James Kirkpatrick
VDARE
March 25, 2015
The legendary conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly asks the obvious question of whether President Obama’s actions on immigration are part of a strategy of destruction by design.
According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the average family eligible for Barack Obama’s “deferred action” on immigration enforcement “already receives about $6,600 a year in means-tested welfare benefits. That includes food stamps, school lunch (and breakfast), Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.”
Schlafly notes,
Many Americans labor under the false assumption that because most immigrants are hardworking, they do not depend on welfare assistance. In fact, as Rector patiently explains, most welfare benefits go to households with children headed by a low-income employed adult.
Rector estimates that the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits the immigrants who came here illegally now receive, plus other goodies such as EITC and ACTC cash, will encourage increased illegal immigration in the future.
The average American, whose children and grandchildren will end up burdened with this enormous debt, must ask whether someone is trying to destroy America. [The Many Costs of Obama’s Amnesty, TownHall.com, March 24, 2015]
Let’s give Obama’s actions the most charitable interpretation possible. Open borders supporters say most people come to the United States seeking to “find a better life.” That’s true, although that’s also true of almost every action taken by every person who has ever existed, ever. Other than masochists or the deranged, few people seek out a worse life.
Still, the United States is a wealthy country and those who come here generally have a better life than what they are leaving behind. It makes life worse for those who are already here, but Americans are privileged, rich, and mostly white, so they can afford it and their opinions don’t count anyway. The welfare payments allow the poor to make ends meet, and what could be wrong with that?
Americans would respond that this is destroying the usefulness of programs that were designed to help fellow citizens and ensures that the country will eventually run out of money. I think your average leftist would respond that given increasing inequality and how well “the rich” are doing, this really shouldn’t be a concern. And why should arbitrary borders keep help away from people who need it? The argument that immigration is actually fueling inequality and that increasing dependence undermines both our society and, in the long term, the recipients of such aid really doesn’t register with them.
Besides, there is a side benefit for Obama supporters. As Schlafly writes,
The two factors that Americans are most concerned about are jobs and voter fraud. The U.S. has accepted two new immigrants for each additional job created since 2000, according to federal data, and expert witnesses have testified that once the amnestied immigrants are given Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, there will be no way to stop them from registering to vote.
The Obama Administration’s actions here actually seem like a kind of ironic testament to the Neo-Reactionary case against democracy as an inherently degenerative force. Importing Democrats justifies whatever short term troubles immigration creates because it will allow the Left to crush conservatives forever and create what they think is their perfect society. Even though the American people have never been asked whether they want their society transformed (and vote against it every time they get the chance), the long term effect of Obama’s policies is, as Peter Brimelow says, “to dissolve the people and elect another.”
The Obama Administration knows that if it can just get away with importing dependents for a few more years and eliminate safeguards on voter integrity, it will have dispossessed Americans from their own country and essentially reduced them to the status of colonial subjects. The end result of our entire system is to reduce a whole nation to social workers and the clients of social workers.
It’s doubtful Obama thinks he’s “destroying” the country. He thinks he is pursuing his vision of the Good. But we can see the results of his moral vision in shattered communities like Ferguson, Missouri or in the Third World barrios cropping up in what used to be prosperous American towns. The legacy of Obama, if not reversed, is that he has reduced “America” to simply a geographic expression.