Defending Against the Wrong Army

By Paul Roberts
Volume 10, Number 4 (Summer 2000)
Issue theme: "Liberals and immigration reform - can they be recruited?"

Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the United States still spends a large sum on national defense. Arguments are made that we need to spend more. But spending may not be the answer if the purposes of defense are being undercut by other policies.

For example, our defense with respect to China has been under-cut by a U.S. defense contractor transferring our missile technology to the Chinese in order for U.S. firms to obtain cheaper and more reliable launchings for their communication satellites. What good does it do to spend more billions on defense when our own defense contractors, with a wink and nod from President Clinton, transfer the technology and weapons systems that we develop to the Chinese?

Take another example. U.S. businesses are hell-bent on building up China's economy in order that they might profit from the development of the Chinese market. But this build-up will make it easy for China to outspend us militarily and prevent us from closing our markets once they are able to out-compete us.

But these concerns, as real as they are, are minor. To see the big problem, consider the purposes of national defense. Countries have armies in order to prevent their being overrun by foreigners who would displace their language, destroy their cultural and communal integrity, and economically exploit the overrun population.

From the standpoint of its main purposes, U.S. national defense is a total failure. National defense has lost to immigration policy.

Did you know that 120 languages are spoken in Los Angeles? According to the Census Bureau, the United States now has such a diverse population that 330 languages are in use.

Many immigrants have strong values and are a positive addition to the population, but liberal politicians have created incentives for immigrants not to assimilate. In some states, assimilation has stopped. Immigrant communities are so large and insular that there is no need or pressure to learn English. Ethnic TV programming and radio broadcasts have made news and entertainment independent of English language ability. In place of the English-language schools that were prevalent during the 'melting pot' era, today there are ethnic-language schools teaching Persian, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Farsi and so forth.

Formerly, the federal government mandated bilingual courses as a way to immerse immigrants in English. Today, English immersion is seen as 'racist' and 'cultural oppression.' Because of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Supreme Court rulings, all non-English-speaking immigrants must be dealt with in their native tongues to ensure they are not denied welfare benefits, medical care, schooling, access to job training programs and employment.

In order for government handout agencies to service the teeming millions of non-English speakers, the demand for interpreters has escalated, putting more financial stress on government budgets and, ultimately, the taxpayers.

Legal-aid agencies are suing government social-service agencies - which cannot handle languages such as Wolof, Tswana, Hmong and Queche - for discriminating on the basis of national origin. To avoid the lawsuits, government agencies now discriminate against the English-speaking native born. The Santa Ana police department, for example, will only hire bilingual persons.

Millions of those who make up our Tower of Babel are illiterate in their own languages. They cannot be taught English when they cannot read or write in their native languages.

Debate over immigration, to the extent there is one, is about money Do immigrants pay more in taxes than they take out in social services? A more pertinent question is Have we lost our country to legions of foreigners who have no incentive to assimilate? Some Hispanic leaders in the Southwest have declared that their intention is secession.

U.S. immigration policy does not differentiate between legal and illegal immigration, as illegals are periodically amnestied and given citizenship. The word has gone out to Third World peoples 'If you make it to America, you are likely to stay - unless Castro wants you back.'

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 immigration reform have loaded the dice against native-born citizens of European descent. Ted Kennedy manipulated the 'reform' to guarantee that almost all of our immigrants are 'people of color.' The Civil Rights Act was manipulated so that 'people of color' became 'preferred minorities' with legal rights over and above those of American males of European descent, who have become legally disadvantaged by their gender and light skin color.

IRS statistics show that the bulk of the income tax is paid by 10 percent of the population. You can safely bet that this 10 percent speaks English.

Our current immigration policy means that by the year 2050 Americans of European descent, a group that comprised 90 percent of the population in 1960, will be in the minority and will have lost control over their political destiny. How does this differ from being overrun by the Chinese army?

About the author

Paul Craig Roberts is a syndicated columnist. Copyright 2000, this article is reprinted by permission of Creators Syndicate.