One of the more remarkable aspects of the continuing debate over
American immigration policy is that the nation's liberal elites seem,
ever so gradually, to be finally catching up with the people. For years
opinion polls have shown that a large majority of the American people,
of all political persuasions and all ethnic backgrounds, want less
immigration. Yet year after year immigrants continue to flood across
our borders as "opinion molders," elected officials, business
executives, and professional eggheads insist that mass immigration is
really beneficial and its dangers are much exaggerated by "nativists"
and "racists."
Only in the last couple of years have a few books been published
that dissent from that view, and the appearance of these books,
published by major New York houses, suggests that the elites are
finally beginning to grasp what uncontrolled immigration means for the
people and the country they rule. What began as a popular protest
against elite policies and preferences has now started influencing the
elites themselves, even if the elites still like to imagine that they
thought of it first.
Roy Beck's *The Case Against Immigration* is the most recent
example of a book published by a major publisher that challenges the
conventional wisdom about immigration (Peter Brimelow's *Alien Nation,*
published last year, was the first), and although Beck has been
actively engaged in the movement to restrict immigration for some
years, he has done so as a card-carrying liberal. A former newspaperman
...