Turning America Into a Fortress Will Usher in, Not Repel, Fascism
David Frum's warning is just hysteria-mongering.
There is a new breed of meta-alarmist conservative pundit that wants to dramatically slash immigration levels and double-down on border enforcement. Not because immigrants are per se detrimental for America, but because natives can't handle them.
National Review's Reihan Salam has written a whole book arguing that if America does not cut back on current levels of immigration—which are nearly half of Canada's and a third of Australia's on a per capita basis—it will court a racial civil war. He'd much rather meet America's labor needs through automation and outsourcing than immigration, never mind that those options might push down natives' wages much more. (I pointed out the problems in Salam's account here.)
Now, neoconservative-turned-#NeverTrumper David Frum has written nearly 8,000 words waxing apocalyptic about how a failure to cut immigration will result in—wait for it—fascism! The opposite is closer to the truth, given that to stop outsiders, a government inevitably has to crackdown on the insiders who want them here. Frum urges Democrats to abandon their admittedly new-found love for immigrants and go back to their restrictionist ways.
But Frum's arguments are based on politically simplistic and stunningly questionable premises, I note in The Week. Democrats should ignore them.
Go here to read the whole thing.