by Ann Coulter
When by some freak accident an English-speaking, non–welfare receiving, Christian Western European family applies for asylum, the government will spend six years trying to hound them out of the country. That’s what happened to the young German family that sought asylum on the (actually true) grounds that the German government was going to take their children away unless they ceased homeschooling them. As a huffy Ralph De La Cruz complained in the Dallas Morning News: “If not having the right to home school” in Germany constitutes persecution, “wouldn’t something like beheadings of the local population by drug cartels, also qualify?”
That’s how asylum is used to turn America into a dumping ground for the most backward people on earth. No advanced country could ever produce the sort of persecution our immigration laws reward, so the asylum welcome mat gets rolled out only for criminals, scam artists, and terrorists. They’re less persecuted than the German family was, but they come from horribly backward cultures, so it’s easy to cook up a good story. After six years of litigation, the Department of Homeland Security finally stopped trying to deport the German family, granting them “indefinite deferred-action status.” You can see them on display in my Immigration Museum as the only asylum applicants in fifty years who didn’t immediately go on welfare.
SHUT IT DOWN
The only way to stop the nonsense is to have an immigration moratorium. It would be nice to get some British and Dutch immigrants again, but it’s not worth the risk of keeping our immigration bureaucracy in business.
Just shut it down. No more family reunification, no more scam marriages, no more refugees, no more phony asylum cases (which is all of them), and no more “high-tech workers” providing slave labor to Microsoft and concubines to Indian pedophiles. No legal fixes can make a dent in our behemoth immigration apparatus. Until every last special pleader for mass immigration from the Third World is out of the business, the country cannot be safe.
A moratorium should be music to the ears of aspiring immigrants! They won’t want to “cry” because “they don’t feel wanted” and are “abused in many ways”—as immigrants to America do, according to Dr. Manuel Carballo, executive director of the International Center for Migration, Health, and Development at Columbia University.27 They will no longer be subjected to “hate crimes and discrimination” in America—as put by Pramila Jayapal, who was born in India, but now represents Seattle in the Washington State House.28 They won’t experience “harassment, hardship and discrimination” in Alabama—as the Southern Poverty Law Center says they do.29 Have immigrants heard about America’s gun fetish? The college rape epidemic? The lack of safe and easy access to abortion? We’re doing them a favor.
If America could get a timeout on endless immigration from the Third World, we’d have a chance to reform ourselves and drain these deep sewers of depravity, racism, and xenophobia that liberals keep finding around every corner. They’ll be happier. We’ll be happier. After a half century of taking in the hardest cases in the world, America needs a little “me time.”
16
I WROTE THIS CHAPTER AFTER NOTICING HOW STUPID RICH PEOPLE ARE
HISTORICALLY, WHEN REPUBLICANS IGNORE WHITE VOTERS, THEY LOSE. WHEN they ignore minorities and drive up the white vote, they win. Reagan took out a sitting president in 1980 by sweeping the New Deal coalition, “except for blacks and Hispanics,” according to a Washington Post analysis.1 Four years later, Reagan’s share of the black vote declined further. He won 9 percent of the black vote2—the smallest percentage captured by any Republican presidential candidate between Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide and Barack Obama’s candidacy in 2008.3
He also won the largest electoral landslide in U.S. history.
Explaining the Democrats’ drubbing in the 1984 presidential election, the Washington Post’s Richard Harwood said Democrats had made a historic “miscalculation” by obsessing over the black vote. Although Southern blacks came through and voted 90 percent for Walter Mondale, Reagan swept the South with 75 percent of the white vote.4
Rule of thumb, Republicans: If you aren’t being called “racist” by the New York Times, you’re losing.
With Democrats always gassing on about how Hispanics are going to turn Texas blue, as happened to California, no one seems to have noticed that Texas already has more Hispanics than California.5 Hispanics in Texas are no different from the ones in California: Both bloc-vote for Democrats by about 60 to 75 percent. The difference is: White Texans vote overwhelmingly Republican, whereas white Californians split their vote. In 2012, whites were 55 percent of the California electorate, but they voted only 53 percent for Romney.6 That same year, whites were 56 percent of the Texas electorate—but they voted 80 percent for Romney.7 Eighty percent! The New York Times’ famed statistician, Nate Cohn, estimates that in 2012 Obama got the smallest percentage of the white vote in Texas of any Democrat in history, at 18.9 percent.8
So how have the media, Democrats, and cheap-labor enthusiasts managed to convince Republicans to focus like a laser beam on winning slightly more of the Hispanic vote? We must consider the possibility that they do not have Republicans’ best interests at heart. Blacks and Hispanics are not swing voters—whites are. It would be as if Republicans tricked the Democrats into devoting all their efforts to getting a tiny sliver more of the fundamentalist Christian vote. The GOP’s addiction to lobbyists’ money is killing the party.
THE OFF-THE-CHARTS POPULARITY OF OPPOSING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson of California pulled off an amazing come-from-behind victory by tethering himself with titanium cords to Proposition 187, which prohibited illegal aliens from collecting public services. Wilson went from a catastrophic 15 percent job-approval rating9 to a landslide victory. Suddenly he was being touted as presidential material.10
This wasn’t the California of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, a storybook era when Republicans could easily win that state. Just two years earlier, Republicans had been walloped in three statewide elections—two senate elections and a presidential election.11 But Wilson won his 1994 reelection with 55 percent of the vote, which was the largest percentage of any Republican running statewide in California in the last thirty years, other than Hollywood movie star and virtual Democrat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won his 2006 reelection by precisely one point more than Wilson got in 1994.
Before the election, the New York Times had the exact same advice for Wilson that it does for the Republican National Committee today. The Times urgently warned Wilson that he was headed for a humiliating defeat by supporting Proposition 187, which was, in the words of the Times, a “nativist abomination,”12 “xenophobic,”13 and a “platform of bigotry, racism and scapegoating.”14 Republicans faced an epic loss unless they repudiated Prop. 187 and leapt on the Hispandering bandwagon—and pronto. There wasn’t a moment to spare!
Luckily, Wilson wasn’t RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, so he didn’t take the Times’ advice.
As it turned out, Proposition 187 got even more votes than Wilson, winning 59 percent to 41 percent. It was supported by two-thirds of white voters, 56 percent of black voters, 57 percent of Asian voters—and even a third of Hispanic voters.15 It won in every county of California except San Francisco, a city where intoxicated gay men dressed as nuns performing sex acts on city streets is not considered unusual. In heavily Latino Los Angeles County, Proposition 187 passed by a twelve-point margin. The “nativist abomination” lifted Republicans across the state and ended the Democrats’ quarter-century control of the California State Assembly.16 Even Michael Huffington nearly beat popular incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein in an election that wasn’t called until days later.
Contrary to the media’s predictions, Proposition 187 “did not motivate more Latinos to come out to vote,” according to Susan Pinkus, director of the Los Angeles Times’ exit poll.17 Refugio Trujillo, for example, a lifelong Democrat with a sign for Wilson’s opponent in his lawn, was among the one-third of Hispanics who supporte
d the initiative, telling the San Jose Mercury News: “We have too many aliens out here.”18 Not only did one-third of Hispanics support Proposition 187, but black voters came out in droves—for Wilson. In House races nationwide that year, Republicans won only 8 percent of the black vote. Wilson won 21 percent of black voters.19 Interestingly, that’s nearly the identical percentage Romney won from young black males in 2012 by refusing to budge in his opposition to illegal immigration.
To give you a sense of what a monumental Republican triumph Prop. 187 was, after the election, the media lashed out at California voters, calling them “bitter” and “angry.”20
Unfortunately for her, Wilson’s Democratic opponent Kathleen Brown didn’t realize that the Times’ hectoring on Prop. 187 was a gag. It was only supposed to fake out Republicans. Convinced that opposition to Proposition 187 was surging, days before the election, Brown asked voters to “send a message that says we understand that in diversity is our strength”!21 Landslide for Wilson. Only ten percent of Brown’s voters cited her opposition to the proposition as a reason to support her.22 But nearly a third of Wilson’s voters cited his support of it as their number one reason for supporting him.
Is Kathleen Brown advising the RNC on its Hispanic outreach?
NICE TRY, GRINGOS!
The response from Mexico was swift. Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari wailed, “Will they return to Mexico, wash windshields in California, sell newspapers on the streets or beg?” Evidently, he wasn’t worried about losing Mexico’s top talent to America through illegal immigration. His government began setting up homeless shelters on the Mexican side of the border. Masked men stormed McDonald’s franchises, smashed plate-glass windows, turned over cash registers, threw hamburgers on the floor, and spray-painted anti-American slogans on the walls.23 (Our new country is going to be great!)
The response from American liberals was swifter. The ACLU and other anti-American groups brought suit and got the initiative overturned by the courts, courtesy of Carter-appointed District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer. Apparently, shots were fired by brave patriots in 1775 on the North Bridge in Concord so that their descendants might one day be forced to support any Mexican who manages to sneak across the border.
Today, Los Angeles is the second-biggest Mexican city in the world. Its taxpayers are required to spend billions of dollars for education, healthcare, food, housing, and jail cells for illegal immigrants. According to the California Department of Education, two-thirds of the public school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are Hispanic.24 Sun-drenched California suddenly has all the problems of a Third World country because the Third World has moved there.
DON’T WORRY, REPUBLICANS, THEY’LL RESPECT YOU IN THE MORNING
After getting a court to nullify the popularly enacted Prop. 187, the Left’s most urgent priority was to make sure Republicans never tried anything like that again. At the time, of course, no one could deny the truth. On the eve of the election, ABC reported that Proposition 187 had brought Wilson “from behind into a narrow lead in a year when incumbents everywhere are threatened with extinction.”25 The Economist magazine said that even in heavily Democratic Oregon, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Denny Smith “made late gains in his campaign by saying he thought Proposition 187 a fine thing.”26
But as soon as memories faded, the media began relentlessly rewriting the story of Proposition 187 as a catastrophe for the GOP. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the media don’t want the GOP to win landslide victories.
Republicans fall for it every time.
Nearly twenty years later, after the 2012 presidential election, the RNC paid $10 million for a report that concluded: “To broaden its appeal, the party must . . . embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our party’s appeal will continue to shrink.” (I could have told them how to lose for, say, $8 million.) It all sounds vaguely familiar . . . wait—I remember! That’s the exact advice given to Wilson in 1994 by the New York Times, the Republicans’ dearest, most trusted friend in the whole wide world.
In fact, however, if Romney had won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, instead of 27 percent, he still would have lost. On the other hand, had he won just 4 percent more of the white vote, he would have won.27 So what did Reince Priebus, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, John Boehner, and all rich Republicans decide their sole mission should be after the 2012 election? Win a few points more of the Hispanic vote! The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza was totally impressed. He cited the report’s conclusion, saying: “That’s 100 percent right.”28 And when Chris Cillizza tells Republicans they’re on the right track, the party had better sit up and listen!
Pete Wilson’s victory on the back of Proposition 187 ought to be studied by today’s GOP like General Eisenhower’s Operation Overlord. Not only was it a stunning success in defiance of the Times’ predictions, but contemporary America has nearly the exact same demographic makeup as California did in 1994—a.k.a. “the California Republicans Swept with an Anti–Illegal Alien Initiative.” In 1994, California was 75 percent white, 12 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian, and 7 percent African American.29 Today, the American electorate is 72 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian, and 13 percent African American.30
Will any rich Republican donor ever notice?
BUSH EMPTIES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
President Bush’s record-breaking 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in his 2004 reelection is cited as a model for Republican office-seekers. Let’s review: Reagan ticked off the only minority group that mattered in 1984, and won a historic landslide; Bush sucked up to Hispanics and barely won his reelection as a wartime president running against a complete nincompoop.31
And look at what Bush had to do to get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote! He carried his half-Mexican nephew, George P. Bush, around on the campaign trail as if he were an extra appendage, giving him a primetime slot at the Republican National Convention for a speech delivered partially in Spanish. He was the first president to give weekly radio addresses in Spanish and also added a Spanish-language page to the White House website. He campaigned—in America—with Mexico’s president. He held a huge Cinco de Mayo fiesta at the White House. He gave speeches to the racist National Council of La Raza, promising $100 million in federal funds to speed immigration applications.32
Bush’s Hispandering didn’t even win him a majority of Hispanics! But it did tick off his base, leading to a blowout loss for his party two years later.
The conservative Christian base that had carried Bush to victory in 2004 turned against him with a vengeance over amnesty, wiping out Bush’s party in the House, Senate, and state governorships. In the 2006 election, only 77 percent of conservatives voted Republican, compared with 91 percent of liberals who voted Democrat.33 Thirty-six percent of voters said they cast their votes specifically to oppose Bush—and he wasn’t on the ballot. That’s even more than the 27 percent who voted to oppose Bill Clinton in the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress.34
It’s hard to argue that Bush’s betrayal of conservatives on immigration was not the central factor in Republicans’ catastrophic 2006 losses. Other than Bush’s obsessive fixation on passing amnesty, there wasn’t much new that year.35
Liberals like to tell the story of how their courageous opposition to the Iraq War finally won the public’s hearts and minds, ushering in a Democratic Congress in 2006, but that’s not what public opinion surveys show. Dozens of Gallup polls on the Iraq War from the moment we invaded in March 2003 to June 2014 show public support for the war declining from 75 percent to 50 percent two years into the war, then mostly remaining in the 40s thereafter.36
It was Bush’s neurotic demand that the Senate take up “comprehensive immigration reform” in March 2006 that enraged Americans. A Washington Post–ABC News Poll in April 2006 showed more Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War than approved of his handling of immigration.37
In nearly
every poll on Bush’s handling of immigration that year, about 60 percent of the public disapproved, with only 25 percent approving—the latter figure giving us a rough estimate of how many Americans acquire their opinions exclusively from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Newsweek, May 11, 2006: 61 percent “disapprove[d] of the way Bush is handling immigration policy”; only 25 percent approved.
New York Times/CBS News poll, May 4–8, 2006: 58 percent “disapprove[d] of the way George W. Bush is handling the issue of immigration”; 26 percent approved.
Pew Center for the People and the Press, April 7–16, 2006: 62 percent “disapprove[d] of the way George W. Bush is handling the nation’s immigration policy”; 25 percent approved.
Time magazine poll, March 29, 2006: 56 percent “disapprove[d] of the job President Bush is doing in handling the immigration problem”; 25 percent approved.38
Gallup has been asking Americans to name “the most important problem facing this country” for years. Going back decades, immigration had ranked as the “most important problem” for only about 4 to 5 percent of respondents. Then, suddenly, in April 2006—just after Bush had launched his plan for “comprehensive immigration reform”—immigration shot to the number one problem for 30 percent of Republicans, 16 percent of independents, and 11 percent of Democrats.39
Lest there be any misunderstanding, poll respondents didn’t think immigration was a “problem” the way Bush thought it was a “problem.” Sixty-one percent of Americans wanted to criminalize illegal aliens.40 Fifty-three percent of Pew respondents said illegal immigrants should be required “to go home.”41 Twenty percent of respondents in a Washington Post–ABC News Poll agreed with: “Declare all illegal immigrants to be felons.”42 Compiling results from a series of polls in February and March 2006, Pew Research found that about 90 percent of Americans called illegal immigration a “serious problem,” while a clear majority called it a “very” or “extremely” serious problem.43