Wise Words on Immigration Policy

Obama, Immigration Propaganda and Our National Identity

6/7/2016 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

Just when you think the Hollywood left might be showing some independence from the Obama White House, it once again falls in line to mouth its propaganda. Just kidding. No one believes that Hollywood leftists think independently.

Fox News reports that the White House has drafted a social media script on immigration for its Hollywood zombies to disseminate. You may recall that the White House furnished gun control talking points for its Tinseltown puppets earlier this year.

The entertainment shills dutifully delivered President Obama's thinly disguised message for gun control with the mindless hashtag "StopGunViolence." The White House supplied the script, imploring its actor enablers to tweet it and post it on other social media. It doesn't matter that Obama's lawless proposals would do nothing to make Americans safer. What's important is that liberals care, as evidenced by their painfully vacuous hashtag-parroting tweets.

On the immigration message, Jesse Moore, the White House's associate director of public engagement, sent an email to so-called Hollywood A-listers, with a video urging the stars to join the #IAmAnImmigrant movement.

Just as with the social media gun control campaign, the White House shamelessly twisted the issue to mislead the public through fact-free, emotion-based appeals. The email said, "We are a nation of immigrants, and whether you're an immigrant, the child or grandchild of immigrants, or you stand with immigrants -- it's on all of us to ensure that we continue to recognize the role immigrants continue to play at the core of this country."

On cue, such screen luminaries as Kerry Washington, Julianne Moore, Alan Cumming and Rosie Perez complied. Washington's account tweeted, for example, "Join Kerry and become part of the #IAmAnImmigrant movement today iamanimmigrant.com."

Let's put aside the obvious impropriety of the White House's using taxpayer dollars to engage in partisan political advocacy. Instead, let's examine the toxicity of its message.

Does anyone disagree with the notion that the United States is a nation of immigrants and immigrants have contributed greatly to America? The problem is that the White House is intentionally painting border enforcement hawks as bigoted and anti-immigrant. Not that this is anything new. It's no different from Obama's depicting Second Amendment defenders as Bible-toting bitter clingers who are wholly indifferent to gun violence. Why would he use facts when lies work so much better?

The left deliberately ignores that conservative opposition to liberal open borders policy has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It rejects that America is based on an idea. Our bond as Americans has been grounded not in our ethnic background but in our unified commitment to liberty, equality of opportunity, equal justice under the law and the belief that we human beings, made in God's image, have certain unalienable rights. Ironically, the very reason millions upon millions have immigrated to America is that it has been uniquely free and prosperous because of these foundational principles.

Ronald Reagan encapsulated the concept beautifully when he said: "America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, 'You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won't become a German or a Turk.' But then he added, 'Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.'"

Don't you see? The conservative position on immigration is inherently colorblind. Our founding ideas belong to all Americans. The left, on the other hand, by flooding this nation with immigrants and celebrating their "diversity" rather than encouraging assimilation into the ethnic-neutral American culture, is overtly race-conscious and divisive.

We don't exclude people from entering based on race. We welcome immigrants, provided they come in legally, according to the rule of law, and consistent with our national sovereignty.

There's a reason we have immigration laws under which we control the orderly flow of immigrants and require prospective citizens to learn and embrace the unique American system. If our citizenry ceases to unite around our founding ideas, we will cease to be unique. Leftists have been at war with these ideas for decades, so we sure don't want to invite millions more people into the nation without restriction and outside the law if they reject our uniqueness. We must not have open borders and further Balkanize our society and dilute our national identity. A sovereign nation has no duty to commit national suicide. In fact, it has a duty to its citizens not to do so.

Immigration and citizenship are a two-way street. Citizens and would-be citizens have a duty to the nation to respect its laws, just as the nation has a duty to citizens to safeguard their rights. We, as a sovereign nation, have a right to admit or reject new citizens and to condition citizenship on their acceptance of the American idea.

Obama's crusade to divide Americans on the basis of race, gender and income has done immeasurable damage to our society. His exploitation of the immigration issue and his depiction of patriots as bigots are making it worse. These liberals know we aren't bigots. But we know that many of them, in their heart of hearts, don't embrace the American idea, which is one reason they are trying to flood the borders and dilute what it means to be an American.