That Barack Obama is full of it is not a surprise. But it is always necessary to call out his latest pile of steaming crap and this week the job falls to Michelle Malkin.
President Obama claims that restricting immigration in order to protect national security is “offensive and contrary to American values.” No-limits liberals have attacked common-sense proposals for heightened visa scrutiny, profiling or immigration slowdowns as “un-American.”
America’s Founding Fathers, I submit, would vehemently disagree.
Our founders, as I’ve reminded readers repeatedly over the years, asserted their concerns publicly and routinely about the effects of indiscriminate mass immigration. They made it clear that the purpose of allowing foreigners into our fledgling nation was not to recruit millions of new voters or to secure permanent ruling majorities for their political parties. It was to preserve, protect and enhance the republic they put their lives on the line to establish.
As Barack Obama attempts to rewrite American history to match his particular political ideology, Malkin looks at the words and deeds of the Founders for their idea of immigration:
In a 1790 House debate on naturalization, James Madison opined: “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable?”
No, not because “diversity” is our greatest value. No, not because Big Business needed cheap labor. And no, Madison asserted, “Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
Madison argued plainly that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily “incorporate himself into our society.”
George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, similarly emphasized that immigrants should be absorbed into American life so that “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.”
Alexander Hamilton, relevant as ever today, wrote in 1802: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
Hamilton further warned that “The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.”
He predicted, correctly, that “The permanent effect of such a policy will be, that in times of great public danger there will be always a numerous body of men, of whom there may be just grounds of distrust; the suspicion alone will weaken the strength of the nation, but their force may be actually employed in assisting an invader.”
The survival of the American republic, Hamilton maintained, depends upon “the preservation of a national spirit and a national character.” He asserted, “To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”
Malkin ends with this simple fact:
Put simply, unrestricted open borders are unwise, unsafe and un-American. A country that doesn’t value its own citizens and sovereignty first won’t endure as a country for long.
