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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
And eventually the US called a pause to the massive immigration. Which by the way is when most of the assimilation of those recently arrived occurred. Without new waves of immigrants arriving those here were gradually absorbed and became more Americanized.
It can’t be under Keynesian tyranny. Our time comes after the bond market collapse.
I have a liberal friend who votes for people who push open borders, but he complains constantly (he works in an environmental field) that there are too many people overrunning the countryside and the ecology is being damaged. I tell him he can’t have it both ways.
His rantings about “too many people” convinced his daughter not to have children. His smart, educated daughter will go childless while the border is overrun with the barely educated. That was fine 100 years go when education was unimportant but not so fine now that it’s absolutely essential.
As several have pointed out before, the combination of open borders and the welfare state is untenable. You can have one or you can have the other, but you can’t have both.
But neither is better than either.
2/3 of GDP is literally population growth. Abort them and grow the government. Borrow and print to make up for it
I should say, I appreciate your perspective as well!
This is true. And in Texas as well as other part of the Southwest, there are Mexican-American families who are landowners and have been here for 9 generations. And we have so many Spanish place names and street names due to our intermingled history. We have Tex-Mex cuisine too. But things feel a little different lately since LaRaza came along. It’s an uneasy feeling that I don’t like at all.
I am an Ur-feminist and Tomi Lahren is my little sister. To her from failing hands I throw the torch, and words to that effect, like, “You GO, girl!”
I myself am a 9th generation Texan, descended from Spanish settlers. You are absolutely correct. And yes, La Raza is an abomination – an irredentist, racist, anti-white hate group.
Oh Tomi, you’re so fine
You’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Tomi,
Hey Tomi…
I saw something similar at the hospital emergency room this past summer when I slipped and needed some staples in my head. If felt for the staff there-how do they deal with that ‘Tower of Babel’? Let’s be intellectually honest at least – there are public/taxpayer/rate payer resources being expended in being required to provide educational, medical and many other public and private services that were coordinated and often performed within that ethnic group’s churches, social organizations, families and neighbors in previous generations and waves of immigration.
This is a genuine ‘problem’ – has been for decades now, and good-willed, generous spirited people are really tired of having the ‘racist/nativist/tribal’ card dropped when pointing it out and wanting something done about it.
Bethany, please come for dinner at my home. I live in a beautiful, 5 bedroom, 3 1/2 baths center hall stone colonial. In a middle school just 15 blocks from me the students speak over 200 languages. The taxes on my home are about $11,000 per year. Out of 500 school districts in my state, our school district ranks 450th. I’d move but no one will buy my house. There are 5 beautiful stone homes, all different, and every single one is empty. The last house on my street that sold 1-2 years ago reaped a whopping $150,000 (less than I paid for mine in 1984). The neighborhood remains breathtaking, especially at this time of the year, if you don’t notice the sofas and dining chairs on the porch, the broken windows, the ratty lawns.
Our Muslim population has increased to around 18% of our township’s population and we will soon have more mosques than Christian churches, if we don’t already.
If you do take me up on my offer, we’ll have to eat in the dining room. It can be uncomfortable to eat in our beautiful family room where we used to dine. The home next door, which is a little higher than ours, is occupied by 2 Muslim families, 2 men, 3 wives and 12 children. All can see directly into our kitchen, family room and bedroom and bathroom if we keep the doors open. And they do. Look. The women are all covered up in black except for their eyes. I’ve tried to say hi to the men many times, but they glare at me and turn their backs.
The family before was also Muslim. They cooked goats in their back yard, tossed mattresses and tires against the garage and received mysterious packages every day from Pakistan. Every member of the household was on welfare, food stamps, heating oil support and housing support.
Have you ever had your neighborhood overwhelmed with “youths” “playing” on the street with fake (not sure about that) AK-47s yelling, “Allahu Ackbar”? Have you ever gone out onto your beautiful patio to eat dinner on a lovely summer night and been greeted with the sound of a man hocking up a lung to cleanse himself for prayer? My husband used to call it Mucus for Mohammed before he got sick. Five times a day. Sure, the local authorities should “do something” but if they did, my taxes would be even higher. All the money goes to the schools.
I stayed in this home “too late” in order to care for my elderly mother who lived 3 minutes away. She died in 2014, the same year my husband was diagnosed with a condition that precludes us from moving into a retirement community.
Now tell me that this immigration wave is just like all the other ones. Maybe VDH and I can get together for a drink someday.
Too many Democrats think this is sweet. It’s pure idiocy.
Ricochet comment of the day.
Well done lass, and surprisingly coherent being that it was written by a female person.
I have no doubt, if Ms. Lahren were to spend a week interning under Hypatia at commenting boot camp, that the results would be salutary.
I agree with you on one thing: Asian immigrants as a whole don’t harm any aspect of American culture. My Chinese wife works, pays taxes, speaks English well, and supports Trump, who BTW also favors letting more Asian immigrants in. I do disagree with you about one thing: I think my wife’s parents are fine where they are: in China.
I had a chinese coworker whose wife from hong kong who has no intention of being an american, and isn’t raising their children to be american either. The fact that they are all industrious, kind, and law abiding doesn’t mean that they actually want to be American. At some point this isn’t immigration.
Let me tell you as an ER doc what I see. I’ve had cases where we brought in the Spanish interpreter, only to have her tell me,” I can’t understand a word this patient is saying, it’s not Spanish”. Turned out to be a Mayan dialect. So to treat the patient I spoke English to the interpreter, who spoke Spanish to the patients husband, who interpreted to the patient. Then we played “telephone” with her answers. Just imagine the quality of the information I was able to get and give this way and how much it slowed down my ability to care for patients.
Ever since Clinton hospitals are mandated to provide professional certified translation services for patients. Guess who bears the costs?
Another time working at a major medical center in NC in one day I needed Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, and Malay.
lovely
Moderator Note:
Code of ConductIf working hard, speaking English, and paying taxes to Uncle Sam isn’t quite being American, it’s at least a good start. I’ll take that [redacted] every day of the week.
Do you feel those are mutually exclusive?
That would seem to be the implication.
You’ll never have to explain a Kipling reference to me, Hypatia. (And it was very funny.)
Agreed – I think it’s peculiar that so many people look at one period of immigration (of at least four) from our history and suggest that the policies from this period should be emulated today because… dubious theories of justice, or anecdotes about their family, naked emotional appeals, or a poem.
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That poem, by the way, was a lie even when it was written. Chinse immigration was banned the year before. Less than a decade after the plaque was mounted we began instituting major restrictions on immigration from all parts of the world.
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As you point out, the U.S., as well as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, al had periods of expansion. It’s crazy to model current immigration on what you needed during those periods. What is best for the country changes over time.
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The argument that we should have a policy not based on national interest, but on principles of justice has a lot of appeal. It’s just not compatible with the anti-enforcement ideas espoused by the people most often making the argument.
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The opportunities that come with living here aren’t unlimited. We can only accommodate a fraction of those who wish to come here. Therefore, the benefits must still be apportioned according to some set of rules if you’re looking for a just distribution.
I’m very serious about this. Send them to us. lol
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America is more than an economic arrangement.
I didnt say illegals did I, nice strawman arguement you have there. I was talking about an immigration moratorium, we theoretically already have a moratorium on illegal immigration
Please excuse my imprecision. I agree with President Trump’s assertion that Asian immigrants are preferable to most others. I believe this because they are smart and hard-working; value family and education; do not proselytize; and rarely commit crimes, violent or otherwise.
I don’t think Muslims speak English with lower proficiency than East Asians, and I apologize for seeming to imply that. Work-ethic, values, and law-abidingness are the primary reasons that I favor East Asian immigration above all other classes of immigration.
You’re absolutely right. It’s also a social and civic arrangement. East Asians provide a positive example of family values and work ethic. I also believe that, if fully assimilated (an important condition), they can also contribute to the civil society.
I do, however, believe that in order to ensure assimilation, immigration levels should be kept at a low level, to ensure that no large diaspora can provide any one group a refuge against blending in.
Your comment was insulting. And projection. Just because you don’t know how to build squat doesn’t mean the rest of us will sit around twiddling our thumbs.