Hush, you must not speak it!

By Elizabeth Wright

What must you not speak? Any expressions of opposition to immigration policies, of course. And that proscription applies to any citizen living in the Western world. The influential Sierra Club used to talk about it a lot, but no more. Not too long ago, this organization sensibly warned about the inevitable negative consequences that would come from "rapid national population growth." But, these days, the group toes the politically correct line on the subject, and keeps silent about the almost 80 million people who have been added to the United States population in the last 30 years.

Club members no longer express concern over the effects of population "sprawl," whereby more and more rural land in the U.S. is being converted to suburban and urban use. On the contrary, many Sierra Club members spend time worrying over the plight of land in other countries. A Club director recently expressed his sorrow over the fact that civil wars in Indonesia have caused over 100,000 people to flee into the jungles ("rain forests"), where they have promptly destroyed the natural environment. He lamented that those 100,000 were not relocated to the United States, which would have prevented the spoilage of all that Indonesian land.

One is tempted to ask, Why stop at Indonesia? Whenever we learn of strife and warfare on other continents, why not offer to open up our borders to half of Africa and India too? And isn't everyone expecting a mess to break loose in China? Look at all the "rain forests" we could protect around the globe, if the U.S. would unselfishly remove any and all few remaining restrictions on immigration.

On that same note, the President of Bangladesh has the right idea. By the year 2050, Bangladesh is expected to have a population of 240 million, which is double today's population. Recently, when President Sheika Hasina was asked how Bangladesh plans to "feed, educate, employ and house" all these people, she laughingly responded, "We'll send them to America." She went on to claim that "Globalization will take the problem away," since there's "free movement, country to country." She talked of a world "without boundaries," where countries with big populations could send its people to countries with small populations. She never did indicate just what positive steps Bangladesh, as a nation, would take to improve the lot of its people, besides shipping them off to all those countries "without boundaries."

"But who'll build India's bridges?" asks writer Manu Joseph. What's to become of the countries depopulated of their educated, innovative youth? Joseph tells of Indian students who are ignoring such disciplines as mechanical, chemical and civil engineering--skills urgently needed by Indian firms. Instead, they are opting to acquire programming skills, with an eye to coming to Silicon Valley.

J. Pearson, writing in London's Daily Telegraph, tells of the damage caused to the social structures of the countries left behind by the continuous outflow of people: "A 1993 study by Nelly Salgado de Snyder published in the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences describes towns desolated by emigration of their young men and pushed to the brink of extinction, which worsens the pressure to migrate. The small amounts of money the migrant men send home in remittances cannot compensate for the devastation caused by their wholesale absence."

In a society that fails to train its own citizens to do its work and imports foreigners instead, what happens when a shift occurs and the need for such workers evaporates? If the foreigners don't return to their home countries, will they compete for the conventional jobs that Americans now fill?

Last year, the number of "guest workers" allowed to enter the United States with special H-1B visas was tripled to 195,000 per year. This year has seen the high-tech industry suffer some setbacks, decreasing the need for such large numbers of employees.

Dan Stein, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), says, "The foreign engineers and programmers that the industry absolutely had to have, just a few months ago, are being handed pink slips today. The jobs for which these guest workers were brought here have disappeared, but we're finding that the workers are remaining. If the laid-off H-1B workers wind up staying here and competing for the dwindling supply of jobs, it defeats the whole purpose of the guest worker program. The most important condition for bringing foreign guest workers here in the first place is that they not take jobs that could be filled by American workers. The same condition must apply during the lay-off process. No American worker should be laid-off when there are guest workers doing the same jobs."

Needless to say, temptation to abuse the H-1B program is great. In 1995, American International Group (AIG), a company based in New Jersey, had 250 of its American computer programmers train contract workers from India who entered the U.S. with H-1B visas, sponsored by another company, Syntel Co.

AIG then laid off all the programmers and hired the newly trained foreigners, paying them substantially less. When the Labor Department was notified of these dealings, Syntel was forced to pay $78,000 in back wages to the foreign workers, but the American programmers were out of luck, as well as out of work.

Chris Temple, in the National Investor, writes, "Make no mistake--the process of bringing foreign workers to America under H-1B is little different in practice than corporations setting up shop in foreign countries in order to hire cheaper labor."

So, what happens when there is an appreciable economic downturn? In a March 14 article, the Mercury News reported, "Less than six months ago, the technology industry pressured Congress to nearly double the number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. Now, growing numbers of those visa holders are sitting idle for months or even going back home, victims of the tech downturn. Hard data isn't available, but anecdotal evidence in Silicon Valley shows that demand has slowed dramatically for many of the people for whom the tech industry had clamored."

In the midst of an economic slowdown and the termination of high-tech jobs, are there safeguards to prevent foreign workers from competing with the American labor force in other areas? And, further, are any appreciable numbers of the unemployed workers really going home, or are most of them finding ways to stay in the U.S.? Craig Nelson, of Project USA, asks, "If economic expansion justifies the mass importation of cheap foreign labor, does an economic slowdown justify the mass deportation of cheap foreign labor?

The March 16 Mercury News partially answers his question: "In some cases, workers are being laid off and returning to India, which dominates the high-tech portion of the nation's H-1B workforce." In other cases, however, "H1-B workers in similar straits are getting low--and illegal--weekly stipends from strapped high-tech staffing companies." Such labor contracting firms are even known to pay for the living accommodations for these foreign workers, in order to keep them in the U.S. until they can locate new employment.

The March 21 San Francisco Chronicle reported that, so far, few laid off H1-B workers have left the U.S. The Immigration and Naturalization Service recently "clarified" its rules and determined that H-1B visa holders do not become illegal, after all, even after losing the job for which they came into the country. Such workers, the INS seems to indicate, can remain unemployed for weeks or months without fear of deportation. To be on the safe side, however, many of these foreign workers are choosing an option that's available to them--switching to another type of visa while looking for a new job.

On June 8, the Washington Business Journal reported: "Workers are unlikely to be deported if they are out of work too long. Immigration attorneys say they don't know of any cases of H-1B visaholders being deported because they were laid off. Still, hundreds of jobless D.C.-area H-1B workers remain in limbo as they look for jobs and try to find loopholes in the immigration laws."

The most potent weapon used against those who advocate reform of immigration laws is the old, reliable "racist" tag, with "xenophobe" often thrown in for good measure. In order to keep up the fiction that only disgruntled whites are against current policies, almost no public attention is given to those American blacks who are part of the movement to limit legal and illegal immigration. Yet organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers, the Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers, the National Action Council of Minorities in Engineering, the Human Resources Network of Black Professionals, and others, have vociferously challenged the H-1B visa programs and current immigration policies in general.

Last year, a coalition of black organizations wrote to Senator Richard Gephardt to express their concern over Congressional support for increasing the H-1B visa program "that exceeds the total number of projected new jobs in the high technology industry." The letter went on to say, "Right now Congress has made it cheaper to recruit from the Indian Institute of Technology than from North Carolina A&T or Hampton University."

Consider the case of the State of Iowa. In 1999, Iowa's Governor Tom Vilsack proposed that his state be allowed a special federal dispensation from existing immigration laws, so it could import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. Not messing around with pretense, Vilsack admitted that cheap labor is his goal. His concerns are for Iowa's business corporations, that desire to avoid paying the kind of wages that would have to be paid to American workers. Some in Iowa have accused Vilsack of wanting to create a kind of "Ellis Island" in the midwest, that would be a federally designated "immigration enterprise zone."

Undeterred by opposition to his plan, Vilsack continues to refine it, claiming that, over time, a total of 570,000 jobs will need to be filled in a state with only 114,000 Iowans to fill them. He has singled out three Iowa cities to use as models for what he calls the "New Iowans" program.

More than a few Iowans resent the fact that Vilsack's program is being initiated without public input. Mark Smith, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, declares, “We don’t give the American worker the opportunity to learn that job. We just bring somebody in from the outside and bring them in cheap. That’s what it really comes down to, bringing them in cheap.”

Tom Courtney, of the United auto Workers, says, “It just seems to me that there are a lot of underemployed people in Iowa now who aren't getting paid enough per hour and don't have decent benefits. We ought to make sure that all those folks are being taken care of before we ask for more people in this state.”

Several polls of the public show that most Iowans oppose a policy of encouraging immigration. Yet, as might be expected, members of the media have fallen right in line with the Governor's campaign for mass immigration. One such is columnist and editorial board member of the Des Moines Register,Shirley Ragsdale. She has cleverly attempted to make the issue one of race guilt. Could it be, she implies, that Iowans just don't want "diversity?" Calling those who oppose current immigration policy "xenophobic," she then goes on to paint Iowa residents as backward types in need of greater cultural "sophistication." One wonders if "sophistication" is a quality that workers bound for meat packing plants are likely to inspire.

In 1992, the town of Lexington, Iowa, discovered firsthand what happens when such a labor force inundates a town. When a new meat packing plant opened, and 2,300 foreign workers and their families landed, no one was prepared for the housing, education and medical needs that had to be met. The town mayor claimed that, due to the low wages paid by the plant, the workers had a hard time affording housing, much less other amenities. The town had expected the meat packing plant to generate other businesses in the region, which it did not. Lexington's troubles have sent signals to other Iowa towns, where offers from businesses to open new meat packing plants (that exist only to utilize cheap foreign labor), are being rejected.

What happens when you don't stay shushed and insist on speaking out against the obvious suicidal tendencies of the Western world? You get kicked, good and solid. England's Conservative party member, John Townend, can tell you about it. So can France's retired actress Brigitte Bardot, as well as many others who try, in various ways, to awaken their countries' citizens to the coming calamity called open borders.

When John Townend made his first open attack on multiculturalism, his party's leader, William Hague, scolded him for impertinence and insisted that Townend's comments were "totally unacceptable." Using unimpeachable statistics on crime, Townend openly blamed immigrants for the rising levels of crime in England and for "seriously undermining" Britain's homogeneous Anglo-Saxon society. He soon learned that concern for ethnic unity and solidarity is the preserve only of the colored races. Whites are punished for any expressed desire to cleave unto their own, and Townend discovered that he had broken a steadfast taboo.

The Conservative party's opposition had a field day, as one politician after another grabbed the spotlight to grandstand and rail on about the glorious benefits of a multi-cult society. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of support for immigration as the "morally right" position to take. A couple of weeks prior, Blair and all the main party leaders had signed a compact promising not to allow any of their candidates to issue campaign material "likely to generate hostility or division between people of different racial, national or religious groups." In other words, a public policy issue as important as immigration was not to be discussed at all.

When John Townend broke the silence (he was not a current candidate for office), a Cabinet minister expressed the fear that Townend's remarks could give the green light to others "to make speeches of this nature." So, Townend's party colleagues, in an attempt to get tougher with him, threatened to expel him from the Conservative party. A party official is quoted in London's Daily Telegraph as saying, "He was told in the simplest terms: be quiet or else."

As for gag orders, the picture is much the same in France, where Brigitte Bardot, a long-time activist for animal rights, stays in trouble. Repulsed by the ritual slaughter of sheep, a practice engaged in by Muslims who have come to France from North Africa, she spoke out against it. She expressed her sorrow over the loss of "my country, France, my homeland," which she said is "again invaded by an over-population of foreigners, especially Muslims." These words she wrote in an article entitled, "Open Letter To My Lost France." Under an "anti-racism" law, passed in 1972, Bardot has been fined several times for her candid expressions. Convicted three times for "inciting racial hatred," Bardot joins others in France who have been punished under recently contrived censorship laws.

Here in the United States, the intrepid Craig Nelsen, who heads Project USA, struggles to make the issue of immigration the center of public debate. Through the use of outdoor billboards, his organization, in very simple terms, warns the public of the future consequences of mass immigration. Billboards contain messages such as: "Because of mass immigration, U.S. population will exceed half a billion in my lifetime. Help us, Congress." One billboard, that contains a picture of two young children, simply states: "Immigration is doubling U.S. population in our lifetimes."

In 1999, the first billboard was erected in Queens, New York, and subsequently more have gone up in other boroughs of the city. Predictably, lobby groups and politicians coalesced to force their removal, generating a firestorm of media publicity. Although the early struggles to exercise First Amendment rights via these billboard notices have ended in disappointment, over 100 billboards have been erected since, in other states, including Nebraska, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Minnesota and California.

In Michigan, where a Project USA billboard was erected on private property, opponents still managed to get city officials to ban it and have it removed. The property owner claimed that this action sparked public support for the billboards, since many people were outraged at the censorship of what amounts to nothing more than a simple statistic.

To the opposition's claim that the billboards' messages "incite hatred," Craig Nelsen asks, "How can it be inciting hate to state the facts about immigration numbers?" He warns, "In a world that will add another billion people in just the next 13 years, Americans deserve to be allowed to speak openly and honestly about the role immigration should play in our country's future."

It's understandable that many members of the ethnic groups now pouring into the United States would begin to have some designs on this country's future and how it might be influenced to serve specific purposes. The desire for "Aztlan," the imaginary territory that some Hispanics would like to carve out of the Southwest portion of the U.S., is generally attributed to Hispanic "radicals." One usually would not suspect aspirants for public offices in major American cities with harboring plans to reconstruct the geographic borders of the U.S. by creating a new country.

Yet, in June, during the mayoral campaign in Los Angeles, mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa was asked by a reporter if he favored a separate Latino "republic" to be created from sections of existing American states in the Southwest. Surprised by the blunt and direct query, Villaraigosa began a rambling, evasive response, before clamming up altogether. He would not answer the question.

Perhaps the first step towards the creation of a separate "Aztlan" has already been taken in the Texas town of El Cenizo, that shares a border with Mexico. It is here, where the majority of the citizenry is of Mexican descent, that a defiance of government is being referred to as a rebellion.

In 1999, the town fathers, in the form of the city council, not only adopted Spanish as the town's "official" language, but proclaimed the town off-limits to federal laws that deal with immigration, especially in regard to illegal immigrants. In fact, the town describes itself as a "safe haven" for illegal aliens, and warns its city employees that they will be fired if they report illegals to the U.S. Border Patrol. In a show of racial solidarity, El Cenizo flaunts its refusal to obey federal immigration laws, and its citizens appear to have a greater identification with Mexico than with the United States. An Associated Press story about the town states that one "might walk into an El Cenizo city meeting and wonder what side of the Rio Grande you're on." Raoul Contreras, writing in La Prensa of San Diego, says about El Cenizo's citizens, "They don't like Anglos telling them what to do and they don't like the INS."

On another front, Swaminathan Aiyar, after dismissing the notion of an Indian takeover of the sub-continent, candidly writes, in the Times of India: "Forget about an aggressive takeover of the sub-continent, we should aim for a friendly takeover of the whole world, starting with the USA. Actually, takeover is the wrong word. More correctly, we must aim at a global inter-mingling where our sheer numbers matter. The world has six billion people, of whom one billion are Indians. Since population growth has slowed or halted in China and large parts of the West, by the year 2050, one in five human beings will be an Indian. So, if globalisation facilitates the free movement of people, Indians should in due course account for a substantial chunk of the population in all countries that are desirable destinations for migrants."

Even the boldest proclamations issuing from those who celebrate the inevitable transformations yet to come of this country's social and political institutions do nothing to bestir a sleeping citizenry that is bent on "making nice" and staying out of politically incorrect trouble. But a day of reckoning will bring with it an understanding of the profound changes to the way of life that we now take for granted, when the race/culture shift is complete.

Columnist Sam Francis sums it up best: "There was an ethnic and cultural homogeneity to the American people that made their nation cohere and their creed and their peculiar form of government work at all. The Founders had no problem whatsoever in understanding and recognizing that America does indeed have a specific ethnic and cultural foundation and that when that foundation vanishes, the American republic disappears with it. . . . It's hardly an accident that as ethnic and racial diversity has flourished, the limited republican government the Founders created from their own British heritage has begun to wither."

Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) - Advocates a temporary moratorium on immigration

Project USA (Director, Craig Nelsen) - Specializes in outdoor billboards, forums, and other alerts

Center for Immigration Studies - Research and policy analysis

California Coalition for Immigration Reform - Issues of illegal immigration

American Patrol (Voice of Citizens Together)

VDARE - For the writings of Peter Brimelow, Sam Francis and others

June, 2001

Copyright 2001 Issues & Views