Ann Coulter: Brown is the new black
Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza’s director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander’s proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I’d be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be “offended” all the time.)
Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin – of the Guadalajara Waslins – ominously warned that while the amendment “doesn’t overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities.”
Meanwhile, Americans aren’t allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is “potentially dangerous to our communities.”
Peggy Noonan: At the Immigration Rally
I love immigrants. That’s not important or relevant, but it’s where I start… I love them because they are brave. They left their country and struggled their way to this one to get a better life. (It’s good to remember that that’s not an insult to us but a compliment. They’re saying: Your way is better.) I love immigrants because they make themselves lonely for their children. They go to a place where few share their language, their memories, their references. They do this so their children will have a greater chance at happiness. I love immigrants because they invest in the future with the biggest thing they can invest with: their life.
…Does my feeling for immigrants, and my afternoon at the march, leave me supporting open borders, or illegal immigration? No. Why should it? To love immigrants is not to believe America has no right to decide who can come to America and become a citizen. America has always decided who comes here. That’s why it all worked.
While the marchers seemed to be good people, and were very likable, the march itself, I think, violated the old immigrant politesse–the general understanding that you’re not supposed to get here and immediately start making demands. It would never have occurred to my grandparents to demand respect. They thought they had to earn it. It would never have occurred to them to air mass grievances, assert rights, issue a list of legislative demands. Especially if they were here unlawfully.
I happen to think America in general has deep affection for immigrants, knows they are part of the dynamic, a part of our growth and our endless coming-into-being. But when your heart is soft, and America’s is, your head must be hard.
We are a sovereign nation operating under the rule of law. That, in fact, is why many immigrants come here. They come from places where the law, such as it is, is corrupt, malleable, limiting. Does it make sense to subvert our own laws to facilitate the entrance of those in pursuit of government by law? Whatever our sentiments and sympathies as individuals, America has the right, and the responsibility, to protect the integrity of its borders, to make the laws by which immigrants are granted entrance, and to enforce those laws.
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