The Washington Post printed a front page article entitled Immigration Debate Echos Past that is less than honest with the readers in its selective use of history.  The article is deeply biased.   Here’s the meat of the pro-illegal immigrant open-borders political argument disguised as a history based news report:

The bitter arguments of the past echo loudly these days as Congress debates toughening the nation’s immigration laws and immigrants from Latin America and Asia swell the streets of U.S. cities in protest. Most of the concerns voiced today — that too many immigrants seek economic advantage and fail to understand democracy, that they refuse to learn English, overcrowd homes and overwhelm public services — were heard a century ago. And there was a nub of truth to some complaints, not least that the vast influx of immigrants drove down working-class wages.

Yet historians and demographers are clear about the bottom line: In the long run, New York City — and the United States — owes much of its economic resilience to replenishing waves of immigrants. The descendants of those Italians, Jews, Irish and Germans have assimilated. Manhattan’s Little Italy is vestigial, no more than a shrinking collection of restaurants.

Now another wave washes over. Fully 38 percent of New York’s 8 million residents are foreign-born, nearly the same percentage as a century ago.

There’s a selection of specifics and history to back up these statements, click on the link above to read them yourself.  Like so much of what passes for modern media reporting, the problem with the article here lies not so much in what is said as in what is left out of the information given to the reader to make an informed judgment about the issue.  The reader is given just enough information about past problems with immigration to then learn that in the end it was all for good and it all worked out later.  The clear message is that now is no different and so no action need be taken to stop massive flows of illegal immigrants now.

What the article does NOT tell the reader to start with is that historically the massive waves of immigrants were explicitly invited to the country by the decision of our elected leaders, in the best interests of the nation when it was determined we needed more citizens to settle lands and provide workers for growing industry.  It was our choice to create these ‘waves’ of immigration.  This is critically important to the current debate because we are not being asked by those coming in.  Quite to the contrary they are breaking our laws and coming in anyways as unwelcome and illegal guests.  Our nation is our collective home, can anyone say that there is no difference between an invited guest staying in your home and an uninvited one who refuses to leave?  It’s silly on its face, of course there is a difference.  Mexico doesn’t tolerate it, why on earth should we?

Consequent to the fact that the historical ‘waves’ of immigration were invited to our nation was that when the numbers rose to the point that they started causing significant social problems and exceeded our ability to integrate them into our culture we stopped the flow of immigrants to gain time to integrate the current wave into our nation.  The immigration pauses usually lasted a few decades until the nation was ready again to invite a new wave of unfamiliar people amongst us.  Each time it was our choice when, whom, and how many immigrants to invite.  Done in this fashion immigration has been a strong benefit to our nation over time to be sure.

The current situation does not at all resemble our history since the illegal immigration open borders fanatics would throw the gates wide permanently and guarantee perpetual waves of massive numbers of immigrants that we will then never have the time to integrate and acculturate.  The current broken system is instead creating instability and long term will shatter our cultural-political integrity.  America will be Balkanized as the waves of immigrants set up their own mini-communities in our multicultural nation and refuse to ever join what will soon become a majority minority nation composed of other such communities.   America is an idea more than anything else.  If we do not have the chance to integrate these people into our culture and political ideas the very idea that is America will cease to be, sunk beneath the waves of third-world immigrants who come here for the money but reject our way of life.

Immigrants are good for America… legal ones we pick at the time and rate of our choosing.  Legal immigration is what Americans support and is in the best interests of our nation.