-By Warner Todd Huston
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol suggested Feb. 7 that the federal government should use immigration from Mexico to replace the American white working class.
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?” Kristol said an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington D.C.
The event, titled “It Came Apart: What’s Next for a Fractured Culture?,” was held in Washington on February 7.
During the immigration discussion, AEI’s Charles Murray noted that the growing problems faced by the white working class in the United States had recently changed his opinion about immigration. Murray said that he now favors curbs on low-skill immigration.
“The thing that has gotten to me over this year … has been the very simple idea that the citizens of a nation owe something to each other that is over and above our general obligation to other human beings,” Murray said.
In reply, Kristol dismissed Murray’s economic argument. “I don’t even see how you can talk yourself into thinking that a big influx of immigrants… really ruined your life,” he said, adding that he understands that many do think this way.
Kristol then said he is “going in the other direction,” by leaning more towards open border policies.
He suggested that if the white working class is in such dire straights, maybe it should be replaced citing Mexico as a likely source of replacements Kristol even claimed that many Mexican immigrants have more American ideals than Americans.
“I’ve actually come the other way which is, honestly we need — immigrants do have more of the old fashioned American virtues than lots of old fashioned Americans,” Kristol said.
Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? Who aren’t going to be… I’m serious, you can make the case — I know this is going on too long and this is too crazy, probably, and I hope this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse.
You can make the case that America has been great because every American — I think John Adams said this at the beginning, right? — basically if you’re in a free society, a capitalist society, after two, three, four generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled, whatever, and then you luckily you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, and Ireland, and Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard, and really went to succeed, and really want their kids to live better lives and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping they can hang on meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. So, in that respect, I don’t know why this moment is that different from the early 20th century.
Each year, roughly 4 million Americans join the labor force. The federal government annually imports 1 million legal immigrants, and allows companies to hire roughly 1 million foreign contract-workers. In addition, a few hundred thousand illegal immigrants cross the border or stay after their tourist visas and work-permits expire.
Kristol’s comments come about 54 minutes into the following video:
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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