Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigration Disaster

by Peter Brimelow

Book Overview

The controversial, bestselling book (37,500 hardcover copies sold) that helps define the debate about one of the most important and hotly contested issues facing America: immigration. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067943058X
• ISBN13: 9780679430582
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 327 Pages
• Weight: 1.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Lessons not learned

Ten years ago, the paperback edition of "Alien Nation" came out in print. While some of the numbers may be off (the number of illegals doubled from than of 1996) the basic message remains. The Federal government has no interest in protecting the original character of the United States - namely, as a European republic. It has and continued to act against the interests of the race that that carved out a civilization superseding previous European civilizations. Peter Brimelow's book deserves a second reading, particularly in the midst of the current (one-sided) immigration debate that Congress desperately wants to avoid. There are the myopic many that love tacos, curry and Thai noodles -- the raging cheerleaders of the "open borders" gang. However, they immediately shut up when the sieve that is our current immigration policy allows Middle Easterners to bomb or crash planes into our buildings. They turn a deaf ear to the fact that greedy businesses hire illegals at firesale wages and boost their own profits. Indeed, the strident open border crowd hasn't said anything about the recent massive demonstrations by Mexican flag waving illegal mestizos and non-white Hispanics -- other than "let them all in!". Senators Kennedy's and Javitz's pronouncement of 1965 was proven wrong: America's has dramatically changed and for the worse. The "Irish beer" swilling, taco eating Americans have learned nothing.

Blade Runner America

Who would have thought back in 1965-70, when America's current immigration binge began, that by 2005 many US lawmakers would be championing driver's license rights for US lawbreakers? Or that our nation's borders would be so overrun that ordinary citizens, like retired law officers, assorted concerned grandparents, and a surprising number of Hispanics (all of whom were recently characterized by "New York Times" columnist David Brooks as "beer-swilling good old boys") would feel compelled to travel to the border with binoculars and lawn chairs and politely try to alert our undermanned Border Patrol about specific acts of blatant lawbreaking, all in the desperate hope of getting their own elected government to begin caring about border security for a nation that does not end in "q" or "stan"? Well, judging by the foresight demonstrated in "Alien Nation," Peter Brimelow is probably one of the Americans least surprised by all this. And, as discussed in his book, illegal immigration is only part of the problem. The US is taking in more legal immigrants than all other nations combined. So when it comes to our grandchildren someday being able to enjoy America's remaining open spaces and wildlands, the government might as well be conducting an Anti-Homeland Environment military campaign utilizing modified B-52 carpet-bomb-paving cement mixers. Brimelow also has the courage to address the ethnic factor. One US Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner once breathlessly proclaimed that America's rapid immigration-induced demographic shift means that we are all becoming "wonderfully transformed." This is pretty much in keeping with today's in-vogue type of racism: an ever smaller percentage of white people equals an ever more peachy world. (If this were true Haiti would be Shangri-La.) But it is more complicated than that. Brimelow, with his unblinking understanding of history, recognizes the fundamental importance of any particular founding ethnic majority to that nation's continued existence. The dreamy counter-argument to Brimelow's common sense one seems to be that we Americans--and to some extent all Westerners--represent some sort of new, highly evolved neutral fairness-monitoring creatures. (In a 1950s science fiction film we would probably be represented by hovering blue lights of pure reason.) It is assumed that we are the first society in history that will remain largely unaffected by any future changes in majority ethnicity, race or religion, since never-ending millions of immigrants will simply absorb the wonderfulness our ways and our universal democratic values. One problema: our "universal" values, which are the foundation of our democratic institutions, grow almost entirely out of the centuries-long traditions of European peoples. It is a little as if Chinese elites had convinced themselves that China's traditional core values are simply universal truisms. All China need do is happily inculcate hundreds of millions o

If we continue on this path...

An excellent exposition on the current state of immigration. What I found interesting of the negative reviews were that more often than not, the reviewer didn't identify themselves.Anyway, as to the book itself, Brimelow merely shows what immigration has been like for the US historically. Truth be told, the founders never intended for this to be a "multicultural" country. If one reads the Federalist Papers (which I've reviewed here), you discover that the founders were counting on the "common heritage" of the people to help make the new country work. As Brimelow shows, multiculturalism is of recent vintage (1960 and later). The underpinning of any country is the commonality of its people: race/ethnicity, language, customs, religion, etc. What Brimelow is saying in this book is that underpinning is being eroded, and the consequences don't bode well for the future. Despite what some reviewers here say, Brimelow doesn't speak disparagingly about current immigrants. His point is that these new immigrants are not inclined to be assimilated, as previous waves were. I think he hits the nail on the head when he says that the current view on immigration is that it's a "civil right" (i.e., everyone has a right to come to America). No other country I know of is thought of in this way.His emphasis on the fact that the US was/is a primarily white nation is not racist; it's merely stating fact. There's no talk about what race is "better", only that commonality is better. I think the charges of xenophobia by some reviewers are entirely specious.What has led every great nation/empire to ruin: taking in peoples it can't assimilate or who don't want to be. Our collapse will be unavoidable. Rome lasted 476 years; I doubt we'll reach that.This is a great, great book. Read it, and then use it by writing your representatives and tell them to turn off the spigot. As Brimelow points out, most Americans are opposed to further foreign immigration and yet it continues. Why? He doesn't answer that question directly -- that's another story.

Because I don't want to live in Tijuana

The systematic anti-European bias of our current immigration policy is not only a war against the people (whites) who created the very civilization for which third-worlders so desire, but a war against the American worker who has to compete with these thralls who will work to see a cock-fight. Peter Brimelow, himself an immigrant and the book's author, thought he moved to America. If he wanted to live in Tijuana, he would have moved there. Frustrated by his observations, he was compelled to write this anti-immigration treatise, and to his credit, he dogged his quarry with diligence. Brimelow addresses every conceivable argument formulated by those who wish for our present immigration policy to continue. A popular one is the often repeated neo-conservative mantra that America was "built on immigration," but the kind of immigration our founders who "built" our country had in mind was of the European variety. In fact, the first immigration act written in 1790 by the men who signed the Declaration of Independence limited immigration strictly to European Christians, which stands in direct contrast with current immigration law that would today deny our European forefathers entrance. (And besides, when European immigrants arrived on Ellis Island 90 years ago, they didn't have subsidized housing, SSI, and other welfare benefits waiting for them, unlike the Aztec Indians entering our country illegally today that Linda Chavez would love to culturally and dysgenically destroy our country with.) The country was founded not on immigration but on private property rights, as specified in the Federalist Papers, in which John Jay constantly stresses the common brotherhood we--we whites that is--have with Europeans. Another argument that Brimelow stabs right through the eyes is the one that says "we need these immigrants because if they weren't here picking lettuce it would cost ten bucks a head." Personally, I would rather pay $20 a head than kiss European civilization goodbye, but this isn't the argument Brimelow adopts. Brimelow claims--correctly--that any benefits massive nonwhite immigration brings is easily outweighed by the urban decay, welfare costs, poor academic performance, and reintroduced diseases (like tuberculosis) they also bring along with them. Shortly after the publication of "Alien Nation," Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham sabotaged the only hope in the last ten years for immigration reform: Section 110 of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Act Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which would've required the government to begin matching entry and exit records of all visitors of the United States. Thankfully, Abraham lost his senate seat. But he isn't alone among the overwhelming majority of politicians, most of whom desperately want to preserve our current open-border policy--Republicans for their cheap labor and Democrats for their cheap cause. We are importing, in essence, people who are illiterate in their own native languages; most

Excellent Book

People who are labeling this author "racist" are very ignorant. I live in L.A. and see first-hand what the out-of-control immigration is doing to this city. Neighborhoods that were once beautiful and safe are now over-populated & dirty & full of crime. This issue needs to be addressed and quickly before further damage is done to this country because of ignorance, liberalism and "tolerance".