Financial journalist and author Peter Brimelow addressed an audience of nearly 200 in Langford Auditorium March 20 as he spoke on “disappearing borders” – the theme of this year’s IMPACT Symposium.
The author of the critically acclaimed book Alien Nation: Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster opened his lecture with a line from Robert Frost’s famous poem Mending Wall, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
He posed this question, “Do good fences (or borders) really make good neighbors?”
Brimelow’s answer is yes – that strong borders will prevent immigration from becoming a growing problem for America.
“We are getting to the point where immigration will be enormously influential in American politics. In fact, the nature of immigration is rapidly eliminating traditional Republican majorities in California and Texas.”
Brimelow called immigration “a luxury, not a necessity.”
“This country is being transformed against its will, and to no particular advantage. There is no aggregate gain to native-born Americans. Although immigration increases GDP (gross domestic product), that is all captured by immigrants themselves. In fact there is a substantial loss due to education, and emergency room healthcare.”
And although Americans benefit little from immigration, losses are great, according to Mr. Brimelow. “There is a tremendous impact due to reduced wages and the transfer of wealth and income from labor to capital. From 1980-2000, immigration reduced income to the average native-born American by 3 percent.”
Brimelow used data from the National Research Council to support his claim. “Every native born American family in California subsidizes the immigrant presence by about $1000. Essentially Americans are subsidizing their own displacement.”
Brimelow fears that if current immigration policy remains unchanged America will become another Brazil: a country of a very small number of wealthy and a large number of very poor.
“So in conclusion,” said Brimelow, “good borders do make good neighbors. Because this nation of immigrants was put together very quickly, it can become undone and chaotic. It will fall like the Tower of Babel and collapse into thousands of warring tongues.”
In addition to Alien Nation Brimelow is the author of The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education. He has written for Barron’s, Forbes, the Financial Post and the National Review, and currently writes columns for CBS Marketwatch. British born Brimelow received his MBA from Stanford University in 1970.
IMPACT began in 1964 when a group of Vanderbilt students saw the need to increase the campus’s exposure to current issues by providing a symposium in which intellectually challenging – and sometimes controversial – speakers could be heard. Throughout the years IMPACT speakers have included the likes of Jesse Jackson, former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F Kennedy, Stokely Carmichael and Donald Rumsfeld.