By Elliot Resnick
Conservative intellectuals don't particularly like discussing immigration. It's uncomfortable, after all, to say "no" to millions of poor Mexicans and Salvadorans pining to live the American dream so many of our ancestors enjoyed.
Yet, the fact is that unless Republicans stanch the flow of immigrants to this country – both illegal and legal – the America bequeathed to us by our forebears will disintegrate before our eyes.
Consider: When I came of age – a mere 20 years ago – Virginia, Nevada and Colorado were all red states. In 1984, Ronald Reagan actually won each of these states by a whopping 25 points. Today, they all lean blue. No Republican presidential candidate has carried any of them since 2004.
Other reliably conservative states like Arizona and North Carolina barely go Republican today. Even Texas – once the "capital of cowboy territory" – can no longer be taken for granted. Beto O'Rourke lost his senatorial race against Ted Cruz there by a mere 2 percentage points in 2018. Two!
So what happened over the last few decades? Have Democrats convinced voters that their ideas are superior to Republican ideas? Has the liberal educational establishment finally succeeded in turning Americans against the Judeo-Christian tradition?
No. What happened is immigration. Starting approximately 30 years ago, immigrants began crossing our border in ever-increasing numbers and brought their left-leaning voting habits with them. The result? Red states turned purple – and then blue.
California is a perfect example. No Republican presidential candidate other than Barry Goldwater lost this state between 1952 and 1988. Today, however, thanks to a massive influx of Hispanics to California, a Republican presidential candidate is lucky if he breaks 35 percent there. And Arizona and Texas will soon go the way of California if current trends hold. That's not alarmism. That's simply what the statistics show.
Why do so many immigrants vote Democrat? To some extent, they do so because dishonest politicians and media outlets tell them Democrats support the "little guy" while Republicans favor the heartless rich. But that's only part of the story. The other part is that most immigrants hail from countries that champion big government or – at the very least – have no history of favoring small government.
A decade ago, the Pew Research Center asked Americans if they prefer a bigger government offering more services or a smaller one offering fewer services. Although 41% of Americans overall wanted a smaller government, 75% of Hispanic Americans – and Hispanics comprise America's most electorally significant immigrant population – favored a bigger government. Just 12% of first-generation Hispanics wanted a smaller government, while 81% wanted a bigger government.
In short – to put the matter bluntly – three-quarters of Hispanics essentially do not subscribe to our Founding Fathers' vision of individuals pursuing their own destiny with minimal interference from a central government. (Western European immigrants presumably reject this vision, too, considering the popularity of "social democracy" on the Continent.)
If American public schools taught children the founding ideals of this republic, the situation wouldn't be so dire. Impressionable young minds could be imbued with the spirit of freedom and rugged individualism. They could be taught, as Thomas Paine said, that "government is at best a necessary evil" – and that it therefore should be kept as small as possible. They could be taught that America was founded on the radical premise that man is born free and that the individual – not government – is sovereign. They could be taught that the founders took pride in America not resembling Europe.
But they are taught none of this. They are taught instead that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were benighted bigots. They are taught that racism and sexism undergird all of American history and that nothing that came before the legal recognition of gay marriage in 2015 is worth preserving.
With the school system we have – and the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood disseminating liberal ideology 24/7 – it's a miracle half the country still votes Republican. But that won't last long. If we continue letting a million immigrants (and numerous more illegal immigrants) into this country every year, Republicans are doomed. Not because immigrants are bad people, but because the overwhelming majority of them simply don't share our founders' values.
So while it may be more exciting for conservatives to debate the welfare state, abortion, school choice and Supreme Court jurisprudence, immigration is more important than all of them. As conservative firebrand Ann Coulter has written, "There's no sense in arguing about any other political issue. If we lose immigration, we lose everything."
It's that simple. Unless we stanch the immigrant flow soon, the Republican Party will die. And with it, the Great American Experiment.
Elliot Resnick is the chief editor of The Jewish Press and the author, most recently, of "Movers & Shakers, Vol. 2: Sixty More Interviews on Everything From Judaism and Terrorism to Politics and Science."
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