Re-Reading Peter
Brimelow's ALIEN NATION-25 Years Later
[VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow writes: 25 years ago tonight,
April 16 1995, I was holed up in a Manhattan hotel room, paid for I am happy to
say by Random House, with a very pregnant wife and infant son, about to begin the publicity tour for Alien Nation, which
kicked off next day with an early morning NBC Today interview by Bryant Gumbel. It was during what John Derbyshire and I now call “The Interglacial,” the brief period after the collapse of the Soviet Union but before the Left
reinvented itself as Cultural Marxist Enforcer of Political Correctness and
Identity Politics. Immigration had long been out of public debate and a
surprising number of people were willing to discuss the issue—at first. Alien Nation even got
not one but two respectful
reviews in the New York Times. Incredible as it may seem, everyone on
both sides expected some sort of patriotic
immigration reform imminently. It took a great deal of lying and lobbying to
bottle the issue up again and keep it effectively out of politics for another two
decades.]
The
spring of 1995 was a memorable time for me. I was attending a university in
Washington D.C. and had an internship with
a Conservative Inc.
type organization. I fell in with a circle of friends who today would be known
as Dissident Right. Back
then, the closest word that described us was paleoconservative.
I
was very impressed by the lecture and a few weeks later purchased a copy of Alien Nation in the Union Station bookstore
while waiting to take a train. In fact, I found my Amtrak ticket
stub tucked away in the pages while re-reading the book recently.
Of
course, my innocence on what the author rightly called “America’s
immigration disaster” ended on that train ride. The following are
what stand out to me about this ground-breaking work on its 25th anniversary.
Myths
Most
Americans know almost nothing about immigration. This includes politicians and
those in the Main Stream Media. Brimelow addressed these myths throughout the
book.
- For example, we are told that open immigration is
an American value. Yet immigration to the US was always tightly
controlled—and strictly from Europe.
The 1790
Naturalization Act limited citizenship to
whites. States, rather than the federal
government, controlled immigration until 1875.
The immigration of large numbers of non-British whites only began in the 1840s
with Irish and
then Southern and
Eastern Europeans until 1921. The Immigration Act
of 1924 effectively ended most immigration. What little there
was after that came from Western Europe, thanks to the Quota Act
of 1921.
- “American has always been a haven for refugees,”
is another common myth. Yet the first explicit recognition of refugees by
Congress came only in 1980 with the Refugee
Act.
- “We need immigrants to help the economy,” is
another one touted by immigration boosters. But Japan has
almost no immigration and enjoys a first world economy
(along with low crime and
no Affirmative Action against Japanese).
Brimelow
relates how one law student at a debate he had been invited to participate in
at the University of Cincinnati (doesn’t happen anymore!) was shocked to
learn that immigration is not a “civil right.”
How It Happened
Alien Nation was also an
excellent resource for an overview of how the US went from an almost 90% white
population in 1965 to a multiracial population today. It didn’t just happen by
accident. It was entirely due to the 1965
Immigration and Naturalization Act. This legislation opened up
the US to mass Third World immigration for the
first time.
How
did a 90% white America allow this? According to Brimelow, it was mainly due to simple lying
from politicians and the media. He quoted Sen. Edward Kennedy’s remarks about
the bill at the time:
First, our cities will not be flooded with
a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of
immigration remains substantially the same …. Secondly, the ethnic mix of this
country will not be upset…In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of
immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as
the critics seem to think.
Of
course, this was an outright lie. Brimelow
notes:
Immigrants do come predominately from one
area—some 85 percent of the 16.7 million legal immigrants arriving in the
United States between 1968 and 1993 came from the Third World.
Brimelow
tried to interview Senator Kennedy for the book to ask him about these statements
but was denied access. However, Kennedy’s immigration advisor, Jerry Tinker,
claimed the change in demographics was largely due to the drying up of desire
to immigrate on the part of Europeans—and an unexpected increase in the number
of Korean GI
brides!
Race and Consequences
Of
course, the most important parts of Alien
Nation had to do with race. In
Chapter Three, Brimelow made the point that, although immigration was always
controlled and limited, it was almost entirely from Europe. This meant that
white America was continually being reinforced by its immigration policy, until
1965. But by the 1980s, immigrants from Europe were only around ten percent of
all immigrants.
This
was not due to lack of interest from Europeans. Quotas were set by Congress
that purposefully favored the Third World in US immigration policy. Again, most
people know very little about how immigration works. How many people (apart
from VDARE.com readers) realize that today’s policy massively favors non-whites
over whites and has done so for over 50 years?
All
of which means that whites are on the road to minority status in the nation
they created. Brimelow notes that the 1960 Census shows whites comprising 88.6
percent of the US. In 1950, it was 89.5 percent.
It
is grimly amusing to read the projections circa 1995 in Alien Nation. They were actually a bit too
optimistic. Brimelow noted whites were projected to be 53 percent of the
population by 2050 and perhaps hit minority status by 2060. He wrote that
whites are estimated to be 64 percent in 2020.
Well,
2020 is indeed here and we are currently at 60.4 percent of the population (2019 figures).
The most recent estimates are that whites will hit minority status by 2042 and
comprise only 46 percent of
the US by 2060.
And
even these stark numbers may seem too optimistic in another 25 years. Democrats
and many Republicans support Amnesties for illegals and want legal immigration
increased.
Why
does this matter? Because, as Brimelow noted, “race and ethnicity are destiny in
American politics.”
Alien Nation has a wealth of
data and analysis on how changing demographics will impact things such as
politics, crime, Affirmative Action, healthcare, welfare, the economy, the
environment and other aspects of American life. As whites are finding out, none
of this is good for them.
One
thing Brimelow didn’t seem to predict explicitly in the book is the massive
increase in anti-white hatred over the past 25 years. But to be fair, he did
discuss the failure of multiracial nations to hold together due to racial
acrimony.
It
may seem somewhat secondary to most, but the most memorable part of Alien Nation to me was where Brimelow
describes the immigration policies of other countries--some of whom send a
great number of their people to the US. He called embassies from various
countries and asked how he himself could go about immigrating to their nations. Bemused officials—often
after letting out a laugh—were blunt in
their replies. Here are just a few examples:
BLOG: CALIFORNIA IS A BIG IMPORTED OF MEXICAN CRIMINALS!
- Japan: “Why do you
want to emigrate to Japan? … There is no immigration to Japan.”
- China: “China does not accept
any immigrants. We have a large
enough population.”
- Philippines: “You
need to be married to a Filipino or
have capital to invest.”
- Taiwan: “You need Taiwanese
relatives by blood or marriage or investment capital.”
- Egypt: “Egypt is not
an immigrant country. We do not permit
immigrants.”
- India: “Since you
are not of Indian origin, while it is not impossible for you to immigrate
to India, it is a very difficult, very complex and a very, very long
process.”
- South Korea: “Korea does
not accept immigrants.”
This
part had the same effect on me 25 years ago as it does today. For all the talk
of immigration, no borders, refugees and a multiracial society being
inevitable, non-whites are batting a
thousand when it comes to stopping all of
this. Not only are they never called racist for
not allowing any immigration of
other races, their co-racialists, once settled in white
nations, are only too happy to lecture whites
about “racism.”
All while vigorously supporting and identifying with
their own ethnostates, of course.
But
it’s not as if the US is race-blind when it comes to immigration policy,
Brimelow pointed out. The US government allows its overseas territories of
American Samoa, Micronesia,
the Marshall Islands,
the Marianas,
and Palau to set their own immigration policies. Remarkably enough, these
territories are not seeking diversity and multiracialism through immigration.
Samoa and the Marianas don’t even allow US
citizens to own land unless they are of islander
ancestry.
“The
world is laughing at America,” Brimelow wrote Perhaps they are right to laugh
at such easy marks.
What
could be done to stop America’s immigration disaster? Brimelow’s solutions
apply just as well today as they did in 1995. Repeal the 1965 Immigration Act,
stop illegal immigration cold and cut back on or even cut off all legal
immigration. Of course, immigrants should not be eligible for welfare handouts
or Affirmative Action preferences.
Reception
Alien Nation was reviewed in
a remarkably wide range of Main Stream outlets. The Leftist reviews were pretty
much what you would expect and are no different than what would appear today.
Below are just a few examples:
“Despite his blatantly racist outlook,
Brimelow has actually insinuated himself into the epicenter of media attention
and on to the bookshelves of mainstream Americans. Like The Bell Curve, Alien
Nation is disguised as "common sense" about an issue
connected to race. The author would like to have his readers believe that his
book is a bluntly honest critique of US immigration policy. But it can also be
seen as an attempt to make racism fit for good society again.”
“We might dismiss the rantings of Peter
Brimelow as delusional paranoia. But the truth is, it's more of a desperate
gasp. As multinational development schemes like NAFTA and GATT continue to
degrade the quality of Third World life, more and more people are being
displaced. We take our acts across oceans in order to survive. Our survival
depends on the destruction of the privilege Brimelow is so desperate to defend.
His fear is justified. We will bury him.”
“America has long been a pluralistic
society, and it has always muddled through. Why should second-generation
Pakistani-Americans be less adaptable than their Polish-American counterparts
70 years ago? Brimelow needs reminding that the melting pot still works—and
that his alarmist views on race and ethnicity are exactly what country is
trying to outgrow.”
But National Review – the voice of
official conservatism at the time, but under the editorship of John O’Sullivan,
whose deviationism on immigration was a factor in William F.
Buckley’s abrupt firing of him in
1997—dedicated four reviews to Alien
Nation. One was
from the great Sam Francis who, as always, cut to the heart of the matter:
The arguments that develop from these
claims run counter to the conception of America as an "idea," a
"proposition,'" or a "creed." That conception implies that
the United States has almost a bottomless capacity to absorb and assimilate
immigrants, since assimilation'' would consist in little more than mere assent
to the credal identity of the nation. But Mr. Brimelow performs meticulous
surgery here as well, showing, for example, that both the Declaration of
Independence and The Federalist assumed ethnic and cultural homogeneity as a
precondition of a coherent nationhood. The point, of course, is that whatever
ideas enter into the definition of America as a political order, those ideas
depend for their proper functioning on a population that accepts them as habits
balanced and defined by other habits rather than as newly learned precepts and
abstractions. It is unlikely that massive numbers of immigrants will doff their
old cultural garments and don new ones comfortably. Hence, large-scale
immigration represents a threat to the cultural homogeneity, and thus the
political unity, of the nation.
One
of the more confused reviews was by Center for Immigration Studies Executive
Director Mark Krikorian in
his Immigration Review newsletter.
While he agreed with most of the arguments against immigration in the book, he
sounded curiously like a hysterical Leftist when the subject turned to race.
Brimelow writes that "the massive
ethnic and racial transformation that public policy is now inflicting on
America is totally new—and in terms of how Americans have traditionally viewed
themselves, quite revolutionary." This is the main point of the book—and
is simply incorrect. America has been ethnically transforming itself
continually, and the claim that Irish and Italians were more similar to 19th
century American natives than today's immigrants are to us is unhistorical and
anachronistic.
On the contrary, the changing ethnic
makeup of the immigrant flow can be seen as a further unfolding of a process
started long ago, as the definition of those deemed fit to be part of the
nation has expanded. The people of Massachusetts and Virginia, after all,
originally considered Anglicans and Congregationalists, respectively, to be
unfit for membership in their communities. Later, non-British northern European
Protestants, such as the Huguenots and Dutch, were accepted (grudgingly) as
potential Americans. Still later, Catholics, at first suspect because of the
hierarchical and seemingly anti-republican nature of their church, were
included. [A Flawed Jewel,
Immigration Review, Summer 1995]
Perhaps
hoping to triangulate (it didn’t work, CIS
was named an "SPLC Designated
Hate Group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center CultMarx
enforcers in 2017) Krikorian even attempted a version of “the Irish weren’t considered white” argument:
But what is white? The Portuguese, who
first arrived in New England in colonial times, certainly weren't considered
white; nor were the Sicilians.
Huh?
Why were Portuguese and Sicilians allowed to come to the US at a time when only
whites were allowed to immigrate and become citizens? Why were they not
segregated in the South like blacks? Why were Joe DiMaggio and Lew Fonseca allowed
to play and thrive in the segregated,
“whites only” era of major league baseball?
Perhaps
significantly, Immigration Review subsequently
carried a dissent at the insistance of board member Diana Hull, but
that review is not online at CIS.
Legacy
One
of Peter Brimelow’s early admirers was Ann Coulter.
She has praised his work for opening her eyes to
the reality of immigration. Her 2015 bestseller, Adios America, is obviously
influenced by Alien Nation. Adios America, in turn, influenced Donald
Trump’s views on immigration. It was these views which separated Trump from the
rest of the lackluster GOP field in 2016 and likely won him
the presidency.
While
demographics have gotten worse since 1995, there is at least now a wide
recognition of the problems caused by immigration. Even Establishment
Republican types have to at least pretend to
be against amnesties and for a border
wall.
And
while President Trump has not been perfect, he has done more for immigration
control than any other president in my lifetime. It is hard to
see how this would have happened without the hard work of Peter Brimelow and
people like him who labored many years in the immigration control movement.
Immigration
and demography are the issues that will decide the fate of the United States. Alien Nation helped bring America’s
immigration disaster to the attention of many who sensed something was wrong
and couldn’t comprehend why they felt like strangers in what was once their
nation. The fight is now much larger, and more Americans than ever are aware of
the stakes.
Alien Nation was a massive
source of inspiration to me and to many others who have been fighting the
immigration battle for a quarter of a century. May it continue to influence
more Americans as we work to salvage what is left of America.
Peter Bradley [Email him]
writes from Washington D.C.
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