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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:
.@TomiLahren: "You don't just come into this country with low skills, low education, not understanding the language and come into our country because someone says it makes them feel nice. That's not what this country is based on." @WattersWorld pic.twitter.com/Dux0cABHar
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 13, 2018
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).
Published in General
I see no reason to jettison my reverence for history and learning the lessons it teaches.
I see little evidence that we have an assimilation problem any different than past waves of immigrants. 1st and 2nd generation Americans born to immigrants are pretty well assimilated in my experience. Just like those born to the turn of the 20th century European Papists who were going to destroy America.
But it wasn’t a terrible policy. It was the sensible policy of a sovereign nation guarding its own cultural norms and the safety of its citizens. Not so long ago, we had a policy of allowing in a certain number of immigrants and then shutting it down until they were assimilated. It’s shocking to me that in such a relatively short period of time, the Left has succeeded in getting so many people to call this wrong or “racist” or “nativist.”
We have always welcomed immigrants from all over the world. But we already had a culture in full swing when they got here, and we do not welcome honor killings or Santeria or Voodoo or any other behaviors that are against our laws or don’t conform to our cultural norms. It’s time we stood up and said so unapologetically, and time we made those who hurl their stupid epithets at us to look like the idiots they are.
My ancestors were some of those European Papists. But when they immigrated from County Tipperary, they didn’t demand that voter ballots be written in Gaelic, or that public school classes be taught in same, and they had no access to welfare or social security benefits. In fact they did everything they could to assure other Americans that they were doing everything they could to assimilate to the dominant culture. There certainly was no embrace of status as an aggrieved victim class.
This is a great, related, article by Kevin Williamson.
We had a little squabble with some people of similar cultural background who followed this weird polygamous cult leader to Utah of all places. On the other hand, looking at the old proposed borders for the State of Deseret, I’m thinking it might not have been too bad an idea.
Changing the subject, it’s pretty funny these days to see the proposed State of Jefferson being described as a “conservative revolt” when that part of the state would be even more welfare dependent than it already is except for the cannabis industry which is by far its biggest single revenue source.
This.
More on my last point… Catholic immigrants were sensitive to the suspicion that they were more loyal to the Pope than America. Their response was not to claim victim status, or accuse other Americans of xenophobia or racism, but to re-double their efforts to demonstrate their loyalty to America. Is that what current immigrants are doing? Why is it, when the U.S. Soccer team plays Honduras at Gillette Stadium, there are thousands of Honduran immigrants waving the Honduran flag and virtually none waving the American flag? As long as we are calling on ancestors as expert witnesses in immigration, I cannot imagine my grandfather waving the Irish flag in a U.S. vs Ireland soccer game.
This isn’t responsive IMO.
Disclaimer: Lahren’s comment in the O/P is sufficiently incoherent that I don’t know if I appear to be taking her “side” or not. I’m not.
I think it is. History teaches us things and one of those things it that a lot of arguments aren’t new.
Her statement may be a truism, but it’s hardly incoherent.
Probably in most cases they also didn’t adhere to the Papal line of the time which strongly opposed democratic government.
If you don’t see it, you aren’t looking, or maybe you live in a place where it isn’t an issue – yet. In Texas, we have TV commercials in Spanish, and I’m not talking about Univision. It’s the regular TV stations. Here are some Texas polling place signs. In some, the English is below the Spanish (and never mind how they’re even voting if they don’t understand English):
And how about this for lack of assimilation:
I’m sure there are those who find this heartwarming, but not only is it a really bad sign for the country, but it costs too much taxpayer money.
Fine. But why should we think that arguments proven inaccurate in one time frame would be similarly inaccurate in a completely different time frame under different circumstances? That’s what you’re arguing. Doesn’t history also teach us not to draw parallels unless there are strong similarities in events? Others here have discussed the strong differences between today and yesterday, and there are a lot more.
And in the 1900s there were signs in Italian and German. Meh.
If I don’t understand something, it’s ipso facto incoherent :)
It makes no sense to me.
Do people still “diagram” sentences? I’d hate to have to do that with the above.
I don’t see the circumstances as being all that different than they were then in a way that matters. People keep talking about the welfare state, well I’m all for getting rid of the welfare state. Join me there.
I am making a general observation on how immigration can be less or more problematic vs. how the government and economy is structured. See #95.
Wilson, FDR, LBJ, the loose money policies of our dumb central bank (from pick a date) have made this an. increasingly less libertarian economy. Superimpose our immigration pattern over this. IMO, this all came to a head in the early 90’s. Asset bubble. 10 years of 2% GDP. Now we have Trump as POTUS. Opiod. Bernie should have been the Democrat nominee.
I’m not going to get into a big argument about it.
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Feelings have nothing to do with the actual rational for open borders. Namely, baring extraordinary circumstances, it’s basic human decency to let people get a job from a willing employer and rent a home from a willing landlord. It doesn’t matter if it makes someone feel good or bad. The imperative to not interfere in someone else’s life requires dire consequences to overcome the presumption. Fear of having a government somewhat less to your preferences, having to look at poverty, or localized undesirable changes, are not sufficient to justify a blanket ban on entire classes of immigrants.
I don’t say this because I think it will be convincing to a skeptic, but in order to teach skeptics that the rational for open boarders is not as trivial as common straw men. The best way to argue is to attack the best arguments.
I doubt it. You had to speak English then to get citizenship. And you had to be a citizen to vote. And it was enforced. Unlike today.
The other point he makes over and over is there is no margin in law enforcement enforcing the law with illegals and poor immigrants. They can’t squeeze them for fines. They might be accused of racism. What if they don’t have car insurance? All kinds of zoning violation.
There were hundreds of German speaking newspapers in the U.S. at the time of WWI , and today you have to pass an English and Civics class to become a citizen.
All of them descendants of teh WASPY Kind of People, too.
I Walton and MarciN are pretty congruent with what my position is. Incentives and structural barriers matter great deal. Trade–the actual ability to trade, one way or another— solves a million problems.
Always get a chuckle out of your comments, Guru. Keep ‘um coming. :)
LOL
I disagree about that signalling much for the country at large or even for Texas. It has been a blend of Spanish and English since it’s inception and many parts of the boarder are only recently patrolled and maintained. In the past there been many “soft” entry points where people went back and forth at will.
All true except the “unlike today” part. That’s exactly like today.
This is why the Kevin Williamson article that I posted is so good.
Some would say that those who tick off the most “diversity” boxes do get a pass. Having parents who never went to college is big. It’s bigger if you are Hispanic, Native American or Black. Being Muslim adds a certain cachet. Being foreign, specifically from a third world country, is huge. It’s better if you come from a very poor performing high school, that way they can ignore your standardized test scores. The newest thing is transfer from community college. This exponentially increases your likelihood of admittance.