THE RIGHT BOOKS

Despite ecstatic claims to the contrary by Senator Simpson, the chief architect of the recently-signedinto-law Simpson-Rodino-Mazzoli bill, the U.S. has probably not “regained control of its borders,” and certainly it has not even begun to solve the problems posed by the immense immigration pressure from the Third World. Immigration and Migration—A Historical Perspective (The American Immigration Control Foundation, Water Street, P.O. Box 525, Monterey, Va. 24465; $2), by John Lukacs, was completed just before passage of the Simpson legislation, to which it refers only once. For the past few years, immigration trends have been debated in the press and in Congress by critics whose concerns have been all too often of the present; by contrast, Lukacs —one of the truly pre-eminent historians of our time—places the subject in the historical context of three millennia, without however losing sight of the immediacy of what he frankly calls “the crisis.” He begins by quoting from the OED, where migrate is defined as “to pass from one place to another,” and immigrate as “to come to settle in a country (which is not one’s own)”; he notes the implication of nomadism in the first and permanence in the second, and suggests that the future of the United States is threatened by both.

By approximately a.d. 210, the Great Migration of Peoples had begun: “They were moving from the east to the west, across the continent of Europe: Celts, Gauls, other Latin-speaking peoples, Germanic tribes, Magyars, western and eastern Slavs, etc.” By the year 1000, “most of our ancestors had settled down in their distinct countries. The ethnic geography of present-day Europe began to emerge.” There followed a period of about eight centuries, during which “the vast majority of the white people of the earth moved little or not at all. . . . And we must consider that these centuries .. . . were the greatest in the high civilization of the white race.” Then, starting just before the middle of the nineteenth century, “a new migration of peoples began,” as millions of Europeans transferred themselves to the New World (or worlds). And yet one fact stood out: that, within both Europe and the Americas, “very few people moved from one country to another. ”

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Despite ecstatic claims to the contrary by Senator Simpson, the chief architect of the recently-signedinto-law Simpson-Rodino-Mazzoli bill, the U.S. has probably not “regained control of its borders,” and certainly it has not even begun to solve the problems posed by the immense immigration pressure from the Third World. Immigration and Migration—A Historical Perspective (The American Immigration Control Foundation, Water Street, P.O. Box 525, Monterey, Va. 24465; $2), by John Lukacs, was completed just before passage of the Simpson legislation, to which it refers only once. For the past few years, immigration trends have been debated in the press and in Congress by critics whose concerns have been all too often of the present; by contrast, Lukacs —one of the truly pre-eminent historians of our time—places the subject in the historical context of three millennia, without however losing sight of the immediacy of what he frankly calls “the crisis.” He begins by quoting from the OED, where migrate is defined as “to pass from one place to another,” and immigrate as “to come to settle in a country (which is not one’s own)”; he notes the implication of nomadism in the first and permanence in the second, and suggests that the future of the United States is threatened by both.

By approximately a.d. 210, the Great Migration of Peoples had begun: “They were moving from the east to the west, across the continent of Europe: Celts, Gauls, other Latin-speaking peoples, Germanic tribes, Magyars, western and eastern Slavs, etc.” By the year 1000, “most of our ancestors had settled down in their distinct countries. The ethnic geography of present-day Europe began to emerge.” There followed a period of about eight centuries, during which “the vast majority of the white people of the earth moved little or not at all. . . . And we must consider that these centuries .. . . were the greatest in the high civilization of the white race.” Then, starting just before the middle of the nineteenth century, “a new migration of peoples began,” as millions of Europeans transferred themselves to the New World (or worlds). And yet one fact stood out: that, within both Europe and the Americas, “very few people moved from one country to another. ”