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Immigration and who we are

Commentary

Migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have formed a caravan to come into the U.S. Their number, perhaps less than 10,000, is a drop in the bucket given the number of people in the U.S., but it highlights how the U.S. is changing.

In 2017 according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), immigrants (legal and illegal) are nearly one out of seven (14 percent) U.S. residents. This is the highest percentage since 1910. CIS reports that the number of immigrants is now a record 45 million.

These figures underestimate the impact of immigration. Current immigrants have had 17 million U.S. children (2017 figure). This means that roughly one out of five U.S. residents are now immigrants or their children (62 million out of 326 million). Also, roughly one out of five babies in the U.S. are now born to immigrants, whether legal or illegal.

According to a recent study by Yale and MIT professors, there are now 22 million illegal aliens in the country. Again, this number underestimates their impact. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that, roughly, 5 million children have been born to illegal aliens and received birthright citizenship.

Consider what a country is. A country is a collection of people connected through certain legal relations. What makes a government morally legitimate is that the people that constitute it consented to it. It is analogous to a country club in that voluntary membership creates the club, distributes its privileges and duties, and controls the use of its property. Without such consent, members would have neither a duty to pay for the club nor would they have to subject themselves to the club’s rules. The content of such consent is set out by the contract that members agreed to when they formed or joined the club.

The problem is that the U.S. citizens have not authorized this flood of immigrants into their club. First, they did not authorize the sea of illegal aliens. Second, many of the immigrants became naturalized through birthright citizenship that the Constitution does not permit. The Claremont Institute’s Edward Erler convincingly argues that birthright citizenship involves a deliberate misreading of the Constitution. Third, even if the citizens did authorize the past flood of immigrants, and they didn’t, by electing Donald Trump they sent a clear message that they want the flooding to stop. By analogy, if citizens elect a President and Congress on the basis of their explicit promise not to send the country to war and then they promptly do so, the people’s will would be thwarted.

Importing so many people with different histories, values, and cultures will significantly change the country. Imagine how members of a rich-and-educated WASP country club in Westchester County, New York would be shocked at what happened to their club if suddenly one out of five of its members were a poor-and-uneducated Central or South American. They might not be able to reverse the change if it were done by a do-gooder executive board who didn’t tell them what they planned to do. Because a club is composed of its members, it would even go out of existence in a metaphysical sense, if not a legal one, were its membership to change fast enough.

Just as the country club members are within their rights not to want their club drastically changed, Americans are within their rights not to want their country drastically changed. This is true regardless of whether the proposed changes would make the country worse.

It is worth noting that the way in which the elites want to change this country will make it worse. It is a fact, no matter how impolite, that today’s immigrants are less educated, intelligent, and skilled than the native population. They vote for higher taxes, more government spending and regulation, more affirmative action, and so on.

To see some of these differences, consider that 27 percent of working-age immigrants are high school dropouts versus 7 percent of working-age Americans (2015 CIS number). CIS also reports that more than half of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) used at least one welfare program (Medicaid, cash, food, or housing assistance) versus 30 percent of native households. National Review’s Jason Richwine argues that the average IQ of immigrants is lower than that of native American whites and that this difference is likely to persist over several generations.

Even if none of this were true, a people have the right to prevent their country from drastic change. A country has a culture to the extent that its people share a history, identity, and set of values. Intuitively, it is morally permissible for Israelis, Japanese, and Norwegians to ensure that their country stays focused on their interests rather than others’ interests. One way that they might do this is by making sure their countries are mostly composed of their peoples. This will ensure that their culture, government, and surroundings remain Jewish, Japanese, or Norwegian. Americans should be able to do the same.

The purpose of the United States is increasingly unclear. If it continues to be flooded by immigrants who differ greatly from native Americans, it will cease to constituted by a specific people. It already wasn’t constituted by a people in the way that Israel, Japan, and Norway are. Every year it is less committed to an idea or coherent set of them. The country’s commitment to freedom or the Constitution is waning with increasing government power. This can be seen whether we look at ever increasing taxes, encroachment on traditional American rights (for example, free speech, gun ownership, and rights against search and seizure), or the number of people under the control of the criminal justice system.

Perhaps the U.S. doesn’t need to be constituted by a particular people or committed to a particular idea or a coherent set of them. Still, it would have been nice if the citizens had been asked.

Stephen Kershnar is a State University of New York at Fredonia philosophy professor.

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