Lux Lucet

Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

Although the mainstream media (MSM) is firmly committed to the proposition that that the entire world has the right to immigrate to the US at taxpayer expense, conservatives have increasingly raised their voices in opposition to this practice.

This installment of Immigration, Citizenship, and the Bible (ICB) is an attempt to examine various conservative arguments for immigration reform in light Gordon Clark’s Scripturalism, the system of thought that asserts the Bible and the Bible alone is the Word of God and is the textbook to prepare the man of God for every good work, including the good work of immigration reform.

My critique of conservatives is presented here in the form of a review of Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster by Peter Brimelow.

Published in 1995 by Random House, Alien Nation (AN) caused quite a stir. Some praised it. From the back cover of my 1996 paperback edition, conservative columnist William Rusher is quoted as saying of it, “A book not to be missed…Every American citizen owes a debt of gratitude to Peter Brimelow.” Others denounced it for what they perceived were the book’s racist undertones.

For my part, although I differ with the author’s methods (he relies on arguments from common sense, history and statistics rather than building his case for immigration reform, as a Scripturalist would, from the express statements of the 66 Books of the Bible and their necessary logical consequences) and with some of his conclusions, AN is, nevertheless, a valuable book and a must read for anyone interested in the hot-button topic of immigration.

Born in England, Brimelow is a naturalized US citizen with an MBA from Stanford University. For a number of years, he worked as a financial journalist, writing for major publications such as Barron’s,
Fortune and Forbes, where he held the position of senior editor. Brimelow also was a senior editor for William Buckley’s National Review, the flagship magazine of the American conservative movement.

One of the strong points of AN is the quality of the writing itself. Brimelow’s straightforward language about race is refreshing. On many occasions, as odd as this may sound when talking about a book on public policy, AN actually manages to be funny and entertaining. All which is to say that readers should not feel intimidated at the thought of tackling this book. It was written to be understood.

In addition to being a gifted writer, Brimelow also shows himself an able scholar. The book is extensively documented, with endnotes for each chapter at the back of the book and an extensive index.

Under the heading “A Helpful Note from Author” at the book’s beginning is a very nice summary of American immigration history from 1607 to the 1990s. Much of the information in this brief section will be new to readers, and I highly recommend their taking a few minutes to go over it.

For example, did you know that US immigration law has undergone two major revisions in the past 100 years? The “Great Restriction” of immigration was enacted by two laws, The Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which together served to put an end to the “Ellis Island” era, imposing national origins quotas for immigrants. For example, the 1924 law “limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census” (Wikipedia). This modified the earlier 1921 Quota Act which had limited immigration from a country to 3% of the total population living in the US as of the 1910 census (see Wikipedia for details).

The second great change took place as a result of the 1965 Immigration Act, which reversed the restrictions of the 1921 and 1924 laws. Since these earlier laws based immigration from a particular nation its proportional representation of the total US population, they served to preserve the racial and ethnic balance of the US population as it existed at the time. On the other hand as Brimelow documents in AN, the 1965 Immigration Act served to favor immigration, not from Northwestern Europe, but from what were considered, at least up to that time in American history, non-traditional sources.

This leads to one of the most important points made in AN: the current wave of mass, third-world immigration is not a force of nature, but the result of deliberate US government policy.

One of the great frustrations in reading about immigration issues from mainstream sources is their tendency to posit the current numbers and sources of immigrants to the US as an unstoppable force of nature, almost as if the immigrants were themselves springing up out of the ground. The only questions we need to consider, these same sources tell us, is how soon the white population of the US will become a minority and how whites they will react to their new majority-minority status.

Brimelow says nonsense to all this. He writes,

The current wave of immigration – and therefore America’s shifting ethnic balance – is wholly and entirely the result of government policy. Specifically, it is the result of the Immigration Act of 1965, and the further legislation of 1986 and 1990.

The three fundamental questions of immigration policy are how many get admitted? who? and how is this enforced? All are uniquely within the power of the American government officials. Even if they prefer to let these questions be decided, as often at present, by default.

Put it this way: American immigration policy may be made by commission. Or it may be made by omission. But it is still made in America, by American politicians.

In other words: it’s their fault (75, emphasis in the original).

Although I would have liked to see him discuss it more, Brimelow does touch on the issue of Roman Catholic immigration and actually expresses sympathy with 19th century Americans who were alarmed at the rapid growth of the Roman Catholic population seen at that time. He even has a few good words for the Know Nothings, a short-lived 19th century American political party focused on countering Roman Catholic immigration from Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s.

But the Know Nothings were far from an ignorant mob, as immigration enthusiasts, probably misunderstanding that nickname, tend to assume. Recent research has shown that they were a cross section of solid middle- and upper-middleclass citizens. And the Know Nothings never actually proposed restricting immigration – just that, in the words of the Know Nothing governor of Massachusetts, Henry J. Gardner, American should take care to “nationalize before we naturalize” any new immigrants. Nor were the Know Nothings anti-Semitic.

The Know Nothings were, however, deeply suspicious of Roman Catholicism – at a time when enormous Irish Catholic immigration had begun, after the potato famine of 1845.

According to Brimelow, the Know Nothings were justifiably concerned that, “Roman Catholicism with its hierarchical structure, unlike Judaism with its self-governing congregations, was not a ‘republican’ religion – one that would be compatible with democracy, free institutions, law, liberty” (12-13).

A further point about the Know Nothings is that they opposed slavery.

In short, the picture Brimelow paints is that the Know Nothings, far being a mob of ignorant, pitchfork wielding bigots as they are often portrayed today, were normal Americans with legitimate concerns about the wide-spread introduction of popery into the United States, concerna that subsequent American history has shown were well-founded.

A third myth debunked by Brimelow is the happy talk surrounding the success of immigrants. In any MSM discussion of immigration, you’ll likely to something like this from a commentator,

XYZ was just Harvard’s valedictorian – XYZ arrived in the U.S. speaking no English three months ago – XYZ PROVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS STILL ALIVE! – despite all those nasty nativists who want to keep all the XYZs out (8, emphasis in the original).

But as Brimelow points out, there are two sides to this coin. If someone wants to trumpet the success of immigrants by citing anecdotes, it is reasonable to expect to hear the other side of the story, except we rarely, if ever, do. Brimelow provides a few such examples from the immigration dark side. For instance,

In January 1993, a Pakistani applicant for political asylum (and, simultaneously, for amnesty as an illegal immigrant) opens fire on employees entering CIA headquarters, killing two and wounding three! (6)

In the ensuing two decades since AN publication, there have been many more such appalling cases, among the best known of which is the murder of Kathryn Steinle by an illegal immigrant in 2015. Donald Trump used her killing as Exhibit A when calling for tougher immigration laws during his presidential campaign.

As mentioned out the outset, although AN is a valuable book for those seeking to learn about the immigration issue, it is not without its flaws. Perhaps the most serious one being the author’s unsuccessful attempt to leap across Hume’s Gap.

Hume’s Gap is the name logicians have given to the fact that one cannot logically derive and “ought” from and “is.” But this is exactly what Brimelow attempts to do. A summary of Brimelow’s argument in AN runs thus: American was 90 percent white in 1965, therefore it ought to be 90 percent white today. But the racial balance of the nation in 1965 provides no basis for informing us what the racial balance ought to be in 2017 or what immigration policy America ought to adopt. In other words, immigration policy must be settled by appeals to propositions other than historical statistics. And for the sake of brevity, those propositions are found in the Bible, a book which AN to a large extent ignores.

And lest I appear to be beating up on Peter Brimelow, the same problem with Hume’s Gap also exists with the favorite incantation of the immigration enthusiasts, who love to exult that “America is a nation of immigrants.” Apart from the fact this it’s not true – as pro-immigration scholar Julian Simon pointed out, the US in not a nation of immigrants, it is a nation of the descendants of immigrants – as a descriptive statement – a descriptive statement is an “is” statement, telling us what is, or at least what purportedly is, the truth – no conclusion about what American immigration policy ought to be logically flows from it. And this would be the case even if every single living American actually were an immigrant.

Another flaw with AN is the author’s endorsement of intrusive big government in the form of national ID cards. In order to solve the problem of illegal immigration, Brimelow proposes that, “Americans may eventually have to carry identification cards, like many Europeans” (260). Some of this is seen in President Donald Trump’s call for national E-Verify, the purpose of which is to prevent illegal immigration from being able to obtain employment but in effect creates what Ron Paul has referred to as the “permission slip society.”

A third difference I have with the author’s conclusions centers around the welfare state. Although Brimelow is a free-market capitalist and on several occasions observes how America’s welfare state exacerbates the immigration problem, he does not call for the abolition of government welfare programs. He instead argues that, since America has a welfare state, it cannot afford open immigration. Brimelow is right about this, of course. But the biblical solution to the conflict between immigration and the welfare state is to junk the welfare state, not to impose severe restrictions on immigration.

One area where Brimelow and I agree is on the necessity of stopping the application of birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. As US law stands, if a mother gives birth on US soil, her child is automatically an American citizen regardless, of her immigration status or that of the father. There is no sound biblical or constitutional basis for this practice. Brimelow call the practice, “plainly outdated” (265).

I would go further than Brimelow and state that it is an outrage and a gross abuse of the American people that American citizenship has been so debased by the federal government as to allow foreigners to barge into the county in clear violation of US immigration law, and then reward them with automatic citizenship for their children, which citizenship allows the parents to apply for welfare benefits on behalf of their “anchor baby.” There is simply no sound biblical or constitutional argument for this practice.

As I have stated elsewhere, the proper, biblical model for admitting individuals to citizenship is outlined in the Westminster Confession, Ch. XXVIII.4. Baptism is the sign of the new covenant and admission into membership in the visible church. According to the Westminster Confession, baptism is to be applied to two groups of individuals: 1) those making a profession of faith in Christ, and 2) the infants of one, or both, believing parents.

Using these same principles as the basis for determining national citizenship, we can say that the citizens of a nation are: 1) those who take an oath of citizenship – in the US this would be an oath of loyalty to the Constitution of the United States, and 2) the infants of one, or both, parents who are citizens.

In closing, it is the opinion of this reviewer that AN is the single best statement of the secular conservative argument for immigration reform on the market. If you read only one book on immigration by a secular writer – Brimelow may be a Christian for all I know, but I refer to him here as a secular writer, because, although he isn’t openly hostile to Christianity, he does not derive his argument for immigration reform from the Scriptures – this is the best one on the market.

The book explodes many common myths about immigration, one of which is the notion that the shifting racial and ethnic balance of the US is the result of inexorable natural forces rather than the result of deliberate government policy made in Washington

All in all, AN is a fascinating but flawed attempt to solve the immigration problem by a gifted political conservative.  If a writer of Peter Brimelow’s obvious talents cannot make a logically sound argument for fixing the serious flaws in America’s immigration system, perhaps this suggests that political conservatism is a threadbare philosophy and that Americans need to turn elsewhere for answers.  Could it be that they need to seek wisdom for immigration reform from the pages of God’s Word?