Why Should We Let Them In?

Now that the Taliban will no doubt be applying for admission to the United Nations, and even some red state Governors are considering invoking masking mandates, the GOP better come up with some kind of narrative to attack Joe, because in another month, the 2022 election cycle will rear its ugly head.

And right now, if the best the GOP can come up with going into the mid-terms is a national leadership comprised of Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene or — God forbid — that demented jerk selling his autograph in the Mar-a-Lago lobby, the handwriting for the GOP losing another election is on the wall.

But even if the economy continues to expand, even if nobody cares about the price of gasoline, even if the kids go back to school or don’t go back to school, there’s always the time-honored concern about ‘illegals’ coming into the United States, a well-worn political mantra that the GOP has been huckstering for more than a hundred years.

That’s right. The legislation which shut the doors to foreign-born populations in 1924 began to appear in various GOP-sponsored federal laws beginning in the 1890’s, a response to right-wing, populist (i.e., anti-government) sentiment which arose in mid-western, farming states.

The roots of anti-immigrant rhetoric are laid out very nicely in a little book, Not Like Us, published by Roger Daniels in 1997, which was when the whole notion of America losing its ‘whiteness’ first became a bedrock, political issue for the GOP. After all, where do you think this ‘English as the official U.S. language’ nonsense comes from?

As Daniels points out, the populism of the 1890’s was directed against the Eastern ‘elites’ who were both the owners of industrial enterprises which were sucking raw materials out of the farm zone at artificially-low prices, but were also bringing masses of undocumented, non-English speaking ‘aliens’ into the country to compete with native-born Americans for jobs. The 1890’s also saw the worst economic downturn and credit crisis in the country’s history until that time, which only made it easier for the GOP to ramp up its right-wing, populist messaging. Sound familiar? It should.

What turned the anti-immigrant rantings of right-wing populism into official government policy after World War I, was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the spread of Socialist ideas and political movements into other European countries and the belief that immigrants from those countries would bring the anti-capitalist pathogen over here.

So today, the ‘threat’ to America comes not from Europe, but from the South. And if we don’t build a wall to keep ‘them’ out, or if we don’t get rid of the stupid law which says that anyone born on American soil is a citizen, we’re going to be overrun by the same kind of human vermin that would have destroyed this country had it not been for the immigration law passed in 1924.

Here’s the bottom line. No matter how you slice it or dice it, the 2020 Census will clearly show that America, racially-speaking, is becoming more diverse. Which is a polite way of saying that the country is becoming less White. And where does this disappearance of ‘whiteness’ most frequently appear? In those coastal, gateway cities controlled by the Democrats and serving as the economic and social bastions for the ‘elites.’

Having said all that, what would I do to fix the problems represented by all those ‘illegals’ trying to pour into the country from the South, from those Muslim countries, or from the Pacific Rim?

I wouldn’t do anything about it. In fact, if it were up to me, I would junk the entire notion of national borders, of passports, of citizenship — that’s right — the whole goddamn thing.

I don’t care who lives next to me, as long as they lower their music after 7 P.M. And if they don’t know how to shut the f*ck up when I want to go to sleep, I’ll call the local version of Officer Krupke to come by and tell them to shut the f*ck up.

And beyond that, all the talk about how this is such a great country because we maintain the traditions which made us so great is just a load of crap.

People are people, no matter who they are, no matter what language they speak, no matter what they choose to do or not to do.

As Grandpa would say — “gai gezunt.” That’s the end of that.