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With Eugene Volokh, founder of The Volokh Conspiracy seemingly fading away, the dominant voice at the website has become that of the far cruder and openly ethnocentric Ilya Somin.
Somin is also a Russian Jewish immigrant but arriving at the age of 5 he did better expropriating the fruits of American higher education, holding degrees from Amherst, Harvard and Yale. Volokh, although judging from his biography a much cleverer man, was confined to UCLA.
Somin is extremely voluble. In May alone he published 19 substantial essays on The Volokh Conspiracy.
These articles are comically predictable. A fanatical Open Borders man, he never exhibits any empathy for the great mass of his fellow Americans. He is strongly influenced by the interests of owners of capital.
I have been brooding about this classic example since it was posted: The “Migrant Crisis” is Caused by Flawed Work and Housing Policies, not Migrants, by Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy, February 20, 2024.
This piece is an absolute master class in Missing the Point, an Open Borders Brigade specialty: https://t.co/Z7qn28R8dt pic.twitter.com/jjBtK7biAa
— Some Random Conservatarian (@violacesario_) February 22, 2024
Somin asserts
- Illegal Immigrants should immediately be allowed to work. The impact on the wages and living conditions Americans in their areas, which I discussed in NYC Mayor Adams Has Migrant Crisis “Solution”: Attack Living Standards Of N.Y. Working Class is simply not considered.
- Standards on construction should be weakened, to allow entrepreneurs to build cheaper and quicker, and with less regard to neighborhood impact.
I discussed this phenomenon in Queens Landlord Enriched By Biden Immivasion—Neighborhood Destroyed and NY Real Estate Owners Pigging Out On Great Replacement Funding
Ilya Somin is impervious to anyone’s interests but his own.
Now Somin has had the insolence to post The 100th Anniversary of One of America’s Worst Laws—the 1924 Immigration Act The Volokh Conspiracy, June 3, 2024.
Bluntly, his claims are crazy:
Post‐1924 Americans are not free to associate, contract, and trade with people born around the world as they were before.
This is a ridiculous statement.
Just as silly
…the Act also did great harm to native-born Americans by depriving them of the economic growth, productivity, and innovation that immigration produces, and reducing America’s power and influence in the world.
Oh yeah? No doubt this was why, 21 years later, America was unable to defeat Germany and Japan in separate titanic global wars, and save the USSR from the consequences of Stalin’s diplomatic outwitting by Hitler and the damage done by his slaughter of his officer corps.
Somin burbles on
If the United States had granted legal permanent residence at the same per‐capita rate that it did from 1900–1914—before World War I disrupted travel—another 164 million immigrants would have been permitted to settle in the United States legally.
While it not quite clear what period Somin has in mind the population of the US in 1965, when the nation- breaking reversal of policy of that year, was engineered, was 195 million. So Somin had had his way this would have been 84% higher.
A population expansion of this size driven by the introduction of aliens obviously raises the danger I discussed late last year in Chinese Problems + No Borders = American Obliteration. Would America still be America?
Apparently this is not a question Somin cares about.
Not that he rejects ethnic considerations altogether:
The most obvious harm caused by the 1924 Immigration Act was consigning many millions of would-be immigrants to a lifetime of poverty and oppression in their countries of origin. The most notorious example is that of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, such as Anne Frank and her family.
There is definitely a school of thought that the 1924 Act was wrong because it did not subordinate American immigration policy to the convenience of German Jews.
In one of his first essays for us Was the 1924 Immigration Cut-off “Racist”? Professor Kevin MacDonald considered the torrent of abuse to which the Act has been subjected:
But were the 1920s restrictions “racist-driven”? What, exactly does that mean? And could it be that the opponents of those restrictions had their own ethnic motivations? Motivations still to be found today?
MacDonald pointed out that the Congressional colloquies were full of admissions by the measure’s supporters acknowledging that recent immigrants were superior in various ways to the native-born. But that they did not accept it gave the newcomers the right to transform America. Thus Congressman William N. Vaile of Colorado
“What we do claim is that the northern European and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But… [t]hey came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. They…did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it.
“We are determined that they shall not…It is a good country. It suits us…If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves.”
This perfectly reasonable point of view is anathema to open-borders types like Ilya Somin.
Why?
Later, in 2014, Professor MacDonald explored this for us in Is Immigration Really A “Jewish Value”? At the time a tremendous effort was underway in Congress for amnesty and immigration acceleration, with the energetic support of most Jewish groups. Also at the time, Israel was wrapping up its successful effort to prevent an inundation by Black Africans crossing the Suez peninsula.
We had a series celebrating this: Netanyahu For President! (4)
Professor MacDonald was curious about this extreme paradox. He concluded:
The way I see it is that overtly nationalist ethics are alive and well in Israel, as it rids itself of African migrants and systematically oppresses the Palestinians via ethnic cleansing and apartheid, while in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western Diaspora the organized Jewish community and most Jewish intellectuals pose as enlightened universalists…
Diaspora Jewish groups in the West see themselves as benefiting from displacement-level immigration because it lessens the power of the White majority.
In fact, the motive may be more specific in some cases as I noted in The Lesson Of WHITE RURAL RAGE: They Hate Us. They Will Always Hate Us.
But I agree with Kevin MacDonald’s conclusion:
Western peoples… can only begin to defend their legitimate interests when they challenge the hypocrisy, and historical inaccuracy, of Jewish immigration enthusiast claims to a unique, and imperative, moral vision.
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I do think that the immigration restrictions of 1882, 1917, and 1924 were mistakes in the sense that they kept out smart and talented Europeans and Asians from the US. We could have really benefitted from having more East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews back then, for instance. Yes, the US was an economic powerhouse in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, but more high-quality people wouldn’t have hurt, would it? They might have pushed for leftism, but we already had enough of our own people, such as Earl Warren and his little gang, doing that even before the US’s borders were opened wider to immigration in 1965.
I do think, however, that Western Europe gets worse migrants, especially Muslims and Africans, whom it should more aggressively try to keep out. So, I’d be more of a nationalist in the Western European context.
As for Israel specifically, the right-wing Jewish nationalist jackass politicians who aggressively want to repeal the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return, or at least wanted to do so before October 7, are total morons. Grandchild Clause immigrants are an unequivocal blessing to Israel and should continue to come to Israel in as large of a number as possible. I don’t give a rat’s ass that they’re not halakhically Jewish. Neither am I, for that matter! Also, Israel should actively encourage conversions to Judaism for high-quality gentiles throughout the world and get them to immigrate to Israel in huge numbers. Seriously.
Has anyone such as Somin, or more generally any open-borders booster, ever explained why the USA or any other nation must let in anyone — talented, oppressed, or anything?
France (and for a long time only France) had a tradition of letting defeated political operatives find sanctuary in France when the dogs were snapping at their heels. After the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburgs, for instance, the leading rebels were let in and spared the gallows of Budapest.
This sort of thing. when rare and done carefully, is understandable. It is also very much an exception to the way nations usually do business. A nation by definition belongs to those born in it and should be permanently off-limits to interlopers and escaping criminals.
What Somin and his ilk are creating is a very cold tomorrow, when the hangover of the West’s current charity binge snaps back after a new depression or new disease, and the hard regimes to come will protect the borders in ways unthinkable to the old Soviet bloc. We were warned by nice guys like Peter Brimelow. Those who come after will be less polite.
Jews are the biggest hypocrites out there as nearly all of them have the opposite stance when it comes to Israel.
Open borders for the Western White Christian World – YES YES YES!!!
Open borders for Israel – NO NO NO!!
Chuck Schumer is pro-life for Israel and donates to a group called American Friends of Efrat but is for abortion up until the moment of birth for goyim babies in the US.
Jews when polled in the US, a majority are OK for gun ownership in Israel while a majority are against it for Americans.
When pressed on the issues many will say “cause of the holocaust” or that it’s the only Jewish homeland out there…well guess what?? Ireland is the only homeland for the Irish and yet Jewish NGOs are flooding it with non-Irish. Sweden is the Swedish people’s homeland and the same thing has been done. Ditto for Germany to the Germans. Italy for the Italians. Scotland for the Scottish. etc.etc.
https://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/abortion-organization-demographic/
The idea that lack of immigration was the key to US victory in the war is another ‘partial’ explanation, and cannot be understood divorced from general economic trends maturing in the late 19th C. The so-called ‘second industrial revolution’ driving an explosive mechanization of labor within a peak industrial setting, along with a general workforce mobilization (including women ‘at home’ and men ‘at war’) was the productive capacity key to a successful US involvement in WWII.
Obviously Somin’s take is the standard Jewish line, affecting both the communist left, but also the ‘liberal’ anti-communist ‘right side’ of the fence. One can point to amateurish but effective ‘open society’ propaganda from Karl Popper (1945), along with even less critical (but certainly more emotionally explosive) writings especially popular within the younger ‘libertarian’ college crowd–those of cult leader Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum–both proclaiming ‘intellectual freedom’, yet within a strictly Jewish paradigm, leading to what they both ostensibly were against–intellectual totalitarianism.
[Pace Popper, Plato in his Laws (not the ‘science-fictionish’ Republic) was correct about immigration, recognizing that a ‘closed society’ is the proper way to manage civic order.]
It is why now successful societies are not ‘open’ in any liberal sense of the word. In this case we point to ascending China, which in all respects is outclassing a multi-cultural West, now in decline.
One cannot, however, point to Japan in this regard, simply because while Japan retains a basic Oriental racial-culture grounding, its civilization is thoroughly Anglo-American-Jewish Empire dominated. Yet Japanese likely still retain an integral spiritual core, whereas the US, Britain and Europe have become spiritually dead, now enjoying the fruits of Judaized materialism. If Japan could manage to throw that aside and seek some peace with China (a big ‘if’) it would be over for the West.
One final point, I’ve had my on-line disagreements with Cleburne, and am frankly surprised he is allowed to ride the Vdare wagon, but I give credit where it is due in his willingness to point out the obvious, even as he manages to obfuscate in other ways.
Nothing surprising from such a writer; but the rest of the world counts the Ashkanazi Jews as Whites; only a few discerning persons bother to learn the details of how Jews are different from other White people, and fewer still get into decision making. The anti- White storm that has been stirred up will certainly cause the rest of the world to hate the Whites, including the Jews. The immigrants do not have the same understanding of property rights or human rights.