Victor Davis Hanson explains why we should care about Citizenship and Illegal Aliens and how the current and past situations affect us in his book The Dying Citizen. Let’s look at what he says in his chapter called Residents:
First, Freedom Troopers, thank you for returning to this hard-riding, saber-slashing, lie-hacking, figurative cavalry charge into politics, news, and lies without you even having to shovel through the horse manure because I have already done it for you. If you find value in what we do here please share this with someone else. I would love to provide you with daily content, but I am alone here now and strapped keeping up with this pace. I don’t have all the resources of those high-powered sites and there are some high-powered people who would like to keep me quiet. So, if you can do nothing else to fight the lies and what is happening to our country at least share us with a friend or two and maybe we’ll get though this together.
‘A resident of America should be easily distinguished from a citizen by the etymologies of the respective two nouns. “Resident” derives from the Latin RESIDERE, “to sit down or settle.” It denotes the concrete fact of living in a particular place. In contrast “citizen” entails a quality, a privilege of enjoying particular rights predicated on responsibilities – and not necessarily on location at any given time.
‘An American resident can be a citizen or subject of any foreign nation who just happens to be living within the boundaries of the United States. US citizens, however, are entitled to constitutional protections wherever they go…Most specifically, citizenship ensures the right to a US passport and, with it, to leave and return to America whenever one wishes.’
‘In the past, the distinctions between the two statuses was comprehensive and important…Today, those differences have virtually collapsed.”
That is the opening of Victor Davis Hanson in his chapter “Residents.” He goes on that, as in all successful republics in history, there used to be clear distinctions “founded on an implicit, tough, quid pro quo.”
Anyone coming here was expected to become an American and that is relatively unique in the world. Recently, however, they have tried to pretend that immigrants to the nation-states of Europe can become Danish, Swedish, German, or what have you. This is false. The states in Europe, unlike the states in America, are nation-states and are composed of specific peoples with racial and cultural characteristics that can be identified as a group and isolated in genetic testing. Just as Shawnee, the Cherokee, Nigerians, Vietnamese, Somalis, Persians, and others. Yet the left refuses to oppose the colonization of Europe by Third World citizens or Islamists who want to convert the nation to Islam (which is a duty of all members of Islam in a way that is not required of Christians, Jews, or Hindus, thus revealing their utter lack of integrity. Leftists only want to protect nation groups and indigenous peoples if it helps them to destroy the West, that is because this is a basic tenet of Communism which is embraced by the Left. Many Leftists clearly embrace communnism while others may be ignorant of their behaving accordding to communist ideals. Communists call such ignorant Leftists “useful idiots” (only among themselves not in front of the useful idiots.
I have said before that my Dad did teach me two prejudices against other “races.” I have built in negative reactions to Poles and French (although I am very fond of Jan Sobieski and Napoleon in history). That is understandable because these are the two most powerful neighbors of Germany and there have been many border disputes over the centuries. To be German, Pole, or French indicated that you belong to a people with long tribal roots back to the indigenous tribes that have occupied that territory for thousands of years. There is a movement in Europe today that they have suffered too many “brothers wars” against each other where, although their nations differ they have a commonality just as Africans are different but have similarities in culture, genealogy, and histories among them. EU immigration laws are pretending they are America and not actual nation states. They are forcing immigration and asylees upon European nation-states in such large numbers that they can destroy their character as the home of a specific people or nations. In fact many have admitted that is their intention!
As one example, the British Isles include England, the home of the Anglo-Saxons, Ireland, the home of the Irish, Scotland, the home of the Scots, and Wales, the home of the Welsh. These are the indigenous peoples of the British Isles. Somehow, we have accepted the lie that indigenous peoples in America, Africa, and Asia all have a right to racial purity and sovereignty, but the indigenous peoples of Europe do not.
That lie reveals the tip of the iceberg of all of the other lies that are the constructs of Leftist ideology that are targeting the West today.
Unlike being a Scot, or a German, to be American is not so much a claim of belonging to the people of one racial group that form a nation state. Rather, it means that you believe in Freedom, that all are created equal and endowed by certain inalienable rights by their creator, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You believe that it is to ensure these rights that governments are instituted among men and that legitimate government derives its authority from the consent of the people, and you vow to support the Constitution of the United States and renounce all foreign allegiance. You also believe (according to the Declaration of Independence and tradition,) that if a government turns against its people and/or the constitution it is no longer legitimate…primarily because every politician, bureaucrat, or other public servant vows to preserve and protect the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Likewise, every legal immigrant to the United States who becomes a citizen vows the same when they are naturalized.
There was a time when America had a lot of land and not enough people to develop it and we welcomed all within our borders as long as they were going to help build up the country. It is no longer that way – unless people of the Left want to give them the government property from the vast wilderness areas in the US that are currently being preserved for environmental reasons in national parks.
Even then, “the arriving immigrant was implicitly expected to surrender his prior identity and adopt a new American one. National identity, though a source of pride to an individual, would not permanently define him. Instead the immigrant was measured by shared human chareacteristic well beyond his superficial appearance or religious creed.” [p. 64, The Dying Citizen] “The immigrant citizen, who might appear superficially different from the Founders, understood that the idea of America meant the nation strived to be always better than it was, which was already far better than the alternatives [in nations] elsewhere…Likewise, the immigrant arrived thinking that America would be better than what he left.” [p.65]
Today there are many in government and in our cities, both elected and un-elected who have betrayed their vow to “Preserve and Protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” and, if they cannot keep this primary vow of service then I believe they should be rooted out and their contaminating influence purged from our government and replace them with someone loyal. Those who speak of a “living constitution” that should be interpreted by our time miss the mark. The Founders already provided for “updating” the constitution with the Amendment procedures. They made it hard to do because once the Ammendment was passed EVERYONE would have to live with it until it could be repealed or replaced. Likewise, those who wave Palestinian, Somali, Mexican, or other national flags and act as “agents of a foreign power” should be deported and have their citizenship revoked or at least jailed for not registering as “agents of a foreign power” as they are required to do by law.
Lets be clear. Any American can be proud of their heritage and even encourage their representatives to support their home country as an ally. I am proud of my German heritage through my grandfather who was German and my Scots-Irish heritage through my mothers family who date back to colonial Virginia, and colonial Massachusetts. But when such support and pride over-rides American loyalty that is a problem and a matter of disloyalty. Further, if their country of ancestry and America were to enter into conflict their support should be with America. My grandfather came from Germany, I have a German flag in my house, and over a dozen historical American flags, but my father and his brothers fought for America during World War II (yeah, I was born late in my parent’s life – I remember in Junior High my parents came on parent’s night and I had several friends and teachers ask if these were my grandparents. I was a little miffed that they thought they were my grandparents or that I lost something having such older parents rather, I had the benefit of instruction by two parents who had lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War and I will always be grateful for that.)
Today, we as Americans are far more diverse than the Founders probably expected, but that could work as long as everyone was assimilated into American culture. Professor Hanson writes:
“The prescient founders had emphasized unity and homogeneity. They rightly feared that numerous and independent American nation-states might resemble the multiplicity of European nations and thus incur the lethal European habit of constant warring…they also worried equally about factions and unassimilated interests that might foment the sort of unrest that had traditionally likewise fueled European internal civil, religious, and ethnic discord and ourtright war – especially if multiplied by obvious geographic divisions that might lend themselves to separation from the Union.
“The answer to all these fears of dissolution and factionalism was a large nation governed by checks and balances, [including the counter-balance of state vs. federal rights] encompassing ethnicities within common borders as they all eventually assimilated and disappeared into a common Americanism. The immigrant then, was to adopt English as his primary spoken language as well as the responsibilities that accompanied the gift of citizenship. He accepted the Constitution in both face and spirit. In lieu of blood and soil, it was to be his unifying, guiding, political doctrine…a citizen was to be defined by his values, not just by his birth and not at all by his creed or color.” [p.65]
Contrary to popular propaganda today “the ideas of the Founders did not simply reflect the ethnic chauvinism of white Protestant Anglo-Americans, the majority of the new country. Rather, they were transcendent, drawing and expanding upon ideas absorbed over centuries from growth of a multiethnic Rome, a multiracial Christianity, the European Enlightenment and Reformation, and the traditions of British parliamentary republicanism…The country was soon enriched by immigrants’ diverse foods, fashions, literatures, music, and arts – as long as the nation’s core values, traditions, and laws were kept sacrosanct.”[p.66-67]
[p. 66-67 The Dying Citizen.]
I retired from Immigration and so people talked to me about immigration who otherwise might not have brought up the topic. I cannot begin to tell you how many New Zealanders, Australians, and others who said “I wanted to be an American but if you are from Europe its almost impossible to get a Visa to come here and become a citizen.” Somehow, instead of being equally open to all, and dependent only on having skills America needs, our screwed-up immigration laws have given a priority to people from the 3rd world who do not always share our ideas of liberty, law, and public service. Simultaneously, we made it almost impossible for Europeans to actually come here to be citizens. Why is it that Europeans find it almost impossible to come here legally but countries who have no tradition of respect for law and order or constitutional government are welcomed in – to the tune of 6,000 or more illegals entering a day without screening as has been happening at a single illegal entry site that is now being controlled by Texas National guard reducing the current flow to between 2-6 people a day. Yet all along the Southern Border this is being repeated. Even worse, the site blocked by National Guard as I type this is WITHIN SIGHT of the legal crossing where there is a bridge and NO RISK OF DROWNING. Far from how the issue is painted by our current administration and the mainstream media the Texas National Guard are saving lives by closing off this entry point where many have drowned each week up until now.
In my opinion we should have no quotas from any country we should simply have controlled border entry and judge potential citizenship and egress into the US based upon their having skills we need or legitimately facing death or torture in their home country.
As an Adjudication Officer, I tell you clearly and unequivocally that we received asylum requests where dozens of requests would be written word for word the same. Whoever may have coached them to write their fictional story, they themselves would be afraid to vary even one word for fear that they might lose their asylum case over some technicality. Today, “legal aid” organizations from the United States meet in Mexico and other countries to “coach” illegal aliens on how to fraudulently enter the United States and break our laws and we are doing nothing to stop it. We no longer have millions of acres to settle an endless supply of immigrants into our country and just hoping for the best. We should have zero tolerance for illegal entry. Because we have not stopped it in the past we end up with obtuse behavior like Obama’s [Obama was called the “Deporter-in-chief” because he deported more illegals from our country than any president before or since] action where he deported disabled American soldiers who served this country in war but did not have legal permanent legal status (but were brought to America as small children,) because they were brought to this country illegally as toddlers. I think this is wrong. But we would not have ever had this problem if they had controlled entry from the beginning. Our failure to control our borders is the very reason people who had spent most of their life as Americans (some of whom knew no Spanish,) were deported. IF their parents had been stopped this parody of justice caused by the Deporter-in-Chief would never have happened. Many of these veterans were deported to Mexico even though they were wounded (sometimes crippled,) serving America and spoke no Spanish. There needs to be some criteria for those who have been living here who have NO criminal record and especially if they have fought for the stars and stripes in time of war. Service should guarantee citizenship.
Victor Davis Hanson states that the laws of our immigration policies went from no structure to “statutes [that] were certainly exclusionary in the sense of discouraging massive immigration from any one particular place – and, in racialist fashion, especially from non-northern and non-western countries.” [p67] In other words we denied immigration to those nations that actually had the rule of constitutional law and were similarly educated to live in a modern technological society. The situation has gotten decidedly worse in the late twentieth century. Denying Europeans equal access to immigration because they are white European is racism. Professor Hanson brings this all into focus for us:
“Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal historian Theodore White later conceded of the politicized Hart-Celler Act, it was “revolutionary and probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.” [Franklin Roosevelts great plan to redirect America from the vision of the Founders to a image that more readily resembled the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany in structure.] “White saw that the law eliminated most meritocratic criteria based on education and acquired skill levels. Instead, immigration was fast-tracked for family unification and, more informally, proximity to the borders. The new rules resulted in much larger rates of admission on the basis of ties to naturalized American citizens and legal residents…the law did not specifically privilege those without high school diplomas over nuerosurgeons, but it certainly had the effect of favoring admission of far more of the former than the later.” [p.73]
Our broken politics of “immigration, identity politics, and salad-bowl separatism, which encourages ethnicities to retain their tribal identifications, sometimes the assimilated third generation was more likely to resurrect a lost ethnic pedigree that was the first generation, which had wished to discard it.” [p.70]
The Professor is right, and I can relate to this. My interest in my German/Prussian ancestry is more intense than my father’s was. He was interested in our family roots and when he visited me when I was stationed in Germany, we found some of our family records, but he (unlike me,) he never took German in school and ceased to speak it after childhood. He always said he didn’t remember any (except what he scolded us with when we were in trouble,) but when he was dying, he lapsed into German for some twenty minutes. Had I not taken it in High School and College, as well as having lived in Germany for four years no one in the house would have been able to talk to him. I don’t think he ever realized he was speaking German. My mom came around the corner as we were talking, and she was somewhat speechless. But I was the third generation German, and my wife similarly is third generation Italian. I do notice some differences in attitudes toward what constitutes family in ours than in families that have been in America for many generations. Both of us grew up with family meaning our immediate family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great aunts and uncles, and out a couple more lines. But the family connections seem less and less important to each generation that lives in America. Family, unfortunately, is not a strong virtue in modern American society.
Back to Professor Hanson he later quotes ex-president Theodore Roosevelt from a 1919 letter to Richard Hurd “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but American.”
Victor Davis Hanson writes: “I once asked a neighbor from Southern Mexico why exactly he had left his birthplace some twenty years earlier to come to the Central Valley of California. I expected the usual answer of immigrants that he was poor and America was rich. But instead his reply astounded me: “Dignity. Dignity. Here even strangers call me Mr. Rojas – the doctor, the sheriff, everyone calls me mister. Not like in Mexico where seňor depends on who you are.”
This is the testimony of a man who, although keeping touch with his ethnic identity became an American and noted its difference from where he lived. Modern policies not only don’t compel assimilation, but they are downright encouraging that masses of illegal immigrants from communities to continue their tribal prejudices and hatreds of other groups rather than become American. Further, the majority of the world does NOT have government based upon a Rule of Law but unfair governments ruled by dictat, decree, or mandates that did not expect fairness or justice in policy nor their rights to be honored. If these illegals are let in with no assimilation, education, or explanation (let alone medical screening), they will assume the corruption that brought them here and through our border by coyotes is the same “rule by bribe and corruption” that existed in their countries of origin. This means that they are more likely to tolerate lies, injustice, and bribes by government officials here. This amounts to a suicide pact, in my opinion.
As Governor Abbott of Texas has repeatedly pointed out in the past month or so this is a violation of the pact between the states and the federal government formed by our Constitution. Unlike the Biden administration’s mischaracterization, the Border Patrol is not intended to be the Welcome Wagon where they issue court review dates for asylum hearings TEN YEARS IN THE FUTURE as they are doing now and have been doing through most of his illegal rule by the Biden dictatorship continuously ignoring federal laws and the Constitution.
Hanson tells us: “Libertarians and cosmopolitans delight in the ideas of no borders. Humanitarians take moral [self-congratulatory] satisfaction in embracing illegal immigrants. Far from acknowledging that there are legitimate reasons to oppose those who come illegally and in large numbers, many warmhearted liberals regard it as an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusion.” No doubt to them it is more important to demonstrate their own moral superiority than to ensure the continued stability of the United States and is so important they don’t even consider the long-term harm (like the potential of future soldiers deported due to lack of valid immigration status – again a travesty that NEVER would have happened if illegal aliens had never been tolerated in the first place).
History has proven over and over again that lies, crime, injustice, or betrayal inevitably causes a long train of abuses in their wake to maintain the illusion of legitimacy of the prior illegitimate act.
Or as Jefferson said, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world….”
Victor Davis Hanson points out, however, that “the public – including immigrants – remain opposed to ILLEGAL immgration. American citizens of Mexican origins often resent unlawful invasion into either Mexico or the United States from Central America.” But politicians and community organizers continued to confuse the issues and Pollsters help them by stacking the question and asking about “immigrants” which most people taking the poll assume to be legal immigrants and then they use the poll to show support for immigrants of all kinds to mislead both the public and other politicians.
Next we will talk some more about the confluence of residents with citizens and how the language used in politics has been carefully massaged or stroked to manipulate and control the formerly free peoples of the West. In a compilation of maneuverings that look like the orchestrated chapters of George Orwell’s book about Britain falling into a totalitarian state through our own versions of “ newspeak” in1984 we are living that out today to a greater or lesser degree in every nation of the West. For those who haven’t read 1984 since High School here is a reminder:
you likely noticed elsewhere, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 shot to the top of the charts—or the Amazon bestseller list—in the wake of “alternative facts,” the latest Orwellian coinage for bald-faced lying. The ridiculous phrase immediately produced a barrage of parodies, hashtags, and memes; healthy ways of venting rage and disbelief. But maybe there is a danger there too, letting such words sink into the discourse, lest they become what Orwell called “Newspeak.”
It’s easy to hear “Newspeak,” the “official language of Oceania,” as “news speak.” This is perfectly reasonable, but it gives us the impression that it relates strictly to its appearance in mass media. Orwell obviously intended the ambiguity—it is the language of official propaganda after all—but the portmanteau actually comes from the words “new speak”—and it has been created to supersede “Oldspeak,” Orwell writes, “or Standard English, as we should call it.” [Quoted From: openculture.com/2017/01/george-orwell-explains-how-newspeak-works under rights of use for educational purposes.]
