The Third-World Invasion and Conquest of America: State of Emergency by Patrick J. Buchanan

Book Review
State of Emergency by Patrick J. Buchanan
Published by Thomas Dunne Books, August 2006

Pat Buchanan, a White House adviser to three presidents, and a three-time Presidential candidate, is at his best once again by tackling today's most sensitive and foremost political and social issue: immigration. In State of Emergency, Buchanan researches the history of immigration in America as well as the causes of the collapse of previous countries empires. He concludes that today's immigrants—by not integrating into American society—, the liberal elites—who encourage multi-culturalism and globalism—, the economic elites—who scour the globe for cheap labor—, and the President—who is afraid of losing financial and political support of business leaders and immigrants alike—are all contributing to a crisis that could eventually lead to the downfall of America.

The Problem
Pat Buchanan sees three problems with today's massive illegal immigration from Third-world countries, particularly Mexico: the immigrants drive down the wages of blue-collar Americans; they commit more crimes than Americans; and most importantly, they do not want to become Americans. Buchanan is not a racist or xenophobe—he clearly states that most immigrants are hard-working and come here for that purpose solely, not to commit crime. Nevertheless, immigrants from Third-world countries commit more crimes than Americans—the statistics cited are factual and cannot be denied. Furthermore, Buchanan writes, they are creating enclaves within American cities that do not resemble America. In essence, they are not Americans and will not assimilate because they don't want to: their allegiance is to their home countries. Aside from immigrant not wanting to learn English, he cites as examples Spanish-language books that teach Mexican history from the Mexican point of view in California and a soccer game in Los Angeles a few years ago between Mexico and the U.S., where the home team was booed and assaulted. The macro-effect is "The Aztlan Plot", writes Buchanan, which is the Mexican government's open policy of turning the Southwest into a virtual Mexico because of historical grievances dating to back to the 19th century when America took away, via force and monetary payments, Texas and the Southwest (these areas were sparsely populated, notes Buchanan, and Mexico for a time encouraged American to emigrate there).

The Effect on America
The overall economic and social effect of current immigration is negative according to Buchanan. He cites economic figures that show that except for educated immigrants, immigrants are a net tax burden on America. Furthermore, by undercutting wages of ordinary Americans, the middle-class will shrink which will create a dangerous social conflict of poor vs. rich. And as stated earlier, they commit more crime. Buchanan writes:

"If, by 2050, America is a souk of squabbling nationalities united only by a common lust for consumer goods, the guilty men will be our unpatriotic elites who put money and power ahead of country and culture.

Truth be told, many really do not care about the other America. For they live in another country, a country of gated communities and college town, of gentrified neighborhoods and wealthy suburbs, their children secure in private or up-scale public schools. Illegal aliens are to them the hardworking folks who mow their lawns, pick up their trash, wash their cars, clean their offices, and collect the dishes after meals at their favorite restaurants.

But to the other America, mass immigration is another experience. They see the neighborhoods, towns, and cities they grew up in changing before their eyes. They see crowds of strange men congregating on the street corners their kids pass on the way to and from school. They have neighbors now who don’t speak English and won’t try. They see their state income and property taxes rising to pay for schools and welfare for people who do not belong here. They see the crime rate rising again, find their kids in gang fights at school, and hear reports of knifings on playgrounds and shootings at the mall. They watch old friends move out of town and out of state to escape to an America that looks more like the country they grew up in. Nightly on cable, they see footage of the invaders sneaking through fences on the border. And they want to know why, when their sons and daughters are guarding Korea’s borders and dying to secure Iraq’s borders, their government will not defend America’s borders."

A Country of Immigrants?
Yes, says Buchanan--it always was and should be, but not on such a massive and unprecedented scale. Buchanan frequently cites JFK's A Nation of Immigrants:

"Through those 350 years [between 1607 and 1958], JFK writes, American took in 42 million immigrants. Now compare those numbers with today's.

In 2006, we have as many illegal aliens inside our borders, 12 to 20 million, as all the Germans and Italians, our two largest immigrant groups, who ever came in two centuries. Our illegal population alone exceeds all the Irish, Jewish, and British immigrants who came. Each year, we catch more people breaking in at the border than all the Swedes or Norwegians who came to America in two hundred years. Half a million illegal aliens succeed in breaking in every year, more than all the Greeks or Poles who came legally from the American Revolution to 1960. More Salvadorans are in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area alone than all the Greeks or Poles who ever came to America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Buchanan also states that historically, immigration to America has been intermittent—when America has felt there had been too much, Congress limited immigration so that the first-generation and their children could assimilate and not cling to their old cultures which further immigration encourages. He cites as an example, among others, the backlash against the Irish following their mass migration due to the potato famine in their home country in the late 1840s.

The Larger Picture
In addition to the economic and social costs of today's immigration "tsunami", Buchanan clearly states that the future of the Union itself is at stake. What is a Nation?, Buchanan titles a chapter. Citing, among others, the break-up of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into countries based solely on ethnic and religious divisions, he sees a danger into having "a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual Tower of Babel" whose citizen have nothing in common except economic gain.

"The new orthodoxy teaches as dogma that race does not matter, that to treat people of different creeds, colors, or cultures differently is immoral in principle and intolerable in practice. The crisis of the new orthodoxy is that it is rooted in an ideology few truly believe. For creed, culture, and ethnicity do matter, immensely. They are not everything, but they are not nothing. They are the forces tearing down empires and tearing apart nations. When we act as if they do not exist, we court disaster, as we did when we marched to Baghdad certain our democratic ideals would be embraced once they tyrant was gone, only to discover that divisions among Kurds, Shia, and Sunni over ethnicity, culture, history, and creed vanquished all our hopes."

The author sees a problem in today's politically correct environment where America's and the West's historical past is now only viewed on negative terms:

"Colonial rule was marked by such evils as chattel slavery and the exploitation of African labor in the mines of the Congo and South Africa. But was not the arrival of the West of immense benefit to the colonized peoples? Can Western civilization not claim credit for having advanced all of mankind morally, politically, culturally between 1492 and 1960? Was not Western civilization vastly superior to the indigenous civilizations it encountered and crushed, from the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas to the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist civilizations from Africa to the Far East? Has not Western Man more to be proud of than ashamed of?

But if Western imperialism was not uniquely exploitative, evil, savage, and shameful, why should the West be made to do eternal penance and pay external reparations? Or do we accept the Sontag verdict: 'The white race is the cancer of human history'?

Most prefer to avoid such questions. But they are not going away. For they are at the heart of the clash of civilizations now underway."

If we look at America historically back to the founding of the nation, it has never been a multicultural medley, writes Buchanan. He quotes George Washington's 1792 letter to John Adams:

"'[T]he policy...of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean settling them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they or their descendants get assimilated to our customs and laws: in a word soon become one people.'

The Father of our country believed that, before they could become Americans, immigrants must embrace our language customs, and habits, as well as our principles."

Buchanan's point is that we must not form and think of each other as separate groups but instead regard ourselves as and be American, with a common culture and beliefs, and not as Mexican or even Mexican-American (or any other nationality). He quotes two former Presidents on the issue:

“'The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.' – Theodore Roosevelt, Knights of Columbus, 1915

'You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in American has not yet become an American.' – Woodrow Wilson, Address to New Citizens, 1915"

"For American to believe that, unlike the rest of the world, we are immune to, exempt from, or unaffected by the powerful undercurrents of race, ethnicity, and culture that are pulling nations apart may prove a fatal delusion," writes Buchanan.

The Solution
"Let us imagine a comparable situation," Buchanan writes.

"Ten million Americans, to escape poverty and find work during the Great Depression, migrate for the Dust Bowl down to Mexico. Settled there, they demand that Mexico provide them cash payments, subsidize their food, provide them free medical care, educate their children in English, teach them U.S. history, and start celebrating U.S. holidays. Suppose the Americans then began to commit crimes of assault, rape, and murder at three and four times the rate of the Mexican people and that the American young started joining criminal gangs at nineteen times the rate of Mexican kids. Suppose, then, that 10,000 Americans joined in the burning and looting of the second largest city in Mexico and millions marched under the Stars and Stripes to demand all rights and privileges of Mexican citizens.
Mexico would have sent its army to drive these Americans back over the Rio Grande. Contrast this with America’s cringing response when faced with a duty to defend our borders and remove intruders from our home. In America’s border crisis, George Bush is a ninety-seven-pound weakling."

The author is proposing essentially the same solution: deport all the illegals and build a fence along the entire border. He is not proposing a Gestapo-like squad to hunt down illegals, but rather a policy of enforcing current federal laws and enacting new stricter ones. As example, he cites cities that currently do not allow police to work with the Department of Homeland Security on immigration enforcement and the lax penalties and even more lenient enforcement of businesses that hire illegal aliens. Buchanan favors much stricter penalties. He proposes ending dual-citizenship and not allowing the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the U.S. to become citizens.

The majority of Americans support such drastic measures, but Pat Buchanan is very pessimistic that these reform will come to fruition even under a Republican majority in the Congress and the White House:

"In almost every opinion survey, majorities of Americans say they want to stop illegal immigration, even if it means troops on the Rio Grande and a barrier fence from Brownsville to San Diego. But the majority no longer rules in America, when its interest collide with the globalist ideology of our transnational elites."

The situation is so dire, Buchanan writes, that unless we solve the immigration problem now America will end up on the ash heap of history.

"'Why was the border guard so thin? Did the Romans not notice...that their way of life was changing forever?' -Thomas Cahill"

Recogitare's views
This is the best non-fiction book I have read in a very long time. It is a page-turner. Even if you are a die-hard liberal and cannot stand Pat Buchanan, this book will make you think and may even shape your opinion on the matter.

Ultimately there are two fundamental questions: what does it mean to be an American and what do we want America to be? A "multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual Tower of Babel" or an America where we all celebrate the same customs, language, and history and call ourselves American, not Irish-American or Cuban-American. From a historical standpoint, Buchanan is correct: essentially all wars have been fought over, and all nations are formed on the basis of blood, tribe, and race. Joseph Stalin, Josip Tito, and Saddam Hussein knew this very well and the only way to keep their nations together was through dictatorship. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia crumbled and Iraq is currently disintegrating along ethnic and religious lines once democracy was introduced. There are countless of other examples. America is unique in its diversity in that we have many a myriad of ethnic groups and religions, but, as Buchanan states, we are (or were) all American bound by a common American culture, customs, language, and history formed largely by America's colonial origins and English ancestry.

It is also important to note that from a biological standpoint, we are not very different from any other species with respect to warfare (ultimately a fight for limited resources): it's largely based on genetics—i.e., the closeness of kinship based on blood. That's why all prison gangs are formed along racial lines and almost all wars throughout history have been fought on that basis.

The attributes mentioned previously—culture, customs, language, and history—are what keep a country together. That in an undeniable fact. Can America, then, survive if all that we have in common is a belief in our country's institutions and a quest for economic gain? Even though it has never happened before, I believe it can. As I have previously written, I am certain that China will be the next world power and will surpass the economic, cultural, and eventually even the military might and influence of America on the world stage. But that doesn't mean that America will crumble. What keeps this nation together today in a global world is economics, and what I see as the biggest threat to America are any quasi-socialist policies. I don't see a problem with having different cultural enclaves throughout America. Could it be because I, a Caucasian, don't encounter this phenomenon personally on a day-to-day basis? It's a possibility. Seattle and larger Puget Sound area is mostly white. When I went to the huge immigration protest held here back in May, I was only one of a few white people amongst thousands of Hispanics who were mostly waving Mexican, and not American flags. I have to admit, that did faze me a bit. Am I a hypocrite then, similar to a person living in a gated community somewhere in California who only encounters a Hispanic when they come to clean their house or mow their lawn? I've analyzed this a bit and I don't think so—I personally like people and seek out venues such as films and festivals from various cultures. It's just a biological reaction for any social species, just as a group of ants, lions, or chimpanzees will feel uncomfortable or keep away from other ones.

So maybe Buchanan has a point here, and he clearly states so: that by 2050, unless we stop illegal immigration, America will no longer be majority white. Is that a problem? I think it could be for the majority of Caucasians. That's why there's currently an exodus of whites from California to other western states, as noted by the author. Could a cultural and ethnic clash be down the road? If America upholds its capitalist roots and we remain economically competitive with the rest of the world, I don't think there will be one. If we don't, there could be enormous civil unrest in America that could lead to its downfall because unlike virtually every other country on the planet, we are not homogenous ethnically.

In the end, I guess I have a different vision of America than Pat Buchanan. I see multi-culturalism as an asset to America. That's why I like the European Union—anyone within it will eventually be able to work and live at the place of their choosing. I'm not proposing a North American union of any sort. What I'm saying is that I like cultural diversity and I think it's good for America. He is correct, however, that people will not assimilate as easily unless we seriously stem the flow of immigrants. The question is: how far does a person have to assimilate to be called American? I think all that's needed is the ability to speak English and the belief and allegiance to America and not any other country. I think it's great if someone celebrates their Mexican heritage and lives in a "Little Mexico". The problem is when that person doesn't want to learn English and doesn't consider himself/herself American. But what's the problem with calling yourself Mexican-American? BTW, Buchanan calls for ending dual citizenship, which I agree is in the best interest of America.

I don't think we should hold the door open for everyone because we economically cannot afford to, but I don't support cutting legal immigration. There are only so many jobs available. But ultimately people come here to work and if there is no work available they will not come legally, or illegally. If we stop giving entitlements to illegal immigrants (I am changing my view on this issue: see this previous post), it should be a disincentive enough because if you can't get welfare, you have to find a job, and if there is no job, you'll go back home. But I do believe that we should give amnesty to those illegal immigrants who have stayed, worked and paid taxes here.