhen you get to certain numbers, no matter
whether it's legal or illegal, it presentsa lot of problems for our society.
We've all heard this before,but America or more precisely,
the United States, isthe only nation founded on an ideal.
But most other nations were founded onethnic or racial bases.
Or, you know what?
Whatever the case may be.
But, you know, which raises the question,what is the ideal?
(31:26):
And to me, anyway, it beginswith the Declaration of Independence.
You know that all men are created equal.
We're all endowed with certain unalienablerights, life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, and andand so so that's to me, the precious value
that needs to be transmittedfrom generation to generation.
And and that's a productof the Enlightenment, I assume.
(31:47):
So from my perspective,
we do not live in an Enlightenment ageanymore, unlike the founders.
To me, we're in an anti enlightenment age.
We're not so much about reason,we're about emotions as any.
Any thoughts on that observation? Sure.
So I mean,I think I would agree to a certain point
with with what you just said aboutAmerica and its founding.
(32:09):
And but I want to make a couple ofbecause I think there were certain
very unique ideas that came intobeing as a result of America.
But I would point out at the end,I mentioned this again in my book,
as best we can tell
at the time of the ratificationof the Constitution and the independence,
we were an 85% British country
(32:31):
in terms of citizens rights.
So we actually weren't all that diverse.
We were really and in fact,many of the founders
kind of saw themselves as Britishor as an offshoot of Britain.
So in particular, I would saythat we are more of a particular people
than a purekind of just America is an idea
suggests,even though I think that those ideas
(32:52):
that you articulated are very good
and I would like Americato be associated with them.
But I think part of the problemwhen we focus too much on America
being just an ideaand not any American people is
are we kicking people outwho don't share that idea?
Like, I don't think we are right.
Like, if we're a creedal nation, thenin theory, you should have to subscribe
(33:13):
to all these creeds to be a partof the American political community.
But we actually don'trequire that in any way.
And so that's why I'm very cautious aboutjust saying, well, we're just an idea,
we're just an ideology,because we're not removing people
who don't believe in some of theseenlightenment values that you correctly
articulated in which I agree withyou are excellent values.
(33:35):
So I think we have moved into this
post-Enlightenment age,and I agree with your comments there.
And I think thisyou know, look, it's very concerning.
And it's again, it's one of the reasonswhy I spoke out in my book.
I think this poses the questionthat you pose
very well in your book and the questionwith the current uncontrolled
immigration policies that we have now,can the United States and its institutions
(34:00):
survive such a rapid transformationthat we've been going through?
And I want to come back to that questionin part two of our interview.
Well, thank you, Jeremy, and everyone.
Thank you for being with us today
On this episode of the Four Scoreand seven Project,
a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
Be sure and likeand like us with your friends and
(34:22):
be sure to join us for part of our programwith Jeremy Carl Baal
when we will continue to explorethe immigration crisis in America.
Welcome to this episode of the Fourscore
and Seven Project, a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark. Your host.
Today, our subject iswhat is possibly the most contentious
and controversial topic in Americathe immigration crisis.
And we will attempt to peel backthe bewildering onion
layers of this complexand politicized issue
(00:44):
to better understand the causesand implications of just what might be
the most profoundis a transition of a single civilization
because of uncontrolled immigrationin almost 2000 years.
We are pleased to have as our guestthe eminent scholar Jeremy Carl,
currently a fellow at Claremont Institutein Southern California,
(01:04):
a past research fellow at StanfordUniversity's Hoover Institution
and a former deputy assistant secretarywith the Department of the Interior.
Jeremy is a graduate of Yale Universityand the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, and he isthe author of the bestselling book
The Unprotected Class.
Welcome, Jeremy.
(01:25):
Thanks so much for having me on.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Good to see you.
So coming back toto the proposition in your book,
you make the propositiona comparison that the fall of the Western
Roman Empire almost 2000 years agowas because of uncontrolled immigration.
And you can comparewhat's happening on our borders today
with what happened in the WesternRoman Empire so long ago.
(01:48):
Can you explain what you mean by that?
Sure.
And I should add, this is I'mnot a Western Roman Empire specialist,
so I'm really reliant, asI note in the book, on the work of those
who are and primarily a couple of booksby a scholar named Peter Heather, who's in
the United Kingdom, who has writtenwritten on the fall of the Roman Empire.
And he basically traces it.
And by the way, this is not unique to him.
(02:10):
So it's not like he thinks thisand nobody else thinks that.
I just think he's done the best kind ofcomprehensive explication of what it is.
But he essentially kind of tracesthe fall back to in, I think 376.
You have some visigothic tribesthere running away from the Huns
who were sort of pursuing them.
They're actually people
with a legitimate asylum claim,unlike a lot of the claims today.
(02:32):
And they sort of appeal to the Romansfor asylum, and that's granted.
But things don't end upkind of working in the way that they do.
And it used to be in earlier Roman historythat immigration had been
even though was a very multiethnic empire,
but it had been strictly controlled,particularly sort of
who lived in the core Italy and underwhat circumstances they could do so.
(02:54):
But in this case, they sort oflet them in.
And then a couple of years later,the kind of people they'd granted asylum
to turn on them with force of armsand win a big battle against the Romans.
These these so-called barbarian tribes,as the Romans would have referred to them.
And this leads to less than 100 yearslater, the fall of the western
Roman Empire,which most historians would date to 476.
(03:18):
And so really, the collapse of what hadbeen the greatest ancient civilization.
Well, I'm a amateur historian.
Love ancient Roman history,both the republic and also the empire.
And this is interesting to hear this,because to me, I've always
been able to understandthe fall of the Eastern Empire
because the people who assault
in Constantinoplecame over the walls that I understand.
(03:42):
But to me, the Western Roman Empirejust kind of melted away.
I think you make the pointthat as a result,
there was a new civilization in WesternEurope as a result.
And can you elaborate the processesby which that that occurred?
Sure.
So you had the collapse of any sortof centralized Roman authority.
And eventuallythis led to the rise of the church
(04:06):
as the kind of most powerful institutionin the Middle Ages.
But this was a very distinct and differentand in many ways,
for hundreds of years,a lesser to the extent that we can talk
about those sorts of termswithout being too provocative.
Civilization than what had preceded it.
I know my father used to always tell meas a when I was a kid,
(04:27):
you know, he would talk abouthow the people would sort of
in the Middle Ages,they would look at some of the
engineering, architectural or whateveraccomplishments of the ancient Romans,
and they would almost be likeit was a race of aliens that had done it.
They couldn't even imagine itbecause the entire civilization,
the organization of the civilizationand I'm not just being rhetorical there.
(04:47):
I mean, scholars have ways that they,you know,
choose to use empiricallyto kind of measure sort of how advanced
and centralized and sophisticateda civilization is
when under utter collapse,once the Roman Empire collapses.
And it's really not for maybea thousand years, you know, or whatever,
till the beginning of the renaissance,that you begin to really come out of that.
(05:10):
Not that,of course, there weren't very worthwhile
and useful things that happenedfrom this new civilization,
But it was really a dramatic departureonce the Roman Empire falls.
Well, I know when I.
Was growing up, I think the popular phrasewas the Dark Ages.
I think that that's kindof become a disfavored term these days.
And they say, well, it really wasn'tquite so dark, but it was in
(05:31):
deep twilight, at the very least,because literacy rates dropped.
Books were no longer common.
The engineering you talk about roadmaking stopped
governmental buildings as opposed toreligious buildings were no longer erected
and everything just went back into reverse
because of the collapseof that civilization.
With your comparison with what's going onnow, bring bring it up to the current
(05:53):
date, with what's going onwith immigration on our borders today.
What's what's comparable to what happenedin ancient Rome and what's different?
Yeah, and I don't want to be too facile.
And in the book, I'm not too facileeither about trying to make
this direct comparison of,you know, we're ancient Rome,
and because people are immigrating here,we're automatically going to collapse.
(06:15):
And I mean,there are a number of differences.
I would say the similaritywas that a lack of control
and in our case, a little weirdly,
because I think what we have right nowis a willful lack of control
and a very organized lack of control,particularly under under Biden.
I mean, he's taking it to extreme levelsthat even a cynic
such as myself did not thinkthat we would get to for political reason.
(06:38):
But even among some of his more recentDemocratic predecessors,
there has not been a particular eagerness
to enforce our borderas if it is something that really matters.
So that that's actually pretty differentbecause the Roman Empire,
even though they kind of lost control,but they were certainly
they thoughtthis was a very serious question
and they thoughteven though they had a very expansive view
(07:01):
of who could become Rome and over timeand I think we have that same
vision as Americans,but they certainly had a lot of hoops
that you had to jump through to do that.
So you have that.
You also have it being it'smuch more of a global flow.
I mean, as expansive as the Roman Empirewas by the standards,
particularly of its time,there were sort of limits.
(07:23):
I mean, you didn't have peoplefrom the southernmost reaches of Africa.
Obviously, you didn't have nativeAmericans showing up in the Roman Empire.
This was kind of primarilynot exclusively, but it's primarily
a European North Africaand maybe the periphery of Asia
type migration patternthat you have going on.
(07:45):
Whereas truly in the U.S.,particularly in the last few years,
we've had a global pattern of migration.
And in fact we even have visas,the so-called
diversity visathat the Democrats have refused.
Unfortunately, to get rid of thatwe are letting people in precisely
on the basis of the countrythey're coming to.
Having very limitedprevious immigration or interaction
(08:08):
with America's culture and civilization.
I just find that to be profoundly oddand I find the ideology that leads
that to happen to be profoundly odd
in a uniquely modern way that certainlythe Romans would not have understood.
So, Jeremy, this raises the question,and you actually posed it in your book.
(08:29):
You said it's a choiceand the Romans made a choice.
And this country right nowis engaged in a great debate
about what that choice should be in 2024.
It's obviously a very hotly contestedpresidential election.
And front and centerin this particular election is what will
our choice be abouthow to deal with immigration,
(08:49):
which and then raisesthe question is demography, destiny?
That's a phraseI think, that shows up in your book.
Tell us a little bitabout your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I mean, there are certain levels inwhich I would say demography is destiny.
But I think the good news is thatdemography is also a little bit arbitrary.
I mean, a lot of people try to pretendthat our racial and ethnic categories are
(09:11):
things that are just kind of descendfrom God on a high and a given to Moses.
And with the ten Commandments.
And what I would suggestis that, in fact, the good news,
if we so choose to kind of goin this direction, is that
ethnic categoriescan actually be quite expansive.
And so there's a lot of groupsand really Hispanics,
(09:31):
and this is most relevant herefor a California audience.
You know, we've sort of chosento kind of treat them since 1980
when we put this in the censusas a different category than whites.
But this is a predominantlyit's four times more European
ancestry groupthan any other type of ancestry.
They have 30% of them intermarryingwith white non-Hispanics.
(09:52):
Really, the only reason you kind of have,
other than some of thesepolitical reasons,
to not kind of include themdemographically in what maybe would be
a future American majority is likea sort of racist one drop of blood rule
such as we had in the 19th centurywhere, you know,
if you had one drop of nonwhiteblood, supposedly.
Right.
Or some small quantity of youweren't considered white anymore.
(10:14):
So these are sort of arbitrary.
My kind of favorite exampleof how arbitrary
sometimes these categories can beis the Hungarians.
And I've spent some some time in Hungaryover the last few years.
They have a great traditionthat's really important to them,
and it gives themtheir very unique language,
which is not related toany of the other languages around them
(10:35):
of being kind of descendedfrom these Central European conquerors
who did in fact sweep in a thousand yearsago and ran Hungarian society,
converted Hungaryto Christianity over time, and kind of had
this whole profound effecton Hungarian civilization.
Yet if you actually, as
we've been able to domodern genetic studies on the Hungarians,
(10:56):
what we've discoveredis pretty much identical
to their Central European neighborsbecause the sort of Central Asian group
that kind of came in and swept inand conquered Hungary
and kind of gave Hungary its culturalidentity is essentially all wiped out.
They become the Hungarian nobility
and they're all wiped out by the Turksin the 14th century.
But even though geneticallythey're no longer the same,
(11:20):
they're no longer really presentas other than as a ghost
in the Hungarian population.
Culturally,they still have a profound effect on who
the Hungarians think they are and how theyperceive themselves in their culture.
And so I think it just shows thateven if you say things like
demography is destiny,how we see ourselves
demographically is really profoundlymalleable.
(11:40):
It's not kind of written in stone.
Well, that's an interesting point,because the example you gave in Hungary
suggests that the preexisting societyin Hungary prior
to the Turks had a powerful qualityof assimilation,
and so that the Turks assimilated
a lot of the preexisting culture,even though the genetics
are very different.
But the culture was passed down.
Sure. Absolutely.
(12:01):
And you see this you see this everywhere.
And you see this in the Americanizationprocess of white ethnics over
the last particularly 100 plus yearsthat I mean, one of the things
I kind of exploit as a myth inmy book is up until the 1880s,
from 1607 onward, when you have thethe the first settlements in Jamestown
(12:21):
that are somewhat successful,
it's primarily at northwestern Europeanphenomenon and even primarily a British
phenomenon,you really begin to get other groups in
in really large numbers, only towardthe latter half of the 19th century.
And yet the 20th century is very muchabout assimilating these groups.
And of course, this doesn't mean they allcompletely lose their unique identities,
(12:44):
but they all become this American majorityto the point that to kind of go
into my book, you know, everybody's
complaining about white people nowand this kind of white monolith.
But in fact,these were all very different groups
that assimilated into a common cultureover a period of decades and time,
because that was something, at leastat the time in the 20th century America.
(13:05):
We thought this was really good
and we were unapologetic about saying,hey, you're going to come to America,
you're going to assimilateinto our culture.
We thought that was a very good thing.
We've lost a lot of thatcultural confidence now.
Well,assimilation used to be a good thing.
Now, I think the counterpointto that, it's cultural appropriation,
which is a bad thing.
(13:25):
It seems to me that those two particular
things are very much in tensionin the current society right now.
There's a lot of pushbackagainst assimilation because that's a bad
cultural appropriation, which I assumethat presents a lot of problems too,
with a continuation of a of a transmissionof traditional values on all on its own.
absolutely.
I mean, and don't get mestarted on cultural appropriation, because
(13:46):
the story of civilization is ultimatelythe story of cultural appropriation.
Right.
I mean, it's it'staking something that you like
in any sort of global civilization,at least
from a different cultureand making it your own.
I mean, just to come upwith a trivial example,
I remember from my childhood, Lee Iacocca,who you'll remember
and I remember and maybe some ofthe younger visitors were not
(14:09):
kind of an
iconic American executive and successstory, particularly in the 1980s.
He was sort of held up.
I remember reading his autobiographywhen I was younger,
and he describesas a youth having pizza parties
and how all of his non-Italian friendsjust thought, you know,
like what sort of, you know,ethnic slurs, Bing, is this this pizza?
(14:31):
You know, this is absurd.
This is crazy. You know,you're not really an American.
Now, people would say, you know, like,what is more American?
I mean, obviously,we recognize it's Italian origin, but
but pizza is very American,right, like that.
And we've made it Americanin a variety of ways
that are very differentthan its Italian origins.
That type of story,that type of cultural appropriation
is really at the heart of whatwe used to think of as being American.
(14:53):
But now, you know, unfortunately,I think we take a very different view.
Any any speculation why that's happened?
Well, I mean, I'mnot sure how well out to be on this,
But I mean, I'll just say I think it'sunfortunately, it's been a really
negative side effect of the lefttaking over
the commanding heights of the culturein the way that they have
(15:14):
and pushing an agendathat has not been kind of just hostile to
white people, but it's been been hostileto their culture and
and kind of history and trying to say that
everything that came before in Americais is really bad in some way.
And we have to kind of remake everything.
And so it's sort of been a long leftistmarch through the institutions
(15:34):
that's kind of led us to get to this pointwhere we are now.
And I think it's again, it's it'sunfortunately really regrettable.
I don't think that there'sany one kind of sharp point
where you can just say, well,you know, there everything changed.
But I think just over a time,we really kind of got to this point
where we really lost confidencein our culture and our civilization.
(15:54):
Well, you know, it's interestingthat you mentioned the pizza example.
Another great example would be hamburger,
which I believe comes from Hamburg,Germany.
We don't think of thatas being ethnic eating or what about beer?
I don't think this country drank
much beeruntil the German immigration in the 1800s.
It's another thing
that we appropriated culturally,but no one thinks about that anymore.
It's just part of our culture.
We have an infinite culturalappropriation.
(16:15):
Americais the land of cultural appropriation
and taking it and making it American.
And why we would want to dispensewith that in favor of having everybody
be really Balkanized is not a questionI am smart enough to answer, I guess.
Yeah.
You made the pointthat the only other area on the planet
besides the United Statesthat is encountering similar
(16:37):
immigration issues is Western Europeor Northern Europe.
I believe similar immigration policiesand things of that nature.
And then you contrast it to other placeslike even like Mexico, where only 1%,
I believe, of the population is foreignborn, or China, which only allows several
thousand people a year
to immigrate into China or Japan,which almost has closed borders in a sense
(16:59):
very, very low foreign born population iswhat's going on in Western Europe, in the
in the United States, a functionof a declining population
that needs support of immigration to keepthe population growing and healthy.
Yeah, I don'tI don't believe that that. Okay, okay.
Let me back up. At a trivial level.
Our fertility is below replacement.
So, yes, if we didn't have anyimmigration, our population would fall.
(17:21):
The factthat this is some sort of huge crisis
that demands immediate amelioration is,I think, simply a political tactic.
It's a political statementthat lacks kind of empirical support
by one of the kind of reasons why is that?
There's a lot of datathat scholars have done.
When you have a lot of immigration, ittends to suppress native born fertility.
(17:43):
So part of the reasonwhy we have such low fertility
is because we've got a lot of immigrationand those immigrants are taking
opportunities that, you know,might be there for native born people.
And so if I'm looking at that as a parent,I have five kids myself.
So I maybe, you know, I kind of ignoredthat in thinking about my own family size.
But when most people are thinkingabout the future for their family,
(18:05):
they're sort of looking to some degreeat least it plays in to like, well,
what sort of opportunitiesare going to be out there for them
When you have a lot of immigration,
those tend to be at leasta little bit suppressed.
So you've got you've got that going on.
But I think that the real keyis what you touched on,
which is America and Europe are reallythe only countries that are sort
of expected to do that, or Australiaand these other few European
(18:26):
derived countriesare just expected as a matter of course,
to have mass immigration, and that's fine,but nobody ever demands it out of China.
Nobody ever demands that of India.
Nobody ever demands that even if Mexicoright next door to us.
And so that's very curious that they don'tseem to think that immigration
is perhaps such an allied goodas we have to pretend it is in America.
(18:50):
And I'm you know,I'm obviously very skeptical of that.
At the same time, you know,I acknowledge that.
Well done.
There are certainly advantagesthat can accrue to immigration,
but I don't think we've been doing itin a very smart way for quite some time.
And we will certainly get into that.
But that kind of brings to the nextquestion immigration is one thing,
but the next questionwhich you raise, I believe,
(19:12):
is who joins the political communityand the joining the political community
to lead, from my point of view, meanshaving the right to vote, cast votes in
not only localbut state and also national elections.
And that raises anotherserious debatable issue.
Currently,I think there's a number of communities,
local communities in this country todaythat allow non-citizens to vote.
(19:32):
I believe that federal law prohibitsnon-citizens voting in federal elections.
But what are the factorsonce you get past the immigration,
the steps by which someone
becomes entitled to participatein the political community, which
I assume traditionally meansyou're getting a visa
or getting a green card,ultimately becoming an American citizen,
the steps and the hoopsyou have to go through to do that.
(19:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
And this is part of our general debasementof citizenship as a whole.
I mean, when you go backand you look at ancient Athens
and sort of thethe kind of cultural origins of the West,
you know, to become an Athenian citizen,
you had to accomplish all of these things.
You had to jump through all these hoopsto kind of prove your loyalty.
(20:14):
You know,now we have people who are citizens of
we have certain laws about being ableto speak English to become a citizen
that have only a very few exceptions,that we simply ignore
about not being dependentthat are required.
We just ignore these laws.
And so when we're told that in fact,
when Donald Trump tried to kind of say,hey, we should actually follow our laws,
(20:34):
and to me it just undisputablethat this was the law.
But we essentially had what was a judicialnullification of some of that. So.
Right.
Judges just said,
we don't care what the law is, you know,we're just going to to do it that way.
And as you point out, who forms thatpolitical community is really important
in the U.S.
right now because of illegal immigration,and particularly in California, this is
(20:56):
particularly striking.
We have a lot of what the British calledin the old days, rotten boroughs,
which were in the British contextin the 19th century.
These were electoral districtsthat for various reasons,
ended up having very, very few eligiblevoters relative to other districts.
(21:16):
And so therefore, they were calledrotten boroughs because it was really easy
for powerful political actors to corruptthe electoral process in these boroughs.
And eventuallythe Brits did away with that.
But we have that because of how we doour congressional redistricting.
So, A, we reward states like Californiafor having a lot of illegal immigrants
by counting those illegal aliensin the census.
(21:39):
And that determines both how many people,California, how many congressional
districts California gets, but also who'sin those congressional districts.
So you have some congressional districtsin California
that have a dramatically lower numberof eligible citizen voters
because you have all these illegal aliensin these districts
(22:01):
and so they're not eligible to vote.
And so what happens, of course, isyou're giving, I would argue, illegally,
far more power to the eligible voters
in those districtsthan you are to those same eligible voters
in California who are in districtswhere more people are here illegally.
So that's a sort of of a backdoor forentry to joining the political community.
(22:24):
There's no direct
right of vote, but because of how we'vestructured the process in this country,
there is effective representation
because they're counted
for the census purpose and the divvying upof the various congressional districts
in the United States.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, California is fighting to enforceAmerican immigration laws,
and I don't think that's a stretchto describe California's
(22:46):
immigration enforcementstarting back in the days of Prop 87.
Right.
Which was the originalanti-illegal immigration bill
that was thrown out by a ratherdubious court judgment
by a fairly radical judge.
And despite the factthis had passed overwhelmingly
in California, I think 58,59% of the vote, the Democratic governor
(23:10):
at the time just said, you know what, hey,we're not going to appeal this.
We're not going to defend California'slaw passed by the voters selectively.
Right.
And do we really want our governmentdeciding which ones of the laws we pass?
It's going to defend or not defend
the. They got a
free, free pass to dojust that back in the east.
(23:33):
And Californiawas fundamentally transformed as a result.
So let's let's pause for just a moment,put up a couple of definitions.
We're we're talking aboutuncontrolled immigration
as opposed to legalized immigration,if that's the right comparison.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, I do
I mean, I'm a pretty hawkish personon the question of immigration.
(23:55):
And we can get intowhy as the conversation develops.
But I think there's too much ofan emphasis sometimes on the right to say
legal, good, illegal,bad and well, illegal is certainly bad.
And while legal immigration certainlyis in a very different category,
because obviously our lawsare at least being respected,
(24:16):
but it's still fair to askin ways that I think we often don't
even for legal immigration,I would argue that the sole criteria
that we should use for illegalimmigration is what serves
the just interests of the peopleof the United States of America.
So we're not a charity ward.
We're not letting in immigrantseven legally
(24:38):
out of just some sort of sense of,you know, noblesse oblige.
It's like if we thinkthat having them here will serve America's
long term interests, well,then we should admit that immigrant
and if we don't think that way,then we shouldn't admit them.
And we should havethat sort of fundamental American interest
in mind with every immigration decisionwe make.
(24:59):
And unfortunately,I think we often don't do that.
Well, that doesn't that highlight anotherbattle line, the so-called culture wars,
because depending on where you fallon the culture wars,
on one side, there are people who believethat traditional American values
should be preservedand should be passed down.
And on the other side,
they believe there's somethinginherently evil about this country.
(25:20):
And the and this is the situationwhere we want to cancel
what's happened in the past.
And therefore, it would seem to methat you get into these political debates
and that directly impactswhat the policy on immigration is you
because if you think that there needsto be cancellation of what
all the bad parts in this countrythat have preceded us,
the only way to take care of thatand address
(25:41):
it is to change the cultureof the community or the nation as a whole.
Is that something you agree withor disagree with?
Yeah, I do actually agree,and I think part of the part of
have been part of the reasonwhy I am very skeptical of
the diversity is our strength ideology,let's call it.
And interestingly,as I point out in my book,
the phrase diversity is our strength,which you hear bandied about quite a bit
(26:03):
these days, actually originatesfrom a comment that then Vice President
Dan Quayle gives to a group of Japanesebusinessmen in the wake of the L.A.
riots in the early 1990s,where we might have thought that
perhaps it illustrated somesome problems with diversity.
And when the Japanesebusinessmen expressed that,
(26:24):
we allsaid, no, no, diversity is our strength.
So that's sort of wherethat phrase really comes from,
where I think the problemwith that ideology lies is that
I think all things being equal, diversityis is really a challenge and a weakness.
And I want to be very carefulabout what I mean when I say that.
I'm not suggesting that the diversegroups of people who are coming here
(26:46):
are bad people,that they don't want to be Americans,
that they don't even contributeto American society.
I'm not saying thatany of that is necessarily the case.
I'm saying that all things being equal,large amounts of diversity in society
and again, this is a very consistentfinding of social science research
make that society more difficultto govern, more fractious, less trust.
(27:07):
All these other things,even if the people you're bringing in
are sensational people,it's a challenge to be overcome.
It's not in and of itself an asset.
Well,it comes back to the point. It's a choice.
And, you know,
we canlook to our northern neighbor, Canada,
which has the political divisivenessbecause of the French
speaking Quebec and Englishspeaking the rest of of Canada.
(27:31):
I think that's your point.
No, absolutely.
And actually, right now, interestingly,Canada has an immigration system
that even compared to our own open bordersas a percentage of the population,
they are radically transformingtheir polity without even any vote.
We are at like 15.5% foreign bornright now as a country.
(27:52):
That's the highestit's been in American history.
I mean, as an independent nationsince we've been able to measure it,
Canada is 25% and climbing rapidly,so it's just a four.
But one of the interesting side effects,
by the way, of that is Quebecindependence.
Sentiment kind of comes very,very close to happening
and almost happensright before this immigration happens.
(28:14):
And as a result of the floodof immigration,
Quebec independence has actually becomea much weaker phenomenon
because the French speakingCanadians are just a smaller and smaller
percentage even of of Quebec,but but certainly of Canada as a whole.
And so it shows how when you haveeffectively uncontrolled mass immigration,
(28:34):
you weaken and attenuate
any of the previous political movementsthat may have been there.
Well, you know, I'm a big believer
in immigration.
I'm a product of immigrationfrom multiple sources.
I just want to go on recordthat I'm a big believer in immigration.
And but the question iswhether it's controlled and managed
(28:57):
properly versus uncontrolled immigration,
which is really the dividing pointwe're talking about today.
And it kind of brings that brings to mindthat I think you had mentioned
this in your book,the British playwright Ismail Zheng.
Well, in his 19 play Melting Pot,which melting pot itself
now is deemed to be racist because it'swe're really supposed to be a salad bowl
(29:18):
and sort of a melting point.
And this comes back to the cultural warsof patriarchy
and white privilege and all this stuffgets rolled into these debates.
But he wrotehe wrote some interesting thing.
He said, America is God's crucibleand God is making the American.
And that was in 19 wait,when that when that play came out.
And I think it was responding toat that point,
the immigration was primarily
(29:39):
from southern and Eastern Europe,which was a new wave of immigration
compared towhat had come before in this country.
So it was it was a compliment.
But, I mean, can we agreethat immigration is basically good,
but it's got some issues the way it'sbeing managed in this country?
Or is that somethingthat you and I disagree with?
Well, I think weprobably would not fully agree on that.
(29:59):
And again, you know, when I say thatI'm not a big fan of immigration,
at least as currently constituted,not saying that we should be
a zero immigration society,although I do call for a net zero pause
in immigration in my book in the same waythat I think it's not a coincidence
that in 1924 we passed the JohnsonReed Act, which is the
(30:19):
the most restrictive immigration actthat we've ever had in American history.
And I don't think it's a coincidencethat right toward the end of that time,
you kind of end up with the timethat is considered retrospectively
when we look back at it,it's almost this parody
of like the all-American Fifties familyand everything like that.
(30:40):
That's because you have,during this pause of immigration,
all these different ethnic groups,largely from Europe that have come in.
They meld into Americans during that time.
They do you have the melting pot at work.
And so that's where I feel likethe volume matters a lot.
And I say that againbecause I'm not trying to bash
individual immigrantsor immigrants for any particular country.
(31:03):
But it's simply to say thatwhen you get to certain numbers, no matter
whether it's legal or illegal, it presentsa lot of problems for our society.
We've all heard this before,but America or more precisely,
the United States, isthe only nation founded on an ideal.
But most other nations were founded onethnic or racial bases.
Or, you know what?
Whatever the case may be.
But, you know, which raises the question,what is the ideal?
(31:26):
And to me, anyway, it beginswith the Declaration of Independence.
You know that all men are created equal.
We're all endowed with certain unalienablerights, life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, and andand so so that's to me, the precious value
that needs to be transmittedfrom generation to generation.
And and that's a productof the Enlightenment, I assume.
(31:47):
So from my perspective,
we do not live in an Enlightenment ageanymore, unlike the founders.
To me, we're in an anti enlightenment age.
We're not so much about reason,we're about emotions as any.
Any thoughts on that observation? Sure.
So I mean,I think I would agree to a certain point
with with what you just said aboutAmerica and its founding.
(32:09):
And but I want to make a couple ofbecause I think there were certain
very unique ideas that came intobeing as a result of America.
But I would point out at the end,I mentioned this again in my book,
as best we can tell
at the time of the ratificationof the Constitution and the independence,
we were an 85% British country
(32:31):
in terms of citizens rights.
So we actually weren't all that diverse.
We were really and in fact,many of the founders
kind of saw themselves as Britishor as an offshoot of Britain.
So in particular, I would saythat we are more of a particular people
than a purekind of just America is an idea
suggests,even though I think that those ideas
(32:52):
that you articulated are very good
and I would like Americato be associated with them.
But I think part of the problemwhen we focus too much on America
being just an ideaand not any American people is
are we kicking people outwho don't share that idea?
Like, I don't think we are right.
Like, if we're a creedal nation, thenin theory, you should have to subscribe
(33:13):
to all these creeds to be a partof the American political community.
But we actually don'trequire that in any way.
And so that's why I'm very cautious aboutjust saying, well, we're just an idea,
we're just an ideology,because we're not removing people
who don't believe in some of theseenlightenment values that you correctly
articulated in which I agree withyou are excellent values.
(33:35):
So I think we have moved into this
post-Enlightenment age,and I agree with your comments there.
And I think thisyou know, look, it's very concerning.
And it's again, it's one of the reasonswhy I spoke out in my book.
I think this poses the questionthat you pose
very well in your book and the questionwith the current uncontrolled
immigration policies that we have now,can the United States and its institutions
(34:00):
survive such a rapid transformationthat we've been going through?
And I want to come back to that questionin part two of our interview.
Well, thank you, Jeremy, and everyone.
Thank you for being with us today
On this episode of the Four Scoreand seven Project,
a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
Be sure and likeand like us with your friends and
(34:22):
be sure to join us for part of our programwith Jeremy Carl Baal
when we will continue to explorethe immigration crisis in America.
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