Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster Paperback – May 30, 1996
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateMay 30, 1996
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100060976918
- ISBN-13978-0060976910
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America ApartHardcoverFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Friday, Jul 26
- Leviathan and Its EnemiesPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonUsually ships within 2 to 3 days
- The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American EducationPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Friday, Jul 26Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
- Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of MulticulturalismPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Friday, Jul 26Only 8 left in stock (more on the way).
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Important...Many of the facts in this book will be surprising even to well-informed readers." -- --Nathan Glazer, Harvard University
"One of the most widely discussed books of the year." -- --Jerry Adler,Newsweek
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Peter Brimelow, who has two children in public school, is the editor of VDARE.COM, a senior fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, and a columnist for CBS MarketWatch. A financial journalist, he has written extensively about the NEA and the economics of education in Forbes and Fortune. The author of Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, he has contributed to the Wall Street Journal the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Part One
The View From the Tenth Circle
These population dynamics will result in the "browning" of America, the Hispanization of America. It is already happening and it is inescapable.
-- HENRY CISNEROS,
former mayor of San Antonio, Texas; Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration
My grandparents came from Lebanon. I don't identify with the Pilgrims on a personal level.
-- DONNA SHALALA,
Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration
We are transforming ourselves . . .
-- DORIS MEISSNER,
Commissioner, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in
the Clinton administration (who approves)
Dante, the great poet of medieval Italy, would have been delighted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service's waiting rooms. They would have provided him with a tenth Circle of Hell to add to the nine degrees of damnation he described in his most famous work, the Inferno.
There is something distinctly infernal about the INS spectacle. So many lost souls wait around so hopelessly, mutually incomprehensible in virtually every language under the sun, each clutching a number from one of those ticket-vending machines which may or may not be honored by the harassed INS clerks before the end of the civil service working day.
The danger of damnation is low--sort of. A Scottish friend of mine did once find himself flung into the deportation holding tank because the INS misunderstood its own rules. And toward the end of my own ten-year trek through the system, I whiled away a lot of time watching confrontations between suspicious INSers and agitated Iranians, apparently hauled in because the Iran hostage crisis had inspired the Carter administration to ask just exactly how many of them there were enrolled as students in U.S. universities anyway.
(The INS was unable to provide an answer during the hostage crisis's 444 days. Or, as it turned out, at all.1)
You can still get a pretty good blast of brimstone, however. Try suggesting that it might be another of those misunderstandings when, having finally reached the head of the line, you are ordered by the clerk to go away and come back another day with a previously unmentioned Form XYZ.
Your fellow huddled masses accept this treatment with a horrible passivity. Perhaps it is imbued in them by aeons of arbitrary government in their native lands. Only rarely is there a flurry of protest. At its center, almost invariably, is an indignant American spouse.
The Great American Immigration Paradox
We are looking here at something crucially significant: the Great American Immigration Paradox. Just as New York City's government can't stop muggers but does a great job ticketing young women on Park Avenue for failing to scoop up after their lapdogs, U.S. immigration policy in effect enforces the law only against those who obey it.
Annual legal immigration of about I million--counting the 100,000 refugees and the 100,000 applying for political asylum--is overwhelmed by an estimated 2 to 3 million illegal entries into the country in every recent year.
Many of these illegal entrants go back home, of course. In fact, some commute across the border every day, But, year by year, the number of illegal immigrants who settle permanently in the United States grows. Here's how to think about it: if you balance the gross illegal immigration against gross departures of illegals, you find the net increase in the illegal immigrant population. A cautious INS estimate: this net illegal immigration has been running at about 300,000 to 500,000 annually.2 No one, however, really knows.
The INS bureaucracy still grinds through its rituals. But the reality remains as President Ronald Reagan described it in 1983: "This country has lost control of its borders."
"And," Reagan added, "no country can sustain that kind of position."3
Indeed, the loss of control is even more complete than Reagan suggested. Much of the current legal immigration can't be kept out either. The majority of those lost souls in the INS waiting room will find salvation, in the form of U.S. residence, in the end.
This is because most legal immigrants--usually between a half and two thirds--are accepted more or less automatically under the various family-reunification provisions of current U.S. law.
Then there are refugees, who apply for admission while they are still abroad, and political asylum seekers, who apply once in the United States. And, similarly, the weird workings of the American legal system have made it virtually impossible to expel asylum seekers once they land on U.S. soil.
In fact in early 1993 another immigration scandal erupted: it emerged that foreigners were getting off planes at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport at an annualized rate rising rapidly through 15,000, applying for asylum and, because of lack of detention space, being released into the United States on a promise to present themselves at a future hearing, which not more than 5 percent ever did.4 (Not that it matters if they do. An unofficial INS estimate is that eight out of every ten asylum applicants end up staying in the United States quite regardless of whether or not their applications are approved.5)
This inability to expel asylum seekers once they set foot in the United States is why both the Bush and Clinton administrations were forced to order the interception of boats carrying would-be illegal immigrants from Haiti on the high seas. And it's why the Clinton administration had to beg humbly that the Mexican government halt and return home shiploads of smuggled Chinese.
As invariably happens with immigration policy, what was intended (or at least alleged) to be kind turns out to be cruel. We will be returning to this theme later.
Naturally, I take a deep personal interest in these immigration idiosyncrasies. After all, as it turned out I could have avoided my INS decade simply by ignoring the law and staying here after I graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1972.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; First Paperback Edition (May 30, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060976918
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060976910
- Item Weight : 10.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,454,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #52,380 in Politics & Government (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the content very informative and the writing style great.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book very informative, excellent, and clear in its arguments. They also say it's inspiring, powerful, and important.
"...Easy to read, clear in its arguments, this book will stand for all time as the first shot fired of the modern irrepressible conflict." Read more
"An excellent exposition on the current state of immigration...." Read more
"...For the most part I found his reasoning thoughtful and well-considered...." Read more
"This was an excellent synthesis of both the history of American immigration policy and a prediction of where we are headed...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's writing style.
"...Easy to read, clear in its arguments, this book will stand for all time as the first shot fired of the modern irrepressible conflict." Read more
"An extremely timely book, bravely written. This book was first published back in the nineties and was prophetic. It is still a must read." Read more
"Great book. Easy to read, very inspiring / powerful, and very important points!" Read more
"Great writing, however much you disagree...." Read more
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Today's Elijah P. Lovejoy is Peter Brimelow. This journalist was a onetime senior editor and reporter for Forbes and the National Review, America's premier conservative, establishment journals. He was fired (or left) these jobs because he has taken up the irrepressible conflict in American Politics.
The conflict: Immigration
Basically, the United States of America is settled territory with its own unique ethnic heritage. America is therefore under threat from Immigration-specifically through the workings of the Immigration Act of 1965, introduced and supported by the late Ted Kennedy.
The 1965 Act-which has been tinkered with-but not fundamentally altered-specifically recruits people from the Third World, especially Mexico to fill jobs and fill up the country. Brimelow argues that the Hispanic wave is a net drain as they are low-skilled workers with very little ability to move-upwards. Indeed, Hispanics are not moving up, if anything children of Hispanics assimilate to a downward, crime prone permanent underclass. Other races might be doing OK, but they unfairly qualify for affirmative action set-asides, special deals, social welfare programs, and often lobby the United States to carryout policies that aid their tribe at the expense of the American People.
Brimelow writes about the consequences of the continued immigration. Basically, it is a more Balkanized, dangerous, and less-free society. Indeed, since this book has been written immigration driven problems have created such a society. Travel is less free since the 9-11, immigrant driven attack, social services costs are so expensive the United States now faces fiscal problems every year, and elections have become a sharp edged contest, heavy with racial overtones.
Keeping immigration alive is the priority of a toxic mix of cheap labor employers (Republicans) and Cultural-Marxist ethnic activists (Democrats).
Despite the extremely powerful pro-immigration forces, since the book America has hardened its boarders, developed a quicker deportation process, and resisted formidable calls for Amnesty (at least as of this writing). However, the issue will not end until the fundamental truth of America is realized: It is a settled territory with its own unique people-immigrants aren't needed and their mere existence is a problem to the American people.
Easy to read, clear in its arguments, this book will stand for all time as the first shot fired of the modern irrepressible conflict.
Anyway, as to the book itself, Brimelow merely shows what immigration has been like for the US historically. Truth be told, the founders never intended for this to be a "multicultural" country. If one reads the Federalist Papers (which I've reviewed here), you discover that the founders were counting on the "common heritage" of the people to help make the new country work. As Brimelow shows, multiculturalism is of recent vintage (1960 and later).
The underpinning of any country is the commonality of its people: race/ethnicity, language, customs, religion, etc. What Brimelow is saying in this book is that underpinning is being eroded, and the consequences don't bode well for the future. Despite what some reviewers here say, Brimelow doesn't speak disparagingly about current immigrants. His point is that these new immigrants are not inclined to be assimilated, as previous waves were. I think he hits the nail on the head when he says that the current view on immigration is that it's a "civil right" (i.e., everyone has a right to come to America). No other country I know of is thought of in this way.
His emphasis on the fact that the US was/is a primarily white nation is not racist; it's merely stating fact. There's no talk about what race is "better", only that commonality is better. I think the charges of xenophobia by some reviewers are entirely specious.
What has led every great nation/empire to ruin: taking in peoples it can't assimilate or who don't want to be. Our collapse will be unavoidable. Rome lasted 476 years; I doubt we'll reach that.
This is a great, great book. Read it, and then use it by writing your representatives and tell them to turn off the spigot. As Brimelow points out, most Americans are opposed to further foreign immigration and yet it continues. Why? He doesn't answer that question directly -- that's another story.