[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             IS IMMIGRATION A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY?

 Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask that the following statement 
by Mr. Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American 
Immigration Reform before the National War College, entitled, 
``Population, Migration and America: Is Immigration a Threat to 
National Security?'' be entered into the Record.
  Mr. Stein's comments before the War College's class of 1995 raises 
critical security issues that this country will face in the future if 
we do not act soon to control our national borders, slow our exploding 
population, and ensure political and societal stability.
  His call for a better understanding of immigration in this country 
and a pressing need for immigration reform is well-taken. There is no 
doubt that immigration reform will a top priority in the 104th 
Congress.
  The speech follows.

Population, Migration and America: Is Immigration a Threat to National 
                               Security?

                             (By DAN STEIN)

       If the grass is always greener on the other side, then a 
     quick glance at our daily papers tells us that for an awful 
     lot of people worldwide, the grass they covet grows in the 
     United States. Never before in the history of this nation 
     have so many people wanted to move here. Never before have we 
     faced so many difficult choices in deciding who, out of 
     hundreds of millions of basically nice folks, we will allow 
     to enter. And never before have we faced a greater challenge 
     in trying to regulate the force of millions pressing at our 
     national borders.
       A storm is brewing. The differential pressure inside and 
     outside our borders has left the nation vulnerable to 
     unregulated storm surges of people seeking our shores. Never 
     has a well meaning group of public-spirited Americans been so 
     perfectly positioned to be blind-sided by the thrall of 
     outdated notion.
       We are truly at a watershed today. Americans are beginning 
     to wake up to this fact. The out-migrations from Cuba, Haiti, 
     the Dominican Republic and Mexico reveal that we are at the 
     headstreams of what could be a chronic state of unmanaged 
     immigration for the next forty years. Before us lie stark 
     choices that are now within our power to decide. Soon they 
     may not be. The international demographic forces at work are 
     strong and powerful. They are perhaps the strongest external 
     forces this nation has ever faced. If we hope to control 
     them, we must choose soon, or it will be too late.
       The patterns of regional population growth--and the 
     dynamics of that growth--will generate the most unregulated 
     flow of migrants in the history of the human race. This has 
     profound national security implications for the United States 
     today and tomorrow. Are we prepared?


     The Larger Picture: Population Dynamics and Migration Pressure

       This metronome in my hand illustrates the rate of world 
     population growth: 171 more people a minute--that's births 
     minus deaths. The United Nations estimates that 90 million 
     people are now added to the population of the planet each 
     year. In just the next ten years, more people will be added 
     to the population than there were in the entire world in the 
     year 1800. Just two generations ago, total world population 
     was 2.5 billion. And that was considered a remarkable number. 
     In 1992, we reached the 5.5 billion mark, and the UN 
     estimates that we will exceed 10 billion in the next century 
     before population growth levels off.
       This demographic force will generate an unprecedented wave 
     of human migration in the 21st Century as ten of millions 
     seek economic opportunity, escape from environmental 
     disaster, civil strife and repression. The patterns have just 
     begun to emerge and will grow with intensity in decades to 
     come.
       Abstract figures don't tell the whole story. To consider 
     fully the national security implications of in-migrations, we 
     must also examine the dynamics of the demographic picture. 
     It's an aphorism now to observe that demographics is destiny, 
     but it's true. The size of the youthful component, in 
     particular the size and growth rate of the illiterate 
     young male population entering the labor force relative to 
     the size of the labor force as a whole, has a great 
     bearing on a nation's (tribe or bloc's), political 
     stability. Idle young men are the leading edge of any 
     radical political force. They are the pool of discontent 
     that most readily challenges static institutions and 
     habits. Other factors, such as rural to urban migration, 
     educational attainment generally, and differential growth 
     rates between different ethnic groups are key to any fair 
     appraisal of the security implications of immigration.
       Robert Kaplan's now much-cited ``The Coming Anarchy,'' from 
     the February (1994) issue of the Atlantic Monthly, painted a 
     dismal mosaic of fragmenting nations and tribes in regional 
     and local flare-ups worldwide. Citing Samuel Huntington's 
     thought-provoking piece in Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), 
     entitled ``the Clash of Civilizations,'' Kaplan observes that 
     ``the world * * * has been moving during the course of this 
     century from nation-state conflict to ideological conflict 
     to, finally, cultural conflict. I (Kaplan) would add that as 
     refugee flows increase and as peasants continue migrating to 
     cities around the world--turning them into sprawling 
     villages--national borders will mean less, even as more power 
     will fall into the hands of less educated, less sophisticated 
     groups. In the eyes of these uneducated but newly empowered 
     millions, the real borders are the most tangible and 
     intracticable ones: those of culture and tribe * * * It is 
     apparent how surging populations, environmental degradation, 
     and ethnic conflict are deeply related.'' (at 60)
       Look at Haiti. Haiti today is a very poor nation of 6.3 
     million. It has a rapidly growing population (2.3 percent per 
     annum), and a population doubling time of 30 years. From a 
     population under 5 million in 1980, its extraordinary growth 
     will cause it to exceed 7.6 milion people by the year 2000. 
     the ``population pyramid'' of Haiti compares to Rwanda, and 
     starkly contrasts with that of France (a nation that enjoys 
     population size stabilization, a high standard of living and 
     the political stability that accompanies healthy national 
     institutions). Today, most of Haiti's civilian legal 
     structure is dysfunctional, its economy is in ruins, and the 
     nation lacks even the ability to enforce its own frontiers. 
     It is an ecological disaster, and the povery/illiteracy rate 
     is over 80 percent. And, as Kaplan says, the rapid growth of 
     young people--especially young males--into such an unstable 
     and overcrowded situation can throw a nation into anarchy.
       Haiti is not unique, of course. We don't need Kaplan to 
     remind us that Haiti's troubles are part of a pattern 
     emerging worldwide. As the political situation deteriorates, 
     general civil violence erupts. Power and influence are spread 
     about each community as local thugs--Kaplan calls them ``less 
     sophisticated groups''--control access to necessities of 
     life. Official and unofficial corruption merge and blur into 
     a generalized pattern of bribery, favoritism and fraud. As 
     more and more young people enter their teenage years (as a 
     result of a very rapid teen growth), they are recruited into 
     what amounts to street gangs. Central political control 
     collapses into generalized anarchy and civil war. In the 
     coming decades, scholars and the United Nations suggest, this 
     scenario will repeat itself over and over in country after 
     country.
       In much of the less developed world we have witnessed the 
     flight from rural to urban areas of the past two generations. 
     Those in the countryside are moving--voting with their feet--
     in response to poor and declining living conditions. Pushed 
     from the countryside and pulled by the city's bright lights 
     and economic opportunity--real or imagined--tens of millions 
     have elected to crowd into teeming metropolitan areas. Mexico 
     City, for example, with 3.5 million people as recently as 
     1950, now holds around 18 million. And what we have witnessed 
     to date is only the tip of the iceberg. The UN estimates that 
     between 1987 and 2025, the urban population of the Third 
     World will have grown by 2.75 billion--twice the amount that 
     were added during the period from 1950 to 1987. In 1950, 
     North America had an urban population of 108 million; Asia 
     (excluding Japan) had an urban population of 175 million. In 
     1990, the figures were 207 million and 900 million, 
     respectively. By 2025, North America is projected to have 280 
     million urban dwellers, while Asia will have an urban 
     population of 2.5 billion--roughly the population of the 
     entire world in 1950.
       In other words, by 2025, Asia's urban population will be as 
     large--in itself--as was the population of the entire world 
     in 1950 (about the time many of us here today were born!).
       In 1990, the entire labor force of the more developed 
     regions was 584 million people. In just the next 10 years, 
     the less developed countries will have to produce 372 million 
     jobs to accommodate all the new labor force entrants. These 
     are not projections. The workers of the early 21st Century 
     are already born. By 2025, another billion people will be 
     seeking employment, a number more than double the present 
     total labor force of the more developed regions.
       These figures represent an economic challenge unsurpassed 
     in the history of the human race. They paint a picture of 
     tomorrow's megacity: teaming with uneducated souls, trapped 
     in urban squalor and poverty, who, gaping at U.S.-made 
     movies, believe that passage to the United States is the only 
     real opportunity for an improved state of being. These same 
     figures reveal that the size of the population most likely to 
     migrate--15 to 45--is growing explosively in real terms 
     unimaginable to earlier generations. Of those who want to 
     move and can physically move, the numbers are swelling at a 
     staggering rate.
       We do not know the degree to which civil war and violence 
     will intensify this desire to move, but we do know that many 
     who would like to move only want to move to a particular 
     country. If only those fleeing under emergent conditions are 
     admitted to a country like the United States, then soon 
     everyone will try to flee under the same pretense of 
     emergency.


                         The ``Good Old Days''

       This acute pressure can only grow in intensity. Any 
     loophole in our immigration processes, any opportunity for 
     exploitation or illegal border crossing will produce 
     uncontrolled waves of in-migrants. This is the most obvious 
     impact on our national security.
       I will discuss more about border security in a bit. But for 
     now, let's keep in mind that these are the ``good old days.'' 
     That may seem hard to believe, but recently, the United 
     Nations named 17 nations as ``potential Somalias,'' or 
     nations that could face collapse, including Mexico, Egypt, 
     Nigeria, and Algeria. Thirteen are already in various stages 
     of crisis, including Afghanistan, Angola, Haiti, Iraq, 
     Mozambique, Burma, Sudan, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Georgia, 
     Liberia, and Tajikistan. The Chiapas region of Mexico is 
     considered extremely volatile. Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, 
     Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and portions of Central 
     America remain the greatest migration threats in our 
     Hemisphere. In each nation or region, we see similar 
     phenomena: a breakdown of civil order, a large, growing, 
     poorly-educated and dissatisfied population in danger of 
     starvation. There are right now perhaps fifteen to twenty 
     ongoing secessionist movements worldwide, most in full 
     swing.\1\ Civil war, separatist movements, generalized civil 
     and social breakdown--each produce large refugee flows. It is 
     a scenario we have warned was coming for many years. It was 
     brought on--or made much more significant--by rapid, 
     uncontrolled or differential population growth rates in high-
     risk nations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Footnotes at end of article.
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       This pattern has already generated an explosion in the 
     number of refugees worldwide, and, over the next thirty 
     years, is going to generate the most unregulated flow of 
     migrants in the history of the human race. (The most recent 
     estimates provided by the United Nations High Commissioner 
     for Refugees suggest there are about 20 million refugees who 
     live outside their home countries--eight times the number of 
     two decades ago--and another 24 million displaced within 
     their own borders.)


                What is the American Security Interest?

       A typhoon occurs not because of pressure per se, but 
     because of relative differences in pressure. In our case, the 
     United States, with its generous entitlement structure, free 
     public education, relatively high wages and lower density, is 
     attractive for those who would like to leave a country that 
     lacks those characteristics. Relative pressure dictates that 
     those with the greatest advantage from the move will try to 
     make the move--and all the pressure is moving more this way. 
     The poor, less educated and lesser skilled have the most to 
     gain by moving to the United States. Because of our high tax 
     rates, relatively low quality of life factors, we have more 
     difficulty in attracting the best and the brightest.
       But let's not get ahead of ourselves, here.
       The implications of these regional demographic facts are 
     staggering. The U.S. security agencies were discussing the 
     long-range challenges presented by this picture years ago. 
     The National Security Council, in ``National Security Study 
     Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth 
     for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests,'' Washington, 
     D.C., December 10, 1974,'' stated the threats this way: 
     [P]opulation factors are indeed critical in, and often 
     determinants of, violent conflict in developing areas. 
     Segmental (religious, social, racial) differences, 
     migration, rapid population growth, differential levels of 
     knowledge and skills, rural/urban differences, population 
     pressure and the spatial location of population in 
     relation to resources--in this rough order of importance--
     all appear to be important contributions to conflict and 
     violence * * * Clearly, conflicts which are regarded in 
     primarily political terms often have demographic roots. 
     Recognition of these relationships appear crucial to any 
     understanding or prevention of such hostilities. (at 
     66)\2\
       When this analysis was written, the 1980 Mariel Cuban 
     boatlift had not occurred. Immigration from Mexico was 
     problematic but still under some control, and illegal 
     immigration was a minor political issue.
       Today, things are different. We now know that this analysis 
     correctly analyzed the relationship between population 
     mobility/hostility dynamics and other security issues. It 
     just didn't bother to place the United States anywhere in the 
     picture. (This is not surprising, of course. Until recently, 
     the United States was in the thrall of the ``myth of American 
     exceptionalism.'' This holds that all the lessons of human 
     history have no bearing on the United States. We're 
     different. ``We're special,'' says immigration expansionist 
     Larry King.)
       Here is the bad news: Simply put, unless the United States 
     develops better control over its borders and curtails 
     immigration, we will simply be overhwelmed. Our institutions 
     will erode, our harmony of outlook will disappear, and our 
     entire sense of national cohesion will evaporate. In short, 
     we will cease to be a nation. We will not continue to 
     function as we have in the past. We will become, instead, 
     groups living on this land, each contending for a larger 
     share of its remaining resources.
       Here is why.


                        the security perspective

       First, let me make one thing perfectly clear. The United 
     States does not now have any security interest in additional 
     immigration. We don't need immigration.
       Now, on its face, that might not seem to be a very profound 
     statement (particularly through our romanticized notions of 
     our history). But consider that the United States did have a 
     profound security interest in immigration from 1607 until 
     1920. The fledgling colonies needed immigration to create a 
     buffer zone between themselves and the hostile Native 
     American forces. They, and later the original thirteen 
     states, also needed settlers to populate new territories that 
     were subject to hostile foreign colonial domination. In other 
     words, settling the continent--settling the land and claiming 
     the territory--was a condition precedent to projecting 
     jurisdiction and, therefore, the nation. That land would not 
     have been left to the Indians. It would have been claimed by 
     Spain, France, Russia, China, Holland, or some other colonial 
     power.
       So imperative was the need to populate the continent that 
     the United States was admitting a new state almost every year 
     in the early 19th Century. The mold for the new territories, 
     laid out in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, established the 
     entire frame of government, legal and philosophical 
     institutions, and basic natural rights of the future 
     inhabitants.\3\
       It might be worth noting here that the level of immigration 
     was much, much lower than it is today. In fact, it was tiny 
     by comparison. And most of the immigrants came from Northern 
     Europe. So even though there was a language problem, these 
     immigrant groups came primarily from Northern European 
     nations, with the Enlightenment traditions of Western 
     Civilization. (Even so, British immigration was high enough, 
     relative to Dutch immigration, to virtually wipe out the 
     colony of New Amsterdam in the mid-17th century. This was 
     true demographic hegemony; New Amsterdam slipped under the 
     waves without a fight.)
       The Framers surely knew the relative importance of actors 
     in making a nation competitive. Shortly after the Northwest 
     Ordinance was passed by Congress, Alexander Hamilton noted in 
     the Federalist Papers that: The wealth of nations depends 
     upon an infinite variety of causes. Situation, soil, 
     climate, the nature of the productions, the nature of the 
     government, the genius of the citizens--the degree of 
     information they possess--the state of commerce, of arts, 
     of industry--these circumstances and many much too 
     complex, minute, or adventitious, to admit of a particular 
     specification, occasion differences hardly conceivable in 
     the relative opulence and riches of different countries. 
     (No. 21)
       In the case of the United States, we undertook a long, 
     protracted process of establishing a new nation across a 
     vast, mostly unsettled territory. It was a territory 
     possessed of vast, resource-rich tracts of land, game, 
     wildlife, strategic and life-giving rivers and streams, and 
     great natural bounty. This enormous resource base, the 
     selective nature of immigration, the form of government (and 
     its underlying philosophy), the social and civic 
     institutions, and the industriousness of the citizens, all 
     fused to create a great national superpower in the 20th 
     Century.
       Israel Zangwill's ``melting pot'' succeeded because:
       (1) a firm, long-developed framework of national political 
     and economic culture and operations had been firmly 
     established by the time the largest immigration waves hit;
       (2) sheer abundance of physical space permitted immigrants 
     and their descendants extraordinary mobility, and an ability 
     to move to, or establish, new communities in which to live;
       (3) the absence of any large population that laid an a 
     priori claim to burial grounds, holy land, ancestral homes or 
     sacred grounds that would resist the encroachment of new 
     settlers.
       (4) the absence of any officially-sanctioned linguistic and 
     cultural preservation, preference or priority that could 
     discourage assimilation.
       If the United States is exceptional, it is exceptional 
     because of past historical circumstances and the recency of 
     its settlement. But, as noted ecologist Garret Hardin has 
     observed, the same factors that enable a group or nation to 
     prosper and multiply are often the same ones that lead to its 
     demise.
       The nation's need for immigration ended shortly after the 
     turn of this century. With the labor supplies met for the 
     industrial revolution (accomplished through immigration from 
     1870 through 1920, and internal rural to urban migration over 
     the same period), the annual immigration level was firmly 
     capped at that point (below 200,000 a year). And, most 
     importantly from our standpoint, there was never any national 
     consensus to this day to raise the numbers. Lost in our 
     somewhat rosy view of immigration history is the fact that 
     this turn-of-the-century wave was an exception, not a rule. 
     Most of our immigration history was of much lower levels, 
     usually below 250,000, and often far below that.
       We enjoyed a virtual end to immigration from 1920 through 
     1965. It was during this period that the children of the 
     Ellis Island wave made great strides toward assimilating into 
     the national culture. Arguably, this assimilation would not 
     have occurred had there not been a stop to immigration in 
     1920. World War II gave immigrants' children a chance to 
     enter the labor force, compete on equal terms and prove their 
     worth in combat. Post-war prosperity led to the creation of 
     new suburban communities that enabled the melting pot to work 
     in earnest. A new suburban neighborhood had the advantage of 
     eliminating the force of prior territorial claim so 
     characteristic of urban ghettos. Everyone's new on the block.
       Everything seemed to be working fine, until 1965. At that 
     point, some in Congress and the holdovers from the Kennedy 
     Administration decided that immigration should be viewed as a 
     ``civil rights issue,'' rather than one tailored to meet the 
     national needs. In 1965, without meaningful debate, we put in 
     place new immigration laws that set in motion the greatest 
     single flow of immigration in American history. Why? At this 
     point in our history, why do we need immigration?
       Do we need more people? Are we underpopulated?
       Is there an acute labor shortage in the U.S.?
       Is there insufficient traffic on our roads?
       Are the water tables in Florida, California and Texas 
     flooded?
       Is there an excess of prime farmland in America?
       Is there too much wildlife in our national parks?
       Is there an overabundance of beachfront property to be 
     developed?
       Do we need immigration to improve American public 
     education?
       Do we need immigration to reduce crime in America?
       Do we need immigration to improve medical care?
       Are there too many acres of wetlands in need of paving?
       Are we too homogeneous to be a legitimate nation?
       Does our national security depend on any way on significant 
     immigration?\4\
       I think (and FAIR thinks) the answer to each of these 
     questions is no. So if we don't need immigration, why have 
     it?
       The answer seems to be perceived tradition and habit.
       But this habit is going to create a lot of problems.
       First, legal immigration (``legal immigration'' is a 
     fictional concept that implies ``by consent of the 
     majority,'' something that is not in any way happening today) 
     is running too high for any reasonable national future. 
     According to demographers Lindsey Grant and Leon Bouvier: the 
     United States grew from a nation of 76 million in 1900 to 249 
     million in 1990 (and to an estimated 260 million in 1994). 
     Forty-three percent of that growth consisted of post-1990 
     immigrants and their descendants. Present immigration and 
     fertility patterns place us on the path to a population of 
     397 million by 2050 and 492 million in 2100. More than 90% of 
     that growth will be a direct result of post-2000 
     immigration.* * * We find the idea of another doubling of 
     U.S. population thoroughly frightening. Consider the impact 
     of many of the nation's current problems: urban decay and 
     unemployment, energy dependence, nuclear waste and sewage 
     disposal; loss of biodiversity and resistance of agricultural 
     pests and diseases to pesticides and medicines; acid rain, 
     climate change, depletion of water resources, topsoil 
     erosion, loss of agricultural lands and destruction of 
     forests, wetlands and fisheries, to name just some.\5\
       Most of this population growth will take place in America's 
     coastal counties (the counties that include big cities like 
     New York, Los Angeles and Miami). Fully 60 percent of the 
     coastal county population increase during the 1980's is due 
     to immigrants entering the U.S. during the decade, compared 
     to a much smaller 20 percent share in the non-coastal 
     counties. If you've driven through many of America's coastal 
     counties, you know what is already happening: crowding and 
     congestion are the norm, open space is the exception. Well, 
     things are going to get a lot worse, thanks in large part to 
     in-migration.
       In California's coastal counties, where 80 percent of the 
     state's population is concentrated, population density is 
     currently just over 600 people per square mile. By 2010, when 
     California's population is projected to reach 50 million (or 
     more--the projections grow faster than I can keep up with 
     them), population density in the coastal areas would be a 
     staggering 1,050 people per square mile! That's twice the 
     population density of Haiti. Most of this growth is 
     concentrated in the urban core or the coasts itself.\6\
       So it's easy to see why Bouvier and Grant are concerned 
     about urban decay, sewage disposal, housing, wetlands loss, 
     crowding and congestion. Who wouldn't be? Most people don't 
     seem concerned because they don't really know about it. But 
     others who do know are turning a blind eye: most of the 
     ``establishment'' environmental community, population 
     organizations and government planning agencies have accepted 
     a growth projection that cannot possibly be accommodated in 
     these coastal regions without dramatic changes to our quality 
     of life, living standards and basic liberties. Where are the 
     roads? What about the housing, the infrastructure, jobs, 
     waste removal and water? We will be marshalling our scarce 
     national resources to try to accommodate this huge influx of 
     people without any sense of our national destiny or goal. Yet 
     no one seems to want to pull heads out of the sand and ask 
     ``why''?


                          the skills mismatch

       Another security concern relates to the mismatch of 
     immigrants to skills. The family preference policies in place 
     since the mid-1960's continue to select most immigrants based 
     on who they know, not what they know. At a time when our 
     economy is placing a premium on a highly skilled, educated 
     work force, our immigration policies are admitting ever-
     growing numbers of unskilled, poorly educated people. 
     Moreover, our policies, as they are currently formulated to 
     favor family ``reunification'' (a euphemism of classic 
     proportions), will result in an acceleration of this trend in 
     the coming decades. Family preferences are self-promoting, 
     self-multiplying, and capable of fueling downstream 
     expectations prematurely among millions of prospective 
     immigrants. These factors lead to a de-skilling of the 
     immigrant stream.
       In other word, immigrants are getting . . . well, less 
     literate and technically endowed. Of the nearly 1 million 
     people who come here through the legal immigration, refugee 
     or asylum processes, a mere 160,000 visas are set aside for 
     people based on their skills. And even that is a misleading 
     statistic, because approximately two-thirds of those visas go 
     to the dependents of the skilled workers. In addition, 
     between 250,000 and 500,000 illegal aliens settle permanently 
     each year. Thus, of the 1.2 to 1.4 million permanent 
     immigrants who come to the United States each year, only 
     about 60,000 or 5% are selected because they have some unique 
     qualifications that our country desires. No doubt some highly 
     skilled individuals come through the family preference or 
     refugee process, but relying on that is the policy equivalent 
     of fishing with a drift net. (Including educational and 
     income data on the recent amnesty recipients only skews the 
     data more dramatically in the same direction. Unlike 1970, 
     today's immigrant is more likely to be on welfare, more 
     likely to be working in a low income job, and more likely to 
     be eligible for the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit than the 
     native born American.)
       As honest, sincere and hard working as most may be, the 
     profile of today's immigrants simply does not match our needs 
     as a nation. Faced with the already daunting task of making 
     the transition to the high-tech, highly competitive global 
     economy of the 21st Century, an immigration policy that 
     admits more than a million people a year, without regard to 
     their skills, is a luxury we can no longer afford.


                              brain drain

       It has been often observed that the developed nations 
     probably do not want to siphon all the technical talent from 
     the developing nations. The American interest in the 
     respective security of all nations means sometimes resisting 
     the impulse to substitute American technical labor for 
     cheaper imported labor.
       But new evidence just reported in Money (July 1994) 
     confirms what many of us have feared for some time. We are 
     losing the best and the brightest to other nations. According 
     to Money, ``driven by rising crime rates, and limited job 
     opportunities, as many as 250,000 Americans are leaving the 
     country for good every year. Nearly one in five Americans are 
     thinking about moving abroad, and fully 26% of those with 
     incomes of $50,000 or more have contemplated it.'' The 
     article claims this foreign flight is related to ``a 
     pervasive sense of disillusionment and pessimism in the 
     country today.'' Many cite objective quality of life factors 
     (many, I think, related to overcrowding). This out-migration 
     trend would put the U.S. in the same position Britain found 
     herself in back in the 1960's. Large scale unskilled 
     immigration, native-born highly-skilled emigration. It is 
     devastating to national competitiveness.


      rapid ethnic change--the security of america's institutions

       Immigration is an emotional issue for many good reasons. 
     Race and ethnicity are two of them. These sensitive topics 
     have a long history of exploitation by ethnic leaders, 
     demagogues and historians. But the implications of current 
     trends are so marked that they must be mentioned in any 
     serious discussion of the impact of immigration on national 
     security. Again, Leon Bouvier: If current demographic trends 
     persist, that is to say, if fertility remains fairly low, if 
     life expectancy increases slightly, and if net immigration is 
     about 950,000 annually, the majority Anglo group, now 
     representing about three-quarters of the population, will 
     comprise just over half of that population by the middle of 
     the twenty-first century. The Latino group will surpass 
     Blacks before 2020 and comprise 22 percent of the nation's 
     population by 2050 while the Black share will be about 13 
     percent. The proportion held by Asians too will grow--from 3 
     percent in 1990 to 11 percent sixty years later.\7\
       We know from the growing border pressures down the line, 
     these are probably conservative projections. Bouvier notes 
     that ``the remarkable shifts taking place in the composition 
     of the population of the United States are bound to have 
     momentous impact on the political structure of the United 
     States.'' (Supra. note 6 at 7) This takes us back to the 
     security questions enumerated earlier: we must look at the 
     nature of these shifts, and their relative dynamic within the 
     nation as a whole. In other words, we need to look at what is 
     really going on.
       There really is no precedent for these kinds of rapid 
     ethnic shifts taking place in the U.S. over so short a period 
     of time. (And no nation has ever sustained these kinds of 
     shifts for any prolonged period of time and survived as a 
     nation.) The last wave (still smaller than today's) at the 
     turn of the century had features different than this one. 
     First, in 1900 many Americans were also migrating from farms 
     to cities. This meant that both foreign immigrants and native 
     Americans were converging on cities simultaneously. Today, as 
     we'll discuss in a moment, native Blacks and whites are 
     fleeing high impact areas (Florida is the only exception, for 
     its peculiar reasons).
       Second, the rate of ethnic change is much faster now 
     because of the stable population growth rates previously 
     established by most of the U.S. population in the 1970's. At 
     the turn of the century, the U.S. birth rate was much higher, 
     as much as twice the current level. Today, whites are at or 
     below replacement level, while minorities are above it. That 
     means that immigration is a higher proportion of population 
     change now than it was at the turn of the century-and it 
     means that immigration in the 1980's (and 1990's) has been 
     contributing to a higher percentage of population growth 
     (over 35%) than it was in the first decade of this century 
     (about 28%).
       The result: faster and more robust ethnic changes, with 
     greater regional concentration and growing fragmentation.
       The 1990 Census revealed these troubling trends: sharpening 
     regional divisions along racial and economic lines. 
     University of Michigan's Dr. William Frey, a demographer, 
     says that ``rather than leading toward a new national 
     diversity, the new migration dynamics are contributing to a 
     demographic `Balkanization' across broad regions and areas of 
     the country.'' The evidence is clear: poor immigrants move 
     in, poor whites and blacks move out. This is a new trend, not 
     consistent with earlier historic immigration and internal 
     mobility patterns. There emerges an increasingly bifurcated 
     economy, in which low-skilled immigrant laborers have 
     relatively few opportunities to work their way up into higher 
     paying, skilled jobs and middle-class status. The loss of a 
     middle class, combined with ethnic fragmentation, should be 
     the first real flare in the sky. People have to want to live 
     together, interact and assimilate to get along. At some point 
     this must happen. But can it ever happen if there is no let 
     up in immigration?
       None of this new evidence surprises me, of course. Why 
     should it? They are the natural consequences of the nation's 
     immigration laws: admissions without planning, oversight or 
     consideration of domestic impacts. (Not a single sponsor of 
     the 1965 Act accurately predicted the full consequences of 
     the laws effects.)
       But these changes are happening, and we must face them or 
     alter their course. While immigration policy should not 
     discriminate against any particular immigrant based on race, 
     religion or ethnicity, these ethnic concentrations must be 
     considered within the context of our future security and 
     health as a nation. We must consider whether we want to keep 
     doing what we are doing, or try something else for a while. 
     (Polls show most Americans want immigration reduced, and FAIR 
     thinks the nation could use a moratorium or ``time out'' on 
     immigration for a while.)
       Few would deny that we are balkanizing and re-segregating 
     the nation into regional enclaves at a time when our 
     political, academic and cultural institutions eschew the 
     ``melting pot'' concept. It is fashionable to foster the 
     barriers that divide, and on college campuses today, it is 
     required for social acceptance that one be part of an 
     ethnically-defined subgroup. Through the operation of laws 
     such as the Voting Rights Act (guaranteed seats, ethnically-
     based districts, bilingual ballots), the Census Act (counting 
     illegal immigrants in the Census for reapportionment), the 
     watering of distinctions of citizenship (non-citizen voting, 
     certain ``equal protection'' holdings), and a full battery of 
     federal and state programs, such as Affirmative Action and 
     long-term, non-transitional bilingual education, that 
     encourage separate identification, immigrants and their self-
     appointed ethnic leaders are inundated with messages that 
     ``unum'' is out, ``pluribus'' is in.\8\
       What does it all mean for the nation and its security? It 
     depends on our speculations regarding the health of our 
     institutions. For those influentials who believe that 
     ``United States is simply an idea,'' or ``a nation of 
     immigrants,'' or ``a concept,'' all this probably means 
     nothing much.
       But a nation is more. It is a people, its land and its 
     institutions. The institutions include customs and 
     conventions, common conceptions of right and just, a shared 
     history sufficient to create some bond, and shared habits and 
     traditions that enable them to co-exist, interact and engage 
     in commerce and political life. In short, through our civic 
     institutions, a people must recognize one another and what 
     defines them as part of a national community. We must look 
     realistically at the conditions that have allowed us to 
     prosper and cohere as a nation. With those in mind, a people 
     must be prepared to defend its land and institutions against 
     outside assault. If we do not wish to protect American 
     institutions, and defend the land for our people, then at 
     that point we will cease to be a nation. Do we have a lot of 
     time?


                        the security of the land

       If we don't really care to defend our domestic 
     institutions, and we don't much care to define who we are as 
     a people, then what about the land? Look at our borders. 
     We've had ten million illegal immigrants come to the country 
     since 1970, and more enter each year. Until recently, most 
     Americans seemed willing to ignore this invasion of the soil. 
     But polls show a changing public mood. People are ready for a 
     change: they want the nation to control its borders. The 
     reasons are simple: when illegal immigrants enter at low 
     rates, no one minds a few harvesters and service workers. But 
     on a sustained, chronic basis, large scale illegal 
     immigration is a wage subsidy for employers that ultimately 
     undermines the entire labor base of an area. And the costs 
     all fall on state and local taxpayers. The voting public has 
     again asserted its desire for meaningful borders and its 
     prerogative to describe who ``We the People'' are and are 
     not.
       The dismal state of political asylum is now common 
     knowledge.\9\ Asylum has become a symbol of the broken state 
     of America's entire immigration control system. People just 
     show up at our airports and make phony asylum claims. 
     Shortly, they receive work documents and a hearing date, 
     often without any positive proof of identification. Many are 
     never heard from again. The public is outraged at the 
     situation. But what has Congress done? Nothing.
       Attached as Appendix A is a flowchart of the steps required 
     in the deportation process. The chart looks like something 
     from the health care debate. No one could easily follow or 
     understand it. But this is the procedural morass that has 
     rendered America's borders unenforceable. Yet this chart 
     illustrates the variety of appeals and delays that are 
     available to the alien to stall deportation indefinitely. The 
     possibilities for collateral attacks, motions to reopen, 
     motions to reconsider, and parallel avenues of relief are 
     endless, and so is the process.
       Lacking adequate detention space for all but a tiny 
     fraction of illegal aliens, most go free. This maze of delay 
     serves their interest quite well. The entire process 
     continues, broken and unabated, until the nation is faced 
     with a highly visible national security crisis such as the 
     World Trade Center bombing, or the Haiti and Cuba outflows. 
     Then, suddenly, the political leadership pays attention.


                            criminal aliens

       A series of jarring incidents in 1993 gave the public the 
     unmistakable impression that immigrants are not all honest 
     and hard working. Some are here to commit crimes, while 
     others are part of a growing number of international 
     organized crime rings that specialize in everything from 
     alien smuggling to computer and credit card fraud. 
     Criminal aliens are overrepresented in the Federal 
     criminal justice system, and information about the nature 
     of sophisticated international syndicates is creating 
     resentment and anxiety among the general public.
       The security threat comes from an inability to identify 
     someone as an alien during pretrial screening or arrest. A 
     person's capacity to slip in and out of the country with 
     several identities certainly facilitates criminal activity. 
     Agencies do not check with one another, and everyone knows 
     the Immigration and Naturalization Service lacks the basic 
     capacity to verify its own documents and information.
       The internationalization of organized crime poses a 
     particular security threat to the United States. Our 
     ineffective identification technologies make it very easy for 
     international criminal syndicates to manipulate U.S. 
     admissions and eligibility procedures to render an illegal 
     alien ``entitled'' to medical treatment, employment or 
     residence. As the level of desperation to move grows around 
     the world, these international syndicates that specialize in 
     the movement of people are only going to grow, and be a more 
     powerful component in the field of organized crime.


                      the security of a secure id

       In the United States today, we do not have any way of 
     linking people to their birth records. This means there is an 
     enormous gap between personal identity and basic government 
     documents. For years, commissions and agencies have sought 
     improved documentary standards. Nearly all advanced 
     industrialized nations have ID systems. Yet, here in the 
     U.S., we steadfastly oppose them. Why?
       We will never properly secure our borders without improved 
     ID systems. Yet just this month, we had another flare up over 
     the ID issue. It was as predictable as the sun rising in the 
     east. No sooner had Barbara Jordan, head of the Commission on 
     Immigration Reform recommended a pilot program to test a 
     verifiable Social Security card than the fear mongers leaped 
     into action. The usual buzz words and phrases, designed to 
     strike fear into the hearts of various groups of Americans 
     flew in all directions. Jordan's recommendation was to simply 
     create a fraud-proof social security card to verify the 
     number electronically. Even that was tough to swallow (even 
     though the Internal Revenue Service has several pilot Social 
     Security number verification programs now underway).
       The United States today maintains citizenship on the honor 
     system, and millions of people around the world know it and 
     are prepared to take advantage of that weakness. The nation 
     needs a national birth-death registry.
       Why this loophole hasn't been corrected seems less to do 
     with the fact the idea is controversial and more to do with 
     fact that no Federal agency really has responsibility for the 
     problem. Secret Service worries about fraud and Social 
     Security hands out numbers based on presentation of a 
     (hopefully) valid state birth certificate. That's it at the 
     Federal level. And there seems to be a great deal of inertia 
     to tackle this problem. Given the absence of revenue 
     possibilities, the projects seems to fall into the ``too hard 
     bin.'' Yet the security of our borders, and our ability to 
     detect criminal aliens, depends upon more and better systems 
     of identification verification now.
       No amount of border enforcement will work without improved 
     capacity to identify who is a citizen, and who is here 
     legally and who is not. Unless we clean up the citizenship 
     records, a vital crack in our national security remains 
     vulnerable to exploitation.


                             cuba and haiti

       What a disaster! The Clinton Administration seems to be 
     determined to demonstrate its inability to anticipate events 
     that its own intelligence predict will occur with 100% 
     certainty. Our intelligence agencies have seen this outflow 
     from Cuba coming for at least two years (surely longer).
       The Governor of Florida has just asked the Federal 
     Government to declare a ``state of immigration emergency.'' 
     This is new. This is a new name to describe a phenomenon that 
     has underscored the acute national security implications of 
     massive, uncontrolled in-migration situations to Florida. 
     First there are costs to Florida. State and county costs for 
     health care, education, resettlement assistance, food stamps 
     and related expenditures are prompting Florida to ask for 
     Federal assistance.
       Secondly, there is the Federal and national security 
     interest in the regulation of our borders. A foreign nation 
     that seeks to export its opposition, or its unemployed labor 
     force should be considered as engaging in a hostile act. This 
     interest must be asserted in a way that is consistent with 
     our overall foreign policy in the region. But since we now 
     know that these situations will be common and growing in 
     frequency and magnitude, we cannot allow our foreign policy 
     to be dictated by threats of massive expulsions or 
     uncontrolled out-migrations of people.
       As the Cuba and Haiti disasters reveal, the chronic threat 
     of uncontrolled migration has the potential to jeopardize 
     U.S. security interests in regional Hemispheric operations 
     and in vulnerable domestic communities. It is also possible 
     that larger U.S. security interests are threatened by the 
     apparent readiness implications of the concentrated 
     deployment of Navy ships in the affected regions. Drug 
     trafficking, refugee and humanitarian relief, economic 
     blockades and immigration interdiction emergencies have all 
     siphoned money from potentially vital strategic hardware 
     acquisition programs and related projects. Soon, if not 
     already, America's military capacity is likely to be 
     compromised.
       Lastly, the Clinton Administration announced this week that 
     it was prepared to detain Cubans in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base 
     ``indefinitely.'' While this threat was made to try to 
     discourage Cubans from leaving Cuba, it may also produce a 
     disaster at Gitmo. Firstly, the United States has as security 
     interest in not detaining thousands--tens of hundreds of 
     thousands perhaps--of foreign nations indefinitely on our 
     soil (lease or otherwise). Putting that aside, what happens 
     if Castro removes his Guards from the Cuba side of Gitmo and 
     Cubans run in? Has anyone considered this?


                               conclusion

       The ad hocracy of this administration's response to 
     migration crises amply illustrates the hazards and potential 
     threats to our national security represented by uncontrolled 
     migration. We must have a better plan in the future. We must 
     have a better understanding now. As a nation, we must be 
     better prepared psychologically to make the sure calls that 
     sound principles permit. We need to understand that the age 
     when international migration could solve human problems is 
     over for the overwhelming majority of mankind. If we and the 
     other developed nations are to control our own destinies and 
     respective national security, then we must recognize the most 
     worldwide will have to ``bloom where they're planted.'' Most 
     will never be able to move from their place of birth, instead 
     individuals will have to work to change those conditions they 
     find unacceptable.
       Our role must be to try to help people improve conditions 
     where they are, within our capacity as a people. While we 
     have a moral obligation to use our resources wisely, nations 
     are and must remain the essential unit of governance. Some 
     say the nation state is a thing of the past. I do not 
     agree. Nation states will emerge from the present age 
     stronger then ever.
       But ours will not necessarily survive unless we prepare to 
     weather the forces in our path these next thirty years. We 
     must re-assert control over our borders now--before it is too 
     late. We have been too lax for too long. Sovereignty is the 
     guarantee of a nation's and its citizens' right to exist--and 
     their right to regulate entry. It is the sole guarantor of 
     our ability to pass along our natural and environmental 
     resources in healthy conditions to future generations. It is 
     our only reliable security for our future.
       Thank you.


                               footnotes

     \1\These include the Kurdish secessionist movements in three 
     countries, Northern Somalia, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the 
     South Ossetians and Abkhazians in Georgia, the Indian 
     Kashmiris, the Sikhs of India's Punjab, the Armenians of 
     Nagorno-Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, the Southern Sudanese, the 
     Oromo of Ethiopia, the continuing secessionist embroglio in 
     Burma, Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and the Chittangong 
     Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. Basques, Quebec, Sardinia, 
     Corsica, Wales, Scotland and Bretons are examples of 
     ethnonational movements in the Western world. ``Historical 
     and Contemporary Assessment of How States Use Secessionist/
     Ethnic Movements to Achieve Political Objectives,'' Alexis 
     Heraclides, et. al., June 1993, National Strategy Information 
     Center paper, at 15.
     \2\Reprinted in The Social Contract, Winter 1992-93, at 118.
     \3\These were mostly carried forward in the Constitution of 
     the United States as ratified, and later amended by Bill of 
     Rights.
     \4\Here there is some difficulty. Some argue, like Edward 
     Luttwak and Ben Wattenberg, that the nation needs young 
     people to form the modern day equivalent of Napoleon's Grand 
     Armee. A nation that is unwilling to risk the lives of its 
     (definitionally) expendable young people must no longer be a 
     great power, says Luttwak in the July/August issue 1994 of 
     Foreign Affairs. Wattenberg claims that a rapidly growing 
     population is vital to national strength, especially if your 
     enemies are growing faster. In 1987, for example, in a book 
     entitled ``The Birth Dearth,'' Wattenberg claimed we were in 
     trouble because our population growth was not slated to grow 
     as rapidly as that of the Soviet Union. This, he claimed, 
     would leave us in mortal jeopardy by the year 2000. These 
     arguments, like those arguments that insist immigration is 
     needed to insure the solvency of Social Security, rely on a 
     cramped view of the true source of national power. In the 
     former case, it is a high quality, well trained and educated 
     workforce, in the latter case, it is fiscal discipline at the 
     federal level.
     It's also possible that an Albert Einstein could immigrate as 
     a refugee. No question about it. Albert Einstein not only 
     expanded the productive potential of the American economy, he 
     did wonders for improving our national security. But we can't 
     run an immigration program admitting millions of people in 
     the hopes of getting another Einstein. It is just not 
     practical. The problem is that Einstein's greatness had 
     nothing to do with the fact that he was a refugee. Had he 
     been allowed to work anywhere, he would have made great 
     contributions where ever he was. Remember, many great 
     inventors produced inventions in other nations that led to 
     great commercial advances here. Ideas can be freely exchanged 
     more easily than people. (Of course, if you know you have an 
     Einstein who wants to immigrate to the U.S., we could hardly 
     be faulted for making the extra effort to bring him or her 
     in. On the other hand, if America's only immigration problem 
     was that ten Einstein's wanted to immigrate to the U.S. each 
     year, I would not be here talking with you today.)
     \5\Bouvier and Grant, ``The issue is Overpopulation,'' Los 
     Angeles Times, August 10, 1994, B7.
     \6\For more information on these trends, see Fox and Mehlman 
     * * * Crowding Out the Future: World Population Growth, U.S. 
     Immigration, and Pressure on Natural Resources, Federal * * * 
     American Immigration Reform (1992).
     \7\Bouvier, ``The Domestic Political Consequences of 
     Projected Immigration to the United States in the First 
     Quarter of the Twenty-first Century,'' National Strategy 
     Information Center, June 3, 1993. It is a tribute to 
     assimilation that today, all non-Hispanic whites are being 
     labelled ``Anglo.''
     \8\Bilingual translations and training in the military has 
     been a mighty challenge when it has been tried. Consider that 
     over 50 languages are now spoken in Los Angeles County public 
     schools. Surely the maintenance of a common language in the 
     military is of vital interest in ensuring the efficient 
     operations of our military establishments.
     \9\See, e.g., transcript of 60 Minutes, CBS News, air date, 
     March 15, 1993, 7 p.m., e.s.t., segment ``A'' on political 
     asylum abuse at JFK airport FAIR has endorsed several bills 
     pending in Congress that would accelerate the hearing process 
     and provide for ``summary denials'' at ports of entry. We 
     believe that if the Clinton Administration had moved more 
     aggressively to implement a one-shot summary procedure, there 
     would be much less need for these chaotic, embarrassing 
     interdiction efforts in the Windward Passage and between Cuba 
     and Florida.

                          ____________________