What Tomi Lahren Gets Wrong on Immigration

 

In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

My friend Brooke had exactly the right take:

https://twitter.com/bkerogers/status/995806378043367424

Lahren’s statement doesn’t just display an ignorance of American history, but also a total disregard for the work previous generations have done with genealogy. Thanks to the power of the Internet, it’s easier than ever before to do genealogical research. A subscription to Ancestry.com opens up a trove of documents from all over the world; painstakingly scanned and transcribed.

Over the years, I’ve delved into this world, and unfortunately find that I am the youngest person in the room at genealogy events by about two generations. As with many trades and skills, genealogy is one of those hobbies that millennials have no interest in taking up.

When I began researching my own family, I only knew my grandparents’ names on both sides of my family, and the name of one great-grandmother. Thanks to Ancestry and a few hundred dollars spent ordering death and marriage certificates from the archives in New York City, I’ve learned an incredible amount about my family’s origins.

The investigation has come with some fascinating discoveries: after a great aunt died, her widower married his sister-in-law. These second cousins saw their aunt turn into their step-mother overnight. Also uncovered was an infant brother of my grandmother’s, buried in the family plot without a headstone or marker of any kind. That discovery was made a few weeks after the birth of my second child, and we discovered this long-lost great uncle who never saw past his first week had the same name as our new son.

What has been most personally enriching is really understanding how much the history I already knew affected my family personally. It’s one thing to intellectually know that the graves and documents belonging to European Jewry was destroyed; it’s quite another to run into a brick wall because of it. While on my mother’s side I was able to easily reach back as far as eight generations thanks to the documents on Ancestry and the work done on the site by long-lost distant cousins; I was barely able to reach back two generations on my father’s. I was able to learn the names of the relatives who made it to America, and sometimes those of their parents if their names were listed on death certificates, but nothing else.

The most humbling part of doing this research has been seeing just how little my family had in terms of money, education, and expertise upon their arrival here. The first relative of mine to arrive here did so 12 years before he died, and managed to bring over all of his adult children before dying. What I know of him is from the 1900 census: he was a tailor from Austria, spoke no English, and could not read or write. His children would be able to learn how to read and write according to later censuses, but they too would work in menial jobs and live in rented homes, bouncing around New York City over the course of their lifetimes. It doesn’t seem as though my great-grandparents were even able to afford to be buried together in the same cemetery (I’ve been thus far unable to locate my great-grandmother, though I am reasonably certain she is buried in the same location as her husband).

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  1. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    RufusRJones (View Comment):
    She’s on record that she doesn’t read books. I sure as hell wouldn’t be running her career the way she is. She could have just read the news for a few years, read some books, and then did opinion. 

    Agreed, and it sounds as though that’s about what she’s done. She relies on the intellectuals at Fox to do the heavy lifting. On the other hand, if the books she doesn’t read are Hillary’s, Obama’s, Oprah’s, etc. it’s not altogether a bad thing.

    • #61
  2. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Our stupid light rail system which sucks $70 million in subsidies every year, had to hire a transit cop from the notorious country so they wouldn’t look racist when they checked for tickets. Because they couldn’t afford turnstiles. The other ones had to get language training as well. 

    • #62
  3. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Nick H (View Comment):
    Y’all are giving Tomi Lahren way too much credit here. Yes, there is a way that her statement is perfectly defensible and makes a good point about the changing nature of immigration over the history of our country. Did she intend it that way?

    Usually, it’s good practice to listen to what people actually say and not to what our inner voices tell us they really mean to say. Unless you’re in the business of constructing straw men.

    • #63
  4. Jager Coolidge
    Jager
    @Jager

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    Ellis Island actually turned people away. The sick, those that would be a drain on the State, political and social undesirables  and those with low intelligence that could become a drain on the State could be turned back.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ellis-island-challenging-the-immigrant/

    The country was built by the immigrants who followed our immigration laws and were allowed into the country. 

    • #64
  5. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    My maternal great grandmother immigrated from Belarus or Lithuania and was an avid follower of Emma Goldman. One of her daughters was a card carrying Communist; she was well traveled, particularly for her day. I have long wondered if she was a courier for the CPUSA or their Soviet handlers. If she was, she was an enemy of our country.

    And Lev Davodivich was living in New York when the February Revolution hit St. Petersburg. He’s better known as Trotsky.

    • #65
  6. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    He said “built by” as in the Pilgrims of the 1600s and those who followed shortly afterward. Those who arrived to find nothing but forests. The debate is not helped along by this kind of purposefully antagonistic parsing.

    • #66
  7. Nick H Coolidge
    Nick H
    @NickH

    Franco (View Comment):

    Yes VDH would have made a better argument, so what?

    When will you guys realize that the advocates of open borders (left and right) will deliberately misinterpret anything they can anyway. And then you casually grant them license to do so! 

    So what? You’re correct that there will always be people who will intentionally “misinterpret” conservative positions. In those cases I’d much rather be able to point out their lies and misrepresentation by providing the full context. That’s not granting them license to do it, it’s the exact opposite! It’s being able to intellectually and honestly defend a position. 

    Franco (View Comment):
    This shows me y’all have no business guiding strategy or tactics on issues involving politics.

    It’s a good thing I have no interest in politics then. I’ll take principles over politics any day.

    • #67
  8. J Climacus Member
    J Climacus
    @JClimacus

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):
    We are historical levels of immigration, and for the first time it’s mostly non European.

    Why does that matter? Is it okay that I immigrated because I’m of European ancestry but my wife’s parents aren’t ok because they are from Asia?

    That’s what they thought back in the largely mythical glory days of immigration:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

    This thread will have been useful if it can at least make a dent in the apparently-impossible-to-kill myth that America was once a land of unlimited, unregulated immigration.

     

    I don’t think anyone claims it was.

    I took your question to be rhetorical: That it was self-evident that no right-thinking person could ever contemplate country specific immigration restrictions. I’m merely pointing out that for much our history, we in fact had such restrictions.  So the fact that we might contemplate them now, or other restrictions as well, is in no way a violation of the principles America has historically used to limit immigration. Such a charge is the implicit point of retailing stories about how one’s ignorant grandpa immigrated from Palermo or Shanghai.

    • #68
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Our stupid light rail system which sucks $70 million in subsidies every year, had to hire a transit cop from the notorious country so they wouldn’t look racist when they checked for tickets. Because they couldn’t afford turnstiles. The other ones had to get language training as well.

    In Massachusetts, there are posters in every single medical facility–doctors’ offices, labs, hospitals–promising translators for 38 languages–I know there are 38 because I counted them one day. The poster says the person has “a right” to have a translator. 

    It’s a lovely idea, but seriously, how can that work? 

    That said, our high schools would be doing the kids a great service to get some of these people into the schools to teach these languages. It would give our kids a way to make money right out of high school. High school kids learn foreign languages pretty quickly. 

    • #69
  10. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Nick H (View Comment):

    People like Lahren who get on TV because they look good and make provocative statements but only have a shallow understanding of what they’re talking about are a discredit to the conservative movement.

    Yet end up with a name and face here.  Bethany makes some very worthy points; I just wish they didn’t start with a nonentity like Lahren.

    • #70
  11. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    As someone said in a comment above (sorry, I can’t find it again), another concern being ignored is the very real desire of LaRaza to “reclaim” the American Southwest, which they contend we stole from them. Their aim is to get more and more Latinos into elected office and flood our southern borders with immigrants and go from there.

    The recent “caravan” was not some spontaneous organic wellspring of starry-eyed harmless people who love America and want a better life, are you kidding me? It was organized by people who do not have America’s interests at heart and who use our liberals (or, as I call them, Useful Idiots) against us. Between LaRaza and the current attempt of ISIS to overrun the world, I think we’d be smart to watch our borders more closely right now.   Let’s can the “Give us your huddled masses” crap until we get a better handle on things.

    It isn’t helpful to accuse those of use whose eyes are open of nativism or rejecting “outsiders” or any of the rest of it. Oh, and my ancestors were Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony and Choctaw Indians, so you can all get out  of here as far as I’m concerned.

    • #71
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    the very real desire of LaRaza to “reclaim” the American Southwest, which they contend we stole from them.

    This is not an exaggeration. These guys are a political menace. 

    • #72
  13. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    Between LaRaza and the current attempt of ISIS to overrun the world, I think we’d be smart to watch our borders more closely right now. Let’s can the “Give us your huddled masses” crap until we get a better handle on things.

    You forgot Soros’ project to fund the election of Leftists as local prosecutors and state Atttorneys General.

    • #73
  14. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    AltarGirl (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):
    You had to be at least healthy. If you weren’t you were sent packing at the expense of the steam ship company. That’s why the steamship companies made thorough medical checkups of those who boarded their ships and turned many away. People in steerage still got sick in the cramped conditions with tuberculosis often reappearing and would not be allowed to enter the US.

    This was the entire point to Ellis Island. It was set up to process immigrants in a way a desperate man couldn’t take off and get lost in the shuffle of NYC life.

    It wasn’t some welcome wagon. If you were sick, you couldn’t board the ferry to the mainland.

    They sent people back to their home countries if they had pinkeye or any other contagious disease. Not quarantined, not any other thing. Sent them back overseas.

    • #74
  15. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Hang On (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    My maternal great grandmother immigrated from Belarus or Lithuania and was an avid follower of Emma Goldman. One of her daughters was a card carrying Communist; she was well traveled, particularly for her day. I have long wondered if she was a courier for the CPUSA or their Soviet handlers. If she was, she was an enemy of our country.

    And Lev Davodivich was living in New York when the February Revolution hit St. Petersburg. He’s better known as Trotsky.

    Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Yes. My father’s mother took him on a pilgrimage to visit Trotsky in Mexico. Ron Radosh, whose parents knew Trotsky and who wound up with a set of Trotsky’s dishes after he was assassinated, tells a funny story about serving baked goods to Communist friends (maybe it was his schoolmates at Little Red,) all of whom of course hewed strictly to the Party line, on the dishes of the fascist traitor Trotsky without telling them until they had already eaten.

    • #75
  16. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    He said “built by” as in the Pilgrims of the 1600s and those who followed shortly afterward. Those who arrived to find nothing but forests. The debate is not helped along by this kind of purposefully antagonistic parsing.

    The country wasn’t built solely by its first inhabitants. 

    • #76
  17. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):
    We are historical levels of immigration, and for the first time it’s mostly non European.

    Why does that matter? Is it okay that I immigrated because I’m of European ancestry but my wife’s parents aren’t ok because they are from Asia?

    That’s what they thought back in the largely mythical glory days of immigration:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

    This thread will have been useful if it can at least make a dent in the apparently-impossible-to-kill myth that America was once a land of unlimited, unregulated immigration.

     

    I don’t think anyone claims it was.

    I took your question to be rhetorical: That it was self-evident that no right-thinking person could ever contemplate country specific immigration restrictions. I’m merely pointing out that for much our history, we in fact had such restrictions. So the fact that we might contemplate them now, or other restrictions as well, is in no way a violation of the principles America has historically used to limit immigration. Such a charge is the implicit point of retailing stories about how one’s ignorant grandpa immigrated from Palermo or Shanghai.

    Just because we had them int he past doesn’t make the right. America had a lot of terrible policies for a long time – that doesn’t mean we should continue to do so. 

    • #77
  18. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    AltarGirl (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):
    You had to be at least healthy. If you weren’t you were sent packing at the expense of the steam ship company. That’s why the steamship companies made thorough medical checkups of those who boarded their ships and turned many away. People in steerage still got sick in the cramped conditions with tuberculosis often reappearing and would not be allowed to enter the US.

    This was the entire point to Ellis Island. It was set up to process immigrants in a way a desperate man couldn’t take off and get lost in the shuffle of NYC life.

    It wasn’t some welcome wagon. If you were sick, you couldn’t board the ferry to the mainland.

    They sent people back to their home countries if they had pinkeye or any other contagious disease. Not quarantined, not any other thing. Sent them back overseas.

    And contrast this with the incident a few years ago, where Obama stood aside holding the door open to waves of illegals who started epidemics of measles and scabies in our schools. And few objected, preferring to have our kids get sick over being called racists. The situation is absurd.

    • #78
  19. AltarGirl Inactive
    AltarGirl
    @CM

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    He said “built by” as in the Pilgrims of the 1600s and those who followed shortly afterward. Those who arrived to find nothing but forests. The debate is not helped along by this kind of purposefully antagonistic parsing.

    The country wasn’t built solely by its first inhabitants.

    And it wasn’t built solely by immigrants that followed.

    Maybe if we stopped with idiocy of “land of immigrants” that minimizes the accomplishments of the settlers in order to promote the self-aggrandizement of immigrants, you’d get less push-back.

    Immigrants from 1890s on have been self-promoting at the expense of those who came before. There is no culture except irish-/french-/italian-/Mexican- American culture. Land of Immigrants. Give us your huddled masses. This isn’t who we are.

    • #79
  20. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Here is where I insert my tedious broken record blather: Check out Dr. Joseph Salerno on Mises and Nationalism. 

    Immigration needs to make the disbursed GDP go up. No social problems. 

    • #80
  21. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    Jager (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    Ellis Island actually turned people away. The sick, those that would be a drain on the State, political and social undesirables and those with low intelligence that could become a drain on the State could be turned back.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ellis-island-challenging-the-immigrant/

    The country was built by the immigrants who followed our immigration laws and were allowed into the country.

    Who here has argued that it should be otherwise? 

    • #81
  22. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    J Climacus (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):
    We are historical levels of immigration, and for the first time it’s mostly non European.

    Why does that matter? Is it okay that I immigrated because I’m of European ancestry but my wife’s parents aren’t ok because they are from Asia?

    That’s what they thought back in the largely mythical glory days of immigration:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

    This thread will have been useful if it can at least make a dent in the apparently-impossible-to-kill myth that America was once a land of unlimited, unregulated immigration.

     

    I don’t think anyone claims it was.

    I took your question to be rhetorical: That it was self-evident that no right-thinking person could ever contemplate country specific immigration restrictions. I’m merely pointing out that for much our history, we in fact had such restrictions. So the fact that we might contemplate them now, or other restrictions as well, is in no way a violation of the principles America has historically used to limit immigration. Such a charge is the implicit point of retailing stories about how one’s ignorant grandpa immigrated from Palermo or Shanghai.

    Past generations feared that those Europeans that we now consider virtuous and proper immigrants would have loyalties to the Pope and would disrupt American culture in horrible and irreversibly detrimental ways. They were wrong. I see no reason why those same arguments marshaled against immigrants now are any less wrong. 

    • #82
  23. AltarGirl Inactive
    AltarGirl
    @CM

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    And contrast this with the incident a few years ago, where Obama stood aside holding the door open to waves of illegals who started epidemics of measles and scabies in our schools. And few objected, preferring to have our kids get sick over being called racists. The situation is absurd

    Shhhhhh…. you’ll create cognitive dissonance in the immigrant apologists who have yet to realize that Colombus Day Terror applies to new invaders as well as old!

    • #83
  24. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin (View Comment):

    I think you need to stay with Victor Davis Hanson sometime.

    One of his most recent podcasts here mentions…

    1.2 million ID thefts

    immigrants fleeing car wrecks

    $100 million California traffic fines forgiven

    burdens placed upon citizens as non-citizens are never arrested for the same trivial things

    horrible schools (California public schools have recently ranks about 48th in some categories)

    25% of healthy California now has diabetes

    about 85% of the immigrants have no English or money

    waking up to gunfire and cockfighting

    littering of dead dogs

    wounded dogs and dog fights

    and lots and lots and lots of trash.

    Conservatives have to keep their heads. Pretending that problems do not exist only makes things worse.

    Conservatives typically rely upon the fight-and-flight part of their brains, not the self-awareness part of their brains.

    As Thomas Sowell would say, conservatives believe in constrained view, not the unconstrained view.

    As Jonathan Haidt would say, conservatives make decisions based upon things other than compassion and “Marxist-type” fairness ideas.

    VDH gets it. He has lived the grimy reality of uncontrolled immigration rather than the flowery rhetoric.

    I actually would love to talk with him sometime.  His experiences in California do not mirror mine in Tennessee or other’s I know in Texas.  I think there are definitely some regional differences to be sure. 

    • #84
  25. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):

    Do you believe that “someone says it makes them feel nice” provides good and sufficient reason to allow people with low skills, low education, and not understanding the language to come into this country? Or do you agree with Lahren’s statement?

    Since I’ve never heard that given as a reason for immigrating I really don’t know how to take Lahren’s statement.  Most likely, as with any of the media, she has no idea what she is talking about.  (that applies to most politicians as well)

    • #85
  26. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    Kozak (View Comment):
    I would want a 5 year moratorium s

    Cool, just don’t plan on much if any new construction during those 5 years.   Call me when it’s over.  I’ll be at my new bar near a beach somewhere instead of trying to build things stuff.  

    • #86
  27. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    AltarGirl (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel:

    In a widely shared clip from a Fox News appearance over the weekend, Tomi Lahren showcased just how little she understands how this country was built:

    America was built not by immigrants, but by settlers.

    All those people that flowed through Ellis Island beg to differ.

    He said “built by” as in the Pilgrims of the 1600s and those who followed shortly afterward. Those who arrived to find nothing but forests. The debate is not helped along by this kind of purposefully antagonistic parsing.

    The country wasn’t built solely by its first inhabitants.

    And it wasn’t built solely by immigrants that followed.

    Maybe if we stopped with idiocy of “land of immigrants” that minimizes the accomplishments of the settlers in order to promote the self-aggrandizement of immigrants, you’d get less push-back.

    Immigrants from 1890s on have been self-promoting at the expense of those who came before. There is no culture except irish-/french-/italian-/Mexican- American culture. Land of Immigrants. Give us your huddled masses. This isn’t who we are.

    I think those that use the term “land of immigrants” include those settlers as “immigrants”. I agree that this isn’t the best way to phrase it but the idea is that almost all Americans are descended from someone that left their home country at some point and came here to make a better life. it’s not an outrageous thing to say even if it is a bit self serving.  

    • #87
  28. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    The recent “caravan” was not some spontaneous organic wellspring of starry-eyed harmless people who love America and want a better life, are you kidding me? It was organized by people who do not have America’s interests at heart and who use our liberals (or, as I call them, Useful Idiots) against us

    This is absolutely right.  The “caravan” was/is a publicity stunt, complete with accompanying camera crews.  

    • #88
  29. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):

    Past generations feared that those Europeans that we now consider virtuous and proper immigrants would have loyalties to the Pope and would disrupt American culture in horrible and irreversibly detrimental ways. They were wrong. I see no reason why those same arguments marshaled against immigrants now are any less wrong.

    To draw the same conclusions from disparate events, you need to replicate  circumstances.  It’s impossible to compare today with yesterday when discussing immigration because 2018 is nothing like 1870.

     

    • #89
  30. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Concretevol (View Comment):
    His experiences in California do not mirror mine in Tennessee or other’s I know in Texas. I think there are definitely some regional differences to be sure.

    IMO, a libertarian economy with a good cost of living makes a big difference on  assimilation. People feel more agency instead of tribalism and they don’t need or use government as much. Graft, dependency, patronage, or rent seeking.

    • #90
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