Immigration and National Character - Dr. Mackubin Owens

Immigration and National Character - Dr. Mackubin Owens

One of the major issues that helped to return Donald Trump to the presidency was immigration and border security. It seems clear that the majority of US voters believed that the federal government had lost control of the southern border with serious implications for labor, crime, and national security.

Those voting for Trump believed that the Biden administration had gone out of its way to undermine border security. For instance, it violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, by releasing millions of dubious “asylum seekers” into the country before their claims were legally adjudicated. It froze all deportations—including those of criminal aliens guilty of manslaughter, vandalism, assault, and other offenses. It ended the “Remain in Mexico” program and Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which limited the overwhelming number of migrants entering the country and temporarily eased the burden on local communities and the outnumbered border patrol. It has violated immigration law by granting mass paroles to large numbers of illegal migrants.

As critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policies (or lack thereof) have argued, the critical issue is sovereignty. Each country has the sovereign right to determine who can become a citizen. Although the United States was founded on universal principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence, the fact is that “rights and liberties” can exist only in separate and independent nation-states, in which the “just powers of government” are derived from “the consent of the governed.” As a sovereign state, the United States has plenary power to determine the conditions for immigration, as set forth in Article I of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.”

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There are two aspects of sovereignty that apply to the present immigration debate. The first is the right of the people to be secure. A large influx of unvetted immigrants makes domestic terrorist attacks more likely, several examples of which have occurred recently. As I wrote for GoLocalProv just over a year ago:

“In FY 2023, 169 migrants apprehended by CBP were on the US Terrorist Watch List. Who knows how many of the 1.7 million who evaded apprehension are potential terrorists? But there is an even greater threat to US national security on the southern border: the cartels. In June of 2021, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the cartels “dictate everything,” ensuring that nothing moves (families, unaccompanied minors, single young men, women, fentanyl, heroin, cocaine) unless the cartels say so.

“And indeed, the cartels are stronger and richer than ever. Their earnings have jumped from 500 million dollars in 2020 to an estimated 13 billion last year. Much of the cartels’ earnings have come from the deadly opioid, fentanyl, which has killed 109,000 Americans over the last two years.”

The second aspect is the expectation that those who come will assimilate and embrace the principles that underpin the American nation. This is an issue that can be traced to the very Founding of the Republic and the dispute between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.  Although Hamilton was himself an immigrant, he was adamantly opposed to the open immigration policies that President Thomas Jefferson proposed in his first annual message to Congress in 1801. Although the incoming president had once opposed unlimited immigration, Jefferson now saw it as a way to secure the future political dominance of his own party over Hamilton’s Federalists.

Hamilton, like most Federalists, was concerned about French influence on American politics. Although the French Revolution had descended into terror and led to the rise of Napoleon, Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party persisted in their attachment to the French. Hamilton feared that Jefferson’s proposal for unlimited immigration would lead to the triumph of the radical principles of the French Revolution over those of the more moderate American Revolution.

Writing as “Lucius Crassus,” Hamilton argued: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”

Invoking Jefferson’s own "Notes on Virginia," Hamilton observed that “foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners.” He argued that “it is unlikely that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism.”

He continued: “The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”

Hamilton concluded: “To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country, as recommended in [Jefferson’s] message, would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”

Hamilton’s fear was that a large number of immigrants attached to the principles of French rather than the American Revolution would undermine that “temperate love of liberty” essential to republican government. Today, we should be concerned about immigrants who, rather than choosing to worship according to the tenets of the Moslem faith, as do Jews and Christians, espouse “sharia supremacism,” the belief that Islamic law (sharia) supersedes the U.S. Constitution.

During its history, the United States has accommodated various ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Indeed, tolerance of varying points of view, especially religion, has been a hallmark of American republican government. But as George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport in 1791, tolerance in return “requires … that they who live under [the protection of the government] should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” To do otherwise would be, as Hamilton put it, “to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”