Our book club selection for February is Mark Krikorian’s The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal. Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and the grandson of immigrants himself. He argues that today’s mass immigration is not good for today’s America. Our current immigration situation and policy have caused a “cracked melting pot” that leads to transnationalism, multiculturalism and post-Americanism (all bad things in his context) which drastically decrease the likelihood of necessary assimilation. Beyond just the assimilation problem, today’s mass immigration erodes American sovereignty, decreases national security, damages our economy, skews government spending and disrupts our otherwise nationally-selected population growth patterns.
His closing chapter defines “a blueprint for a modern American immigration policy: a firm commitment to reducing the illegal population over time and keeping it low; a level of legal immigration, built up from zero, which is still quite high, perhaps four hundred thousand per year, though likely to decline as time passes; a temporary visa system that welcomes the legitimate visitor but is not a means to sidestep the immigration laws; and pro-immigrant measures to offer a warmer welcome to those we admit as our future countrymen.”
The New Case Against Immigration has extensive end notes and is a fairly quick read coming in at under 250 pages of text, although Krikorian’s tone sometimes struck me as mean. My colleagues should find the criticisms of the State Department and of DHS particularly thought-provoking. For some mixed insights into Krikorian and CIS, here’s an interview with Krikorian on BookTV, a lengthier review of the book, a criticism of CIS from Imagine 2050, an article by Krikorian on Amy Chua (see her World on Fire here at RAHF), and a profile of CIS from the TransBorder Project.
Our little book club (predominately elitists per Krikorian’s definition) should have an interesting meeting this month.
I ran across your review from Goodreads, and I was curious what you thought about the specific points Krikorian makes. I’m wading through the book and find him not so much opposed to immigration as much as for vast reform of it.
I agree that Krikorian supports a vast reform of our immigration laws. As you’ll see at the end of the book, he supports very low immigration with very high support of legal immigrants. I am not an immigration expert, so I don’t have much to say on his specific points. For me, the book was a very interesting look at one view of our immigration problem. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book. Let me know what you think. -John