Last week was, among other things, immigration week in Derbland. Tuesday
morning I went to a Manhattan Institute bash, a panel discussion with
panelists Tamar Jacoby of the MI, John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, and
Peter Brimelow, who runs the VDARE immigration-restrictionist website. (All
three of them have written for NR or NRO at various times.) That one I have
written up for NRO, should be online in a day or two.
Then on Thursday I went to a lunch-presentation organized by Mark Krikorian
at the Center for Immigration Studies, to present an award to CNN’s Lou Dobbs.
Lou has been doing a series of pieces called “Broken Borders,” about our
loss of control over immigration. Also present was Rep. Tom Tancredo, the
most outspoken voice in Congress on immigration issues.
Attending these events, and talking to people at them, and about them, I get
the impression of a slow thaw going on, a gradual turn in the public mood.
What Peter Brimelow calls “The National Question” is not quite respectable
yet in mainstream politics. You won’t be hearing diddly about it from Bush
or Kerry between now and November, and if you poke your head up above the
parapet on this issue in the elite media, you will find yourself on the
Southern Poverty Law Center’s watch list faster than you can say “hate
group.” Yet more and more people in the Commentariat — people like Lou
Dobbs and Michelle Malkin — are willing to speak frankly and clearly about,
at least, the folly of not properly securing our country’s borders and entry
points. And with Sam Huntington’s new book, it is apparently OK now
for serious scholars to venture into the larger area of U.S. population
policy.
The eye-opener of Thursday’s event for me was a lady I found myself sitting
next to, Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of a book titled FUNDING TERROR. As NRO regulars know, Rachel is a leading
authority on how international terrorists finance their operations. As the
British and Irish govts have learned all too well this past 30 years in
Northern Ireland, terror and crime are inseparable. Rachel knows all the
details, including the nasty little secrets of international banking, for
whom the terror/drugs/crime nexus is big business — too big to ignore, and
mighty profitable.