The immigration time bomb.

DESPITE ALL attempts by large portions of the media--what Richard Weaver in 1947 called the "Great Stereopticon"--to project their false cosmos upon the "revolving dome," the American public sees the threat of invasion (a/k/a "illegal immigration") clearly and whole, as is strongly suggested by recent polls. According to the Gallup poll, whose findings are largely reflected in other surveys, "the American public takes a hard line toward illegal aliens, with 75 per cent favoring . . . a law that would make it illegal to employ a person who has entered the United States without proper papers." It found that "the public . . . strongly supports a proposal requiring all U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens to carry an identification card," and that a majority opposes granting amnesty to illegals currently in the country.

It has been ten years since Leonard Chapman, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, declared that "Illegal immigration is out of control," but Congress, for reasons of its own, has discovered a wide variety of excuses for doing little--if anything--to protect its citizens from the estimated two million illegals migrating each year to the United States. Meanwhile aliens threaten to seize political control in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Florida, while politicians on both sides of the border speak tauntingly of "reconquering" the American Southwest from the "Anglos."

The Immigration Time Bomb (The American Immigration Control Foundation, P.O. Box 11839, Alexandria, Va. 22312; $2.50), by Palmer Stacy and Wayne Lutton, is a superb recapitulation of what it is not perfervid to describe as a national crisis. Stacy, a graduate of the Duke University School of Law and a longtime aide to Senator John East (R., N.C.), and Lutton, an historian currently working as a policy analyst for The Summit in Manitou Springs, Colorado, have drawn upon an immense amount of information to argue not only for the feasibility of immigration control but for its absolute necessity, shoring up their case with reference to a large body of recent scholarship.

In 1980, 808,000 legal immigrants entered the United States; since then, the number of legals has been running at about 600,000 a year. At the same time, between one million and two million (the higher number is the more likely) illegals have found their way into the country each year. If current trends continue, by the year 2050, the total population of the U.S. will have grown from 226 million to almost 321 million (using the more conservative figure) or 414 million (using the more realistic): that is to say, an increase of between 95 million and 188 million in 65 years. And according to Dr. Leon F. Bouvier, a distinguised population expert, owing to the pattern of chain migration (that is, of immediate family--and and some not so immediate--legally permitted to join naturalized or amnestied arrivals), in combination with the breeding habits of the largely Hispanic, Caribbean, and Asian immigrants, by the year 2050 post-1980 immigrants plus their descendants will account for 45.2 per cent of our total population (at the two-million-per-year rate), and 56.9 per cent by 2080. That is to say, in less than a century more than half of America will be the Third World.

EVEN AMONG some conservatives there is a tendency to regard the enforcement of current immigration laws and the passage of new ones as ungenerous and inhumane, and the Left would add "racist" to that indictment. And yet the United States--which would have, even if every reform offered in this book were made law, far and away the least restrictive immigration policies of any country in the world--simply cannot keep up with the fertility pressures in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Until the late 1960s or early '70s immigration to this country from south of the border amounted, relatively speaking, to little. Today, and in the near future, "hundreds of millions" of people--some of them prompted by their governments--will decide the U.S. is the place to go. Most of these will not be "political" refugees but "economic" ones, attempting not to escape from political persecution but simply to enjoy the American standard of living. We assuredly cannot take them all; and by not drawing the line now, we merely relieve the pressure deservedly felt by incompetent and corrupt governments, while in the long run swamping our own economy and standard of living as well as, in all likelihood, America itself as we know it.

According to Messrs. Stacy and Lutton, much of what is written and said about the behavior of recent immigrants to the U.S. is simply false. Particularly in respect of our Asian "refugees" (an increasing number of whom are young men wishing to escape military service at home) a stereotype has been created of mom-and-pop entrepreneurs who, having founded their small establishments, lead respectable lives, stay off the public-assistance rolls, and regularly pay their tax contributions. This type, while it of course exists, just as certainly, not typical. Stacy and Lutton offer evidence that illegal aliens cost the American public $25 billion a year: in terms of outrageous welfare and Social Security fraud, medical and education bills, crime, and the treatment of diseases not seen in the U.S. for years--not to mention jobs, often service and construction jobs, taken from U.S. citezens (the myth of aliens "creating jobs being just that, as the authors grimly demonstrate). Moreover, they do not "melt" as earlier influxes of immigrants did (frequently they make no effort even to learn English), and when they do go into business for themselves they hire their own. The United States is no longer an adolescent country but a mature one; its economy, its political structure, and the cohesive tension of its society will not tolerate the pressures they will undoubtedly be subjected to if immigration reform is not effected.

By doubting to six thousand men the force of our border patrol along the Rio Grande we could secure that border at a price of less than $150 million--surely a negligible sum by Washington's cosmic standards. For another $40 million we could beef up the INS and introduce a computer-coded ID card; thus slowing the immigration tide to a trickle at a cost of around $200 million. Because, as Stacy and Lutton remark, if they can't get job here and they're likely to get caught, they just won't come.