30(!) Years Ago, LA TIMES' Jack Miles Claimed U.S. Immigration Law Could Not Be Enforced In His City. But Whose Fault Was That?
My response: What has Conservatism Inc been thinking? And WWID (What Would Israel Do)?
As I write this (Sunday June 8, 2025) a very familiar communist/racial activist/ looter riot appears to be brewing up along BLM/ George Floyd/ 2020 lines in Los Angeles. (see pic above).
This reminds me of one of the nicest reviews (not a hot competition) that my 1995 book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster got: “The Coming Immigration Debate” by Jack Miles, The Atlantic Magazine (those were the days!), April 1995.
But Miles, who is sort of an Old Believer liberal, nevertheless reacted badly to my call for illegal alien expulsion:
I strongly agree with Brimelow that American immigration law needs to be reformed severely and quickly. And many of his proposals make good sense. However, his call for a new version of Operation Wetback--the hated federal program that forced a million illegal Mexican immigrants to return to their homeland in the 1950s--is worse than reckless. In a 40 percent Hispanic, heavily armed city like Los Angeles, the mass expulsion of illegal Mexican immigrants could not come about without a violent disruption of civic, economic, and even religious order, and probably not without provoking a major international incident. Such an operation could be implemented only at gunpoint, and it would be resisted the same way. Its announcement would be a virtual declaration of civil war.
My response: this simply concedes that the U.S. had lost control of its national territory—as early as 1995!
I did not accept back then that the U.S. should tolerate that.
And I still don’t accept it.
Bring it (so to speak) on.
Two questions occur to me now:
This was thirty years ago. The situation has only gotten worse. What was the American Political Class—and Conservatism Inc.—thinking?
WWID—What Would Israel Do?
I’m happy to say that at 82 Jack Miles is still alive and enjoying retirement.
"What was the American Political Class—and Conservatism Inc.—thinking?"
They weren't thinking. They were obeying. They still are.
So diversity isn't our strength?