The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal
by Mark Krikorian
Sentinel (part of the Penguin Group), 2008
ISBN 1595230351
We've all heard the laments: "My grandpa from Sicily learned English, and my grandma from Minsk got by without welfare. So what's the problem with immigrants today?"
As Mark Krikorian argues in this provocative book, what's different today is not the immigrants, but us. Today's immigrants are very similar to those of a century ago, but they are coming to a very different America -- one where changes in the economy, society, and government create fundamentally different incentives for newcomers. In other words, the America that our grandparents came to no longer exists. And this simple fact must become the new starting point for the explosive debate about immigration policy.
Krikorian argues that although mass immigration once served our national interests, in today's America it weakens our common national identity, limits opportunities for upward mobility, threatens our security and sovereignty, strains resources for social programs, and disrupts middle-class norms of behavior.
So as the politicians argue about border fences and amnesty, they are missing the bigger picture: the harmful impact of large-scale settlement of all kinds of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, temporary or permanent, European or Latin or Asian or African. Modern America has simply outgrown immigration, and we must end it before it cripples us.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/756062