See Also: “Refugee Questions Liberals Need to Answer” and “Refugee Questions Christians Need to Answer“. If you’re reading this article, you’ll be glad you did.

by Rod D. Martin
November 6, 2015

A friend recently forwarded me this video by Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, entitled World Poverty, Immigration and Gumballs. There are many many things right — and completely off-base — in this presentation, some of which I will discuss below.

As you watch, you’ll note that Beck completely ignores illegal immigration. This is because he (and NumbersUSA) believe it would be easier to cut off legal immigration than illegal, which I’ve always found…odd.

There is a case for a lot more immigration. There is a case for a lot less immigration. Beck makes a very good case for less, for the uninitiated, the guilt-ridden and those in the orbit of Pope Francis. But he does not address, in this presentation at least, anything that’s being seriously debated in Washington.

For Democrats, immigration is all about (a) making up for all the babies they’ve aborted who are now needed in the working class, and (b) making up for all the Democrats who’ve been lost in that process. They are trying to rig the game at the ballot box for the next 50 years or more.

While the Chamber of Commerce agrees with the Democrats as to cheap labor (ironic in that the Democrat Party is built on organized labor, which should reconsider its partisan home), the vast majority of Republicans support (legal) immigration for very different reasons. The case for immigration is obvious: as Beck says, the best and brightest do tend to come here, which is good for America, and every bit as good for those individuals as it was for our own ancestors. And anyway, America is not a race or a place but an idea: any who share it are welcome.

That’s the theory, at least. Beck states but does not elaborate that there are practical limits to how many can be welcome at the same time. One might disagree with him about what that limit may be, but the principle is sound. So the real question is this: how much immigration can America absorb without becoming a different country?

Again, the Democrats want America to become a different country, so they see this as a feature not a bug.

Sadly, as pro (legal) immigration as I have always been, I’m becoming pretty skeptical on that front. If people are here for a while they have a chance to assimilate and enough of them figure out that government isn’t just a big vending machine, that America works the way it does for a reason, and that the details matter as much as the big ideas. But we’re now taking in so many people predisposed to socialism or something like it, and we’re doing it so fast, and we have been doing it so long, that America may need a breathing spell just to get things back in balance: to digest, if you will.

The Democrats don’t want balance. They don’t want to digest. They want to win elections and “transform the culture” by breaking every law Barack Obama swore to uphold. Like a card cheat, they want an extra pair of aces, heck, an entire extra deck, up their sleeve, so they can win through illegal voters what they could not win by persuasion.

But then, this has always been the Democrat playbook. Kind of like when they started a Civil War. And later when they were out lynching black sharecroppers. To the left, what is right is whatever serves the need of the moment. And the need is always power.