¡Adios, America!

by Ann Coulter

  The reason all the estimates from Pew, DHS, CIS, the Urban Institute, and the Current Population Survey are nearly identical—11 million!—is that they all use the same census data. To count illegals, analysts subtract the number of legal immigrants (estimated from those who answered census surveys) from the number of foreign-born residents (also estimated from those who answered census surveys). But if the census’s figures are wrong, then, obviously, so are the estimates.

  THE REAL NUMBER IS 30 MILLION ILLEGALS

  There’s good reason to believe the census numbers are wrong. In 2005, two Bear Stearns analysts, Robert Justich and Betty Ng, warned clients that there was “significant evidence” that the census undercounted the illegal immigrant population by at least half.29 They estimated the number at closer to 20 million—and they were advising clients about something important: their money.

  Justich and Ng discounted the census data because it relied on illegal aliens answering surveys. As Justich told the Wall Street Journal, “The assumption that illegal people will fill out a census form is the most ridiculous concept I have ever heard of.”30 People who have left their families, paid huge sums of money to smugglers, trekked thousands of miles, and broken American law to enter this country don’t have much incentive to fill out questionnaires from the U.S. government.

  The census tried to account for the reluctance of illegal aliens to answer government surveys by adding 10 percent to their population estimate. Guess where they got 10 percent? From another survey of illegals. In 2001, the University of California asked Mexican-born residents of Los Angeles if they had taken the recent census. Ten percent said “no.” But almost 40 percent refused to take that survey.31

  Citing the work of anthropologist Maxine Margolis, Justich and Ng argued that the nonresponse rate of illegal immigrants might be quite a bit higher than 10 percent. In 1990, Margolis found that the Brazilian consulate counted 100,000 Brazilians living in New York City, while the Brazilian foreign office put the number at 230,000. That same year, the 1990 census reported that only 9,200 Brazilians lived in New York City.32

  Dispensing with the census’s figures, the Bear Stearns analysts looked at remittances from the United States to Mexico. These are electronic money transfers recorded by a nation’s central bank—not surveys of people who don’t want to answer surveys. The report found that while the number of Mexicans living in the United States was supposed to have grown by only 56 percent from 1995 to 2003, remittances from the United States to Mexico grew by almost 200 percent, even as the median weekly wage increased by just 10 percent. The Bear Stearns report also compared the growth in housing permits and school enrollment with official population figures in various immigrant enclaves. According to the census, for example, the combined population growth of Brunswick, Elizabeth, and Newark, New Jersey, was only 5.6 percent between 1990 and 2003. But housing permits in these towns grew by more than 600 percent, and 80 percent of the new permits were for multiple dwellings.

  From these and other calculations, they estimated the illegal population to be 20 million, and that was back in 2005. The very next year—the same year illegal immigration was supposed to have nearly stopped—two Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalists, Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, undertook their own study for Time magazine and concluded that “the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million—enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to the U.S. by legal means.”33 But according to every major news outlet, America gained fewer than a million illegal immigrants that year, and then miraculously went right back down to 11 million illegals by 2007.

  Combining Justich and Ng’s conclusion that there were 20 million illegal aliens here in 2005 with the estimate of Pulitzer Prize winners Barlett and Steele that another 3 million illegal immigrants would enter in 2006, plus at least another 3 million illegals coming in every year throughout the following decade—surely a low estimate—would mean there are at least 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States today. To most Californians, 30 million seems low.

  So why are Americans being insistently told that there are only 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States? When Lou Dobbs began referring to the “11 to 20 million illegal aliens” in 2006, citing the Bear Stearns report, the Columbia Journalism Review went apoplectic: “Lou Dobbs takes a tough look at the immigration debate—and plays loose with the numbers.”34 For simply reporting the ranges and not taking a position on the correct figure, Dobbs had shocked the conscience of the CJR. “Every major newspaper in the country that has reported a number over the past several days,” the Review triumphantly reported, “has given an estimate of about 11 million or 12 million.” What kind of vulgar demagogue would question “every major newspaper”?

  The CJR dismissed the Bear Stearns report for being “light on the large-scale demographic data”—i.e., census data. In fact, however, even the Pew report touted by the CJR had warned that its own estimate was based on census data samples of fewer than a hundred thousand people, and added a cautionary note about the accuracy of both the underlying data and the assumptions used to make estimates.35 CJR was undeterred. Amid more denunciations of Dobbs for “suggest[ing] that somehow Bear Stearns’ estimate is just as valid as the better-grounded lower estimates,” the screed concluded: “We are inclined to believe the much more comprehensive analysis of the Pew Hispanic Center.” Merely for mentioning a report that CJR was less “inclined to believe,” Dobbs came in for paragraph after paragraph of abuse.

  Minimizing the number of illegals is evidently very important to some people. If Americans realized that there are probably three times as many illegal aliens here as we’re constantly being told, upward of 30 million, it might make them angry. When it comes to immigration, the journalist’s motto is: The public can’t be trusted with the truth. People might jump to unwarranted conclusions—such as that amnesty functions as a magnet. They might notice that the country’s workforce and social safety net are collapsing under the weight of 30 million poor people, while the rich and powerful are doing quite well.

  IMMIGRATION: A HOMICIDE MADE TO LOOK LIKE A SUICIDE

  Conservatives have been buffaloed into thinking that they’re the ones who want to change the country. No, the question is: Why is it better that the ethnic population of our country be changed? There’s a strange rhetorical asymmetry, where mass-immigration advocates are allowed to say, It’s fantastic that the country is becoming browner, but no one else is allowed to say, I don’t think so. Don’t even think about asking if it’s a good thing that 52 percent of legal immigrant households are on the dole.

  Immigration of the past half century has been a national homicide made to look like suicide. It’s a staged crime scene. Everyone acts as if the “browning of America” is a natural process, and immigration opponents are like King Canute trying to hold back the ocean’s tide. It’s more like Americans are trying to stop an Army Corps of Engineers project that will flood the valley where they live in order to build a hydroelectric plant that will help one powerful corporation. The people who live in the valley will bear all the costs, and a few rich shareholders will make all the profit.

  That’s not “natural.” The government is artificially flooding the valley. The beneficiaries of our immigration laws try to convince us that something that is 100 percent the result of government policy cannot be changed. We are constantly being told, The country’s changing, get used to it. This has the effect of making people crazy. They think, I guess it is just me! People can see the country is changing rapidly for no good purpose.

  It’s one thing if things are getting worse and nothing can be done about it. But there is nothing necessary about our immigration policies.

  IF YOU LIKE YOUR COUNTRY, YOU CAN KEEP IT

  Politicians willfully designed laws to change the nature of the coun
try, and then act outraged when anyone says: I don’t like what you’ve done. If it’s racist to say that immigration is changing America’s ethnicity, why wasn’t it racist for supporters of Kennedy’s 1965 bill to boast that it wouldn’t? Much like the miasma of lies required to pass Obamacare, when Kennedy’s immigration law was being debated, Democrats swore up and down that the country’s ethnic composition would continue to be white and European. If you like your country’s ethnic composition, you can keep it! Thus, for example, Kennedy said his immigration law “will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.” America, he said, would continue to have the same “ethnic mix,” and “the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.”36

  The Washington Post assured readers that “the new immigration pattern would not stray radically from the old one.”37 Senator Hiram Fong of Hawaii said that Asians “will never reach 1 percent of the population.”38 Attorney General Robert Kennedy testified that there would be only about five thousand immigrants from the Asia-Pacific Triangle “after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear.”39 Secretary of State Dean Rusk testified that “there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years,” but no mass migration from that part of the world.40 Representative Emanuel Celler of New York claimed that “there will not be, comparatively, many Asians or Africans entering this country.”41 (Imagine saying something like that in public today. They’d bring back hanging.)

  In the first five years after the law passed, instead of the 8,000 immigrants from India, as promised by Rusk, there were 27,859. Instead of 5,000 immigrants from Japan, as we were assured by Senator Fong, there were 20,000.42 Through family reunification policies, immigration from those places has exploded. Contrary to Kennedy’s assurance that his bill would not “inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area,” more than half of all immigrants to the United States since 1970 are native Spanish-speakers.43 That’s not what the bill’s proponent promised. That’s not even “diversity.”

  Merely to point out that the bill’s proponents lied, and every single one of these predictions was off by approximately 300 percent, is to invite personal calumny. The United States is being artificially transformed into Latin America solely for the benefit of Democrats and businessmen in need of cheap labor. If you object, you’re a racist.

  I promise this law will not do XYZ!

  Hey—your bill did XYZ!

  You’re a racist.

  As with Obamacare, had the bill’s proponents told the truth, the 1965 immigration overhaul would never have passed. The difference is that, when proof of their lies about Obamacare emerged, the bill’s architect, Jonathan Gruber, went into hiding; Democrats were humiliated; and Republicans triumphant. When proof of their lies about the 1965 immigration act emerged, Kennedy was made a saint, Republicans were humiliated, and Democrats triumphant. Congratulations, liberals! You won. Whoever slaps the “racism” post first, wins. (And you wonder why MSNBC calls opposition to Obamacare “racist.”)

  MERIT-BASED LANDSCAPERS

  Supporters of the 1965 act also claimed that it would introduce a meritocracy in immigration. Attorney General Kennedy put it starkly in a letter to the New York Times: “The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system.” Representative Celler said immigrants would “have to compete and qualify in order to get in, quantitatively and qualitatively.”44

  Fifty years later, when a Harvard PhD thesis pointed out that our immigration policies have been the opposite of a meritocracy, dragging down the national IQ by favoring immigrants from countries with IQs far below the national average, liberals called the author, Jason Richwine, a “racist.” He was forced out of his job at the Heritage Foundation and made virtually unemployable. How about revisiting Bobby Kennedy’s sainthood for promising a meritocracy in immigration? Apparently, that’s now “racist.”

  They’re the ones discriminating on the basis of race! Our immigration laws discriminate against the handful of countries that populated America for the first three hundred years of its existence in order to bring in poor immigrants from the Third World. Since 1970, nearly 90 percent of all legal immigrants have been from the Third World, and the majority of them need taxpayer assistance. The only reason liberal elites want to inundate America with poor immigrants is because white English-speaking immigrants from developed countries won’t do menial labor or bloc-vote for the Democrats.

  Guess who’s hurt the most by our immigration policies? Americans without a lot of job skills, especially black Americans. You know who else is hurt by the constant importation of low-skilled workers? Hispanic immigrants—the ones who were admitted last year, and the year before, and the year before that.45 Sorry, poor voiceless Americans—Sheldon Adelson wants to pay his maid even less! If anyone has a right to be screaming “racism!” it’s those of us opposed to the dump of a million low-wage workers on the country every year.

  The reason we can’t use immigration to bring in the best people is because our best people don’t want immigrants competing with their kids. They want immigrants competing with their landscaper’s kids. Democrats don’t care that because they’re continually importing more low-wage workers to the country, the immigrants already here can’t get a decent-paying job. Al Sharpton’s catchphrase is: Pro-lifers only care about the fetus until it’s born. Well, Democrats only care about immigrants until they can vote. I promise you: If immigrants voted 8–2 for the Republicans—rather than 8–2 for the Democrats—Chuck Schumer would be down on the border with the Minutemen. How about the Democrats explain why it’s so vital to constantly import more people when most Americans think we have enough already? What is it they don’t like about our working class? What is it they don’t like about our country?

  6

  IMMIGRATION AS “MYSTERY BARGAIN BIN”

  A 2013 PROPUBLICA ARTICLE ABOUT A PAKISTANI ANCHOR BABY WHO BECAME a heroin dealer/terrorist described one of his drug-dealing associates this way: “Ikram Haq was a mentally impaired Pakistani immigrant. His lawyer, Sam Schmidt, convinced the jury that Headley conned his client into a heroin deal.”1 I see at least three reasons the word “immigrant” should never have been attached to the name “Ikram Haq”: “mentally impaired,” “Pakistani,” and “heroin deal.” May I talk to the immigration official who decided to admit Ikram? Please at least tell me that the mental impairment appeared after we were graced with Ikram’s presence.

  U.S. immigration official: What else can you tell me about your son?

  Visa applicant: Well, he’s mentally impaired and will never reach the cognitive level of a third grader.

  U.S. immigration official: That’s fantastic! We’ll get the papers right to you.

  Since when are we required to take anyone who wants to come here, including mentally impaired Pakistanis who engage in heroin deals on a bad day and contribute absolutely nothing to society on their good days? That’s not a rhetorical question—I want the exact date. Americans seem to be under the impression that we signed an agreement to participate in the Mystery Bargain Bin on immigration: It could be $10,000—or it could be a pile of dirt! Here’s hoping!

  America is not a public hospital in an urban neighborhood where we have to take anyone who shows up. Until 1970, American immigrants did better than the natives—as any sane immigration policy would require. They made more money, bought more houses, and were more educated. By contrast, the post-1970 immigrants are far more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty than native-born Americans. More than a third of all post–Kennedy act immigrants don’t even have a high school diploma.2 Among natives, only the sick, addled, or delinquent have failed to complete high school by the age of twenty-five—about 7 percent of all Americans.3 Manifestly, our government has no interest in setting up a skimming-the-cream operation when it comes to
immigration.

  WHAT DID WE DO?

  Twenty-five years of PC education has convinced Americans that we have to treat immigrants as if they’re black people and we’re making up for the legacy of slavery. These aren’t descendants of American slaves! Why do we owe other countries anything? It is simply assumed that we must have done something to them.

  Britain used to have an empire, meaning that it wiped out exotic diseases, ended tribal bloodshed, expanded literacy, and generally dragged primitive societies into the nineteenth century. Life was better than before, but, on the other hand, the British administrators had all the good jobs, so the natives threw the British out. Now it works the other way, Jack. In some bizarre notion of turn-about-is-fair-play, it is assumed that backward societies have a right to relocate to the countries of their former colonizers. I thought they hated those guys?

  That’s crazy enough. But America didn’t have any colonies. It was a colony. Our racial guilt is over slavery and Jim Crow (by Democrats). Nixon didn’t impose racial quotas on trade unions because he thought it would be culturally enriching for white members to work side by side with black people. He was enraged at the unions for refusing to hire blacks. The country, he said, owed African Americans a “dividend.” What do we owe the Third World?

  Did we all agree to turn our country into a gigantic battered women’s shelter required to take in every oppressed person of the world? Why would any country do that? We’re not obliged to take the world’s hardest cases. In fact, I’m sure most Americans would think that’s a bad idea.

  What did we do to the Somalis? The only American intervention there was purely humanitarian. In the middle of a mass starvation, America leapt in to send food to this primitive warlord society. Unfortunately, the warlords intercepted our grain shipments, so the first President Bush sent troops to ensure our aid would get to the people. The Clinton administration came in and decided America was going to “embark on an unprecedented enterprise aimed at nothing less than the restoration of an entire country as a proud, functioning and viable member of the community of nations.”4 In short order, the brutalized corpses of American troops were being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.