"LOW AND SAFE AND LEGAL" IS "RARE AND SAFE AND LEGAL":

Wax's address was based on a 2018 Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy paper titled "Debating Immigration Restriction: The Case for Low and Slow." In the paper, Wax argues that America's debate over immigration has been warped in a pro-immigration direction by "left-leaning elites," whose "reactive, highly emotional, and one-sided" approach to the issue has made a serious debate over policy possible. It is the right and only the right, she argues, that is willing to talk unsentimentally about the harms from mass immigration.

Wax's paper splits the case for lower immigration rates into two buckets: the economic and the cultural. Her economic arguments follow those of Harvard economist George Borjas -- that low-skill immigration lowers wages for native-born Americans and is a drain on the welfare state -- as well as one of her own articles, written with policy analyst Jason Richwine (who has also run into controversy), arguing that such immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans. These claims are certainly debatable -- Borjas is somewhat of an outlier in his field -- but relatively straightforward.

Culture is, in Wax's phrase, a bit more "elusive." She defines the core of the cultural case for immigration restriction as this:

The idea is that a shared American identity is essential to maintaining a common sense of purpose, trust, and community. A large influx of immigrants, especially from nations that do not share our cultural values and understandings, will undermine citizen morale, unity, and solidarity as well as the integrity of our institutions.

There are two ways to make this case, per Wax. One set of people, "creedal nationalists," believe that immigrants from all backgrounds can move here without disrupting American society. But such assimilation takes time, so it might be wise to keep the pace of immigration slow and the number of immigrants low. "For this ilk of nationalist, there is no obstacle to America's core ideas being successfully adopted and embraced, and equally so, by people regardless of ethnicity and national origin," she writes.

A different group, "cultural distance" nationalists, "draw a sharp distinction among potential newcomers based on culture of origin and national background." In essence, they hold that immigrants from some backgrounds are not assimilable -- specifically, immigrants from non-Western nations are extremely unlikely to be able to accept the norms and values that would make them contribute to American society.

"Many cultural-distance restrictionists endorse the notion of maintaining a majority 'legacy' (European and Anglo-Protestant) population," she writes. "Immigration from non-Western countries should thus be kept at a minimum so as not to compromise the dominance of groups that are closer to our cultural heritage and more effective at transmitting it."

Who are the people advocating this view? Wax cites John Derbyshire, a right-wing writer who formerly wrote for the mainstream National Review. Derbyshire was fired from this job for penning a piece in which he advises his children that "if you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible." Other places that Wax credits for "thoughtful discussion" of these issues are Taki's Mag, the alt-right publication where Derbyshire published his screed about "the number of blacks," and VDARE, another leading alt-right publication. (The pro-Trump Journal of American Greatness and the marginal right-wing site Jacobite were also mentioned.)

This idea -- cultural distance nationalism -- is what seems to especially interest Wax in her paper. It's an idea whose implications are extremely troubling if you believe in a multicultural, pluralistic America. Cultural distance nationalism makes blanket judgments about people based on their national origin and ethnic identity. It also argues that immigration policy must not be allowed to "compromise the dominance" of "European and Anglo-Protestant" people in the United States and Europe.

American borders were for generations open to newcomers, but that was often in spite of, not because of, popular attitudes. Colonial America, a frontier society, was highly diverse by what passed for diversity in those days-mixes of English, Scots, Frenchmen, Dutch, and even Jews from the Caribbean. By the early 1800s century, however, the nation increasingly defined the "standard" American as a Protestant of British origin. (Needless to say, Africans and Indians were totally outside of this conversation.)

The great challenge of the mid-19th century came in the form of Catholic immigration, first heavily from the Irish fleeing famine, then Central Europeans fleeing political chaos, and later Southern and Eastern Europeans seeking economic opportunity.

Employers in America's era of industrialization of course encouraged and subsidized the influx. But millions of native-born Protestants resisted it. They resisted, in part, because they feared the economic competition. But nativists also felt threatened by foreigners' lifestyles and the spectre that Catholic immigrants would install Papal rule from Rome--a charge that actually gained far more credence than the occasional warnings we hear today about Sharia law. The struggle against foreigners was so great that a national political party, the Know Nothings, arose on this platform alone. Blood literally ran in the streets as mobs attacked the "unassimilable" immigrants and their institutions.

Around the end of the 19th and the beginning of 20th century, resistance to immigrants focused on the Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slavs, and Jews coming from Europe, as well as the Japanese and Chinese coming from Asia. Job competition was again one concern and it led to murders of Asian immigrants in California. (Ironically, Irish immigrants and Irish-descended Americans were especially vociferous in this context.) Anti-immigrant voices also raised political objections that European immigrants were bringing in radical, Bolshevik ideas. At the same time, progressives (yes, friends, progressives) provided a scientific justification for controlling immigration: These foreign "races" were inherently less intelligent and less moral than the Nordic race; their rabbit-like breeding would corrupt America; they could not assimilate.

In the mid-1920s, nativist campaigns led to laws effectively closing off immigration from much of the world that wasn't "Nordic." Whereas in 1910, before the interruption of World War I, almost 15 percent of Americans were foreign-born, by 1970 fewer than five percent were. Today, about 14 percent are, a result of the 1965 immigration reform legislation that removed quotas by national origin and also allowed family reunions, a celebrated rejection of discrimination by nationality.

Unfortunately, Americans hold a warped collective memory of earlier immigration history. Many assume that the European immigrants of generations past assimilated quickly, unlike Latin American, Asian, or Muslim immigrants today. Not true. Lasting ethnic enclaves like Greektowns and Little Italys were typical. Today's immigrants actually learn English and forget their native languages faster than did the earlier newcomers. Similarly, romanticized memories lead many to believe that, unlike today's immigrants, their ancestors made it up the ladder on their own steam-also a distortion. In the end, the supposedly unassimilable children and grandchildren of earlier immigrants became regular Americans, often to the chagrin of parents who hoped that their traditions would be more lasting.

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