Invaders Pillage and Conquer
8 April 2006
Program Director, All Things Considered
635 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
Dear Editor:
In his commentary (April 7), Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist commits several errors - each one so fundamental that it completely undermines the credibility of everything that he says. I mention here only two of these errors.
First, Gilchrist repeatedly calls today's immigration an "invasion." It's inexcusable to equate unarmed people seeking jobs and a better life in a market economy with armed marauders seeking to kill us and to steal our homes and factories. Second, he asserts that the "magnitude" of immigration today is "unprecedented." Not so. Annual immigration rates peaked a century ago at 1.5 percent of the U.S. population; today's rate is about half that figure. And today's foreign-born population is ten percent, well below its peak of nearly 15 percent in 1910.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Program Director, All Things Considered
635 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
Dear Editor:
In his commentary (April 7), Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist commits several errors - each one so fundamental that it completely undermines the credibility of everything that he says. I mention here only two of these errors.
First, Gilchrist repeatedly calls today's immigration an "invasion." It's inexcusable to equate unarmed people seeking jobs and a better life in a market economy with armed marauders seeking to kill us and to steal our homes and factories. Second, he asserts that the "magnitude" of immigration today is "unprecedented." Not so. Annual immigration rates peaked a century ago at 1.5 percent of the U.S. population; today's rate is about half that figure. And today's foreign-born population is ten percent, well below its peak of nearly 15 percent in 1910.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Monday January 8, 2007 at 10:15am
We have every legal right to deport all illegal aliens as long as we do it lawfully, right? (If you think otherwise, you don't believe in our fundamental concept of sovereignty).
So, tell us what would happen if we tried to deport all illegal aliens. Would some of them resist? Would some of them take parts of our cities?
Obviously, we have been invaded, it's just that some people want to redefine "invasion" as they do with other words, like "amnesty".