Alex Kranz outdebates Mark Steyn

From SteynOnline's Postbag, here's Kranz's letter and then Steyn's attempt to change the subject:

THE FUTURE IS BLUE
ALEX KRANZ: You topped off one of your best columns ever with a glaring mistake. You've always been apparently myopic about the dangers of American mass immigration - at least I've never seen you take it on; you shouldn't let your own status scare you, David Frum and John O'Sullivan, among others, are for immigration reform - but your prediction that Red America is simply going to outbreed the Europe-esque Blue America is mistaken, unless you, unlike Michael Barone or anyone I have yet to see try, can refute the following:

Notwithstanding the fantasies and spin of immigration enthusiasts on the Right, the largely Latino population of the immigrants, and even the other ethnic groups among them, vote mostly Democratic. And their birthrates are healthy. And it's likely that they, like the African-Americans of the immediate post-WWII period and the Muslim immigrants in Europe now, will give birth to a generation more alienated, and thus more Left, than they are now. The great American economy won't boost them into middle-class Redness because the endless importation of yet more workers will keep their services near-valueless.

So your theory of Religious Reds outbreeding Secular Blues only works if the massive influx of Religious Blues convert from strongly Blue to strongly Red. They are unlikely to do so any more than African-Americans (fairly religious Blues) have or will. (Or the very religious newcomers to Europe have or will.) If nothing else, their numbers are too great for them to assimilate to middle class America; they'll remain Latin Americans, sympathetic to socialism and unsympathetic to gringos.

There are greater, nonpartisan problems with current immigration - ethnic tension and balkanization, class stratification and poverty - but those are relevant too, as they are problems which empower the Left.

If the Left can just get through this current slump, and continue to convince Republicans that immigration is an unstoppable, beneficial force of nature and that anyway Latinos are natural conservatives, the Left's future in America is actually pretty sunny.


MARK REPLIES: Actually, I’ve written about US immigration on several occasions (here - for example), not least because of my own “status”, as you put it. Legal immigrants, who’ve paid thousands of dollars and filled in dozens of forms and pay their taxes and provide jobs for US citizens, are among the most hostile to illegal immigration. I am in favor of efficient fair legal immigration and utterly opposed to the ludicrous concept of the “undocumented”, as anyone who saw my speech at the Claremont Institute dinner earlier this month can testify.

However, in the end, everything is comparative: for all the problems you cite with unassimilated Hispanics and alienated blacks, they are as nothing to the degrees of unassimilation and alienation of third-generation European Muslims in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Pick the most disaffected black male you can imagine in the worst ghetto in America: whatever his pathologies, if you gave him ten million bucks he’d want to live pretty much like the average rich white guy lives. On the Continent, disaffected Muslims wish to create an entirely different society from the rich white folks’, and as their demographic and economic strength they will do so. No nation’s prospects are guaranteed but America has enormous advantages over Europe.

Wouldn't it be simpler, Mark, just to say, "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right about immigration and U.S. voting" instead of telling us, in effect, that a broken leg is worse than a broken toe and other things we already know? I'm sore about this because Steyn is specifically misquoting my work, so I'd like him to admit that he's been misleading readers, not change the subject like this.

Anyway, to move on to Steyn's argument about how smart we were to situate North America north of Latin America instead of north of the Muslim world, like those idiot Europeans did with their continent, the point I've been making for years is that we need to remember that when the Europeans invited in most of the ancestors of their current Muslims, from 1950-1973, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ferocious Muslim fundamentalism appeared to be a dead letter back then. Heck, in the first half of the 1950s, Puerto Rican terrorism in the U.S. was a more pressing threat than Muslim terrorism was in Europe.

What we should have learned from history is that these things are highly cyclical, that groups with low status go through periods of anger and quietude. My guess is that we're a few years away from an upswing in Latino unrest in the U.S., as the "wind from South" blows north from Venezuela and Bolivia.

But, I don't know what exactly the future will bring, and neither does anybody else.

For example, back around World War I, Henry Ford imported a lot of Lebanese Muslims to work in his factory in Dearborn, Michigan. It also seemed like a good idea at the time. but, how did that work out? Surprisingly, from our perspective now, following the 2005 Muslim disasters in Europe, so far it has turned out not that badly. Why not? When Congress cut off mass immigration in 1924, that kept major problems from developing.

In contrast, Ford and other automakers also invited lots of Southern blacks to Detroit to work in their factories. How did that work out for Detroit? In the long, catastrophically. Detroit has never recovered from the black riot of 1967 and the long black crime wave.

All we can be fairly certain about is the overall historical pattern, which is that some members of groups toward the bottom of society get sore enough about their relative status now and then to lash out. What policy does that suggest? Most of all, prudence. Don't let in large numbers of people likely to wind up low on the totem pole. If you are currently letting them in, then stop it. Now.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer