OPINION:
As numbers go, “61” languishes in obscurity. But as applied to illegal immigration, 61 is “yuge,” as Donald Trump might say. It’s the number, in millions, of both legal and illegal immigrants who live in the United States. It’s the number, as a percentage of the U.S. population, of Americans concerned about the impact of mass migration on America as we have known it for going on three centuries. The number is further a measure of how Mr. Trump has crossed over from business to politics, to ride the issue to the front of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign.
A study published this week by the Center for Immigration Studies finds there now 61 million immigrants and their American-born minor children living in the United States, 45 million of whom are legal residents. Between 1970 and 2015, the proportion of immigrants to population increased by 353 percent — six times faster than the general U.S. population, which grew by 59 percent. Some states watch their numbers of immigrants rise much more steeply: in Georgia, 3,058 percent; in Virginia, 1,150 percent; and in Texas, 1,084 percent.
“These numbers raise a profound question that is seldom even asked, says Steven Camarota, the center’s director of research. “What number of immigrants can be assimilated?” This a question that the governing elites do not ask, but millions of Americans do. A survey conducted by the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and previewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, finds that 61 percent of Americans polled say “continued immigration into the country jeopardizes the United States.” The survey measures the opinion about not just the illegals, but about all immigration.
Mr. Trump’s critics say his brash star power is responsible for inflaming “xenophobic sentiments” among Americans, who are dismissed as “nativists” and ignorant “yahoos.” But if the governing elites had done something about these widespread fears and reservations, the Trump phenomenon would never have ruined their picnic. When, at a rally last week in Michigan, he scorched the Ford Motor Co. for its plans to move a Ford factory to Mexico, he was answered with chants of “Build the wall! Build the wall.” Like it or not, and the impotent elites don’t, it was economic reality talking, not ethnic hatred. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and even John Kasich acknowledge that.
The immigration issue isn’t simply about numbers and whether migrants will add or detract from the U.S. economy. It’s more fundamental than that. It’s whether the nation will remain moored to its founding values or be transformed into a place unrecognizable. Assimilation of newcomers eager to become Americans, once the goal and glory of America, has been fractured by the celebration of diversity, scorning English as the language that has tied the nation together. In New York City, for example, voters can fill out a ballot in any of six languages, and public schools, which should be teaching English as their first priority, must accommodate students in any of 180 tongues.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders refuse to acknowledge the threat of cultural suicide. Both say they’re committed to “comprehensive immigration reform,” but what they mean is accepting as many new arrivals as possible short of provoking civil unrest. The liberal aim is to eliminate all vestiges of America’s heritage to establish a new nation easily integrated into a global village without borders.
A majority of Americans understand that an American identity cannot survive open borders. When interviews on the street find that most passers-by do not even know who the nation’s capital was named for, it’s clear evidence that Americans will soon be strangers in their own land.
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