Fuentes Debate Outline


Summary of the main points against non-European immigration -


1. “Will of the People” Argument


Argument - The will of the American people was not represented when Congress voted on the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act; This immigration reform fundamentally changed the composition of America, and most people would have been opposed to that, had that information been made public. One may go as far as to say that this move was actually subversive and that the will of the people was intentionally betrayed.


Counterclaim - The will of the American people was expressed in this congressional vote.


Counterargument - If the will of the American people was actively betrayed, one needs to provide sufficient evidence that 1) the politicians in favor of the bill knew the impact it would have, and 2) that the politicians made an effort to suppress this information so that the public would not be able to accurately assess the bill.


Evidence for counterargument -
1. According to a Harris Poll done in 1965, 7/10 Americans were in favor was abolishing country requirements in favor of skills for immigration to our country. A 1965 Gallup Poll confirms this as well, stating only 32% of Americans cared what the country of origin of an immigrant was. [1]
2. Widespread bipartisan (74% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans) support in the House and Senate for this bill.
3. Efforts to appease conservative lawmakers (ie: Michael Feighan, a “Dixiecrat” of Ohio) to make the “family member” provision the most important one, actually backfired.
   1. Feighan still had popular support in his district after the 1965 Immigration Act passed, winning with 76.06% of the vote in ‘66 and 72.38% of the vote in ‘68.
1. No widespread movements or “voter retribution” for the passage of this act ever happened.
2. Bonus Meme - He seems to wiggle between “it’s happening quickly!” vs “it’s happening slowly!” when it suits his argument.
3. The “Kalergi plan” that was previously cited is not sufficient evidence for politicians being subversive for a variety of reasons.
   1. Firstly, it’s the “Hooton plan,” not the Kalergi plan.
      1. Hootan was not a politician, he was a physical anthropologist who wrote an article in the New York newspaper, PM. [2]
         1. “The families of the men already married should remain in Germany for a period of years, but might eventually be permitted to join the fathers. The latter should not be allowed to return to Germany. The objects of this measure include reduction of the birth rate of "pure" Germans, neutralization of German aggressiveness by outbreeding, and denationalization of indoctrinated individuals.”
         2. “During the period of supervision and occupation of the several states by armies and civilian staffs of the Allied Nations, encourage members of these groups to intermarry with the German women and to settle there permanently. During this period encourage also the immigration and settlement in the German states of non-German nationals, especially males.”
      1. Hooton’s plan had nothing to do with using North Africans to breed with Germans.
   1. Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi was the co-founder of the Pan-European Union. He was not “instrumental” in any way in the UN.
   2. Kalergi is not Jewish.
Bonus counterclaim: We exist in a Democratic Republic where we elect our officials to vote on our behalf. It is not a requirement that they vote with the will of their constituents as part of our government. If you do not like this, you must change the fundamental nature of our government.


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1. Constitutional AKA “Original Intent” Argument


Argument - The Founding Fathers wrote “to ourselves and our posterity,” in the preamble of the Constitution. We can use context clues from other writings of the Founding Fathers, such as The Federalist Papers to figure out what they meant by “posterity.” In The Federalist Papers #2, John Jay writes - “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government.” It is clear from these statements that the Constitution was clearly designed to protect the “European, Christian people.”


Counterclaim - This “original intent” does not matter because it was never written explicitly into the Constitution, and the “original intent” that you claim exists doesn’t exist. John Jay never even used the word “posterity” when discussing these concepts in the Federalist Papers.


Counterargument - If one wants to suggest that The Federalist Papers give an indication for the type of people the Constitution was written for, and if we ignore the fact that the Constitution, despite being very precise in a lot of its language, never explicitly mentions any specific groups of people, one would have to concede that the current definition of “white European” was not used at the time the Constitution was written.


1. Why does the Constitution not explicitly call for European only immigrants to be made into naturalized citizens? Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 very clearly delegates the powers of naturalization to the Congress and does not explicitly denote any group of people that should not be naturalized.
   1. In an 1819 letter that John Q Adams, one of the main, seven founding fathers, wrote as secretary of state, "The government of the United States has never adopted any measure to encourage or invite emigrants from any part of Europe... They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity, rather than backward to their ancestors..." [source]
   2. In a 1788 letter to Francis Van Der Kamp, a dutch politician, George Washington states “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” [source]
1. Wouldn’t we only consider Anglo-Saxon Protestants as the original people of the Americas if we really wanted to read this hard into the word “posterity?”
   1. In the book “Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution”, John Jay, who would become the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, suggested erecting “a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics” when considering New York’s Constitution. [3]
   2. According to the 1790 US Census, Over 81% of free people in were British, not a “mixture of white Europeans.” [4]
      1. Almost none of Scandinavia is represented here. No Italians, no French, very few Germans.
   1. Benjamin Franklin, another key founding father, hated many of the people you consider “white” and doesn’t sound like he’d be interested in their posterity at all. In a 1751 short essay titled “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc,” Franklin wrote - “Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.” [5]
1. In a letter to Samuel Kercheval, Thomas Jefferson, an important founding father, quote on changing the Constitution - “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” [6]
2. Related point - our rights do not come from a Christian God, they come from something greater than Man. This is what is meant by Natural Rights. People are endowed by “their Creator” in the Declaration of Independence, not Yahweh or God or Christian God.
   1. Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, was absolutely not Christian. [7]
   2. Per the establishment and clause and free-exercise clause, Christianity is explicitly NOT given special consideration. It was established for “our posterity,” not the “Christian posterity,” not the “white European posterity.” “Our” is defined by citizenship, which has never been defined as “European.”
Bonus Counterclaim - The Federalist Papers were written in an attempt to unify the people of America, not to establish that no immigrants could be allowed into the country. Of course the writers would try to make the people sound as unified as possible, it was borderline propaganda.


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1. Fundamentally Changing the Public to Win Votes Argument


Argument - There is political incentive to change the composition of the American public by importing people who will vote a certain way. This is not a legitimate way to win seats in government, or other political power.


Counterclaim - The Constitution sets forth rules by which people are allowed to vote. If you don’t like the process of letting naturalized citizens vote, then your issue is with the Constitution, not any changing demographic.


We believe in the marketplace of ideas! I hope I can convince new immigrants to adopt my belief system. Muslims already have, in the United States, compared to those abroad!


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1. Immigrants Importing Their Problems Argument


Argument - People immigrating from countries with severe problems are likely to bring those problems to the United States. If we bring in too many immigrants from any country with severe problems, a sufficient number of those immigrants could cause the United States to resemble the countries they came from. One cannot divorce a country’s people from its problems.


Counterclaim - Immigrants alone do not have the power to bring structural problems from their country to the United States, and this has never been sufficiently demonstrated.


Counterargument - One needs to demonstrate immigrants bringing immigrant problems into this country for this argument to be true. However, immigrants do not bring their problems with them according to most data.
1. According to a 2015 report from the American Immigration Council, Immigrants are less likely to commit crime than the native born. [8]
   1. “The 2010 Census data reveals that incarceration rates among the young, less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men who make up the bulk of the unauthorized population are significantly lower than the incarceration rate among native-born young men without a high-school diploma. In 2010, less-educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent—more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign-born Mexican men, and five times greater than the 1.7 percent rate among foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men.”
   2. According to a report from the Police Foundation “Undocumented Immigration and Rates of Crime and Imprisonment: Popular Myths and Empirical Realities,” Foreign Born Latin Americans have a .99% chance to be incarcerated compared to 1.71% of native born white people. [9]
   3. In a Cato Report, using US Census Data from the American Community Survey, titled “Criminal Immigrants: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin,” even illegal immigrants commit less crime than natives with .84% of them being incarcerated compared to 1.53% of the native population. [10]
   4. According to a US DoJ report, “Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008–2012,” Crime has always been highly correlated with geography and income, across all races and all levels of income, with the exception of hispanics, who always seem to be fairly underrepresented. [11]
   5. According to a 2014 report “Identifying the Effect of Immigration on Homicide Rates in U.S. Cities”, Immigration can’t even be correlated with an impact in large city crime rates. [12]
   6. Restricting men would BY FAR reduce crime. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, men account for 93.2% of the Prison Population. [13]
1. Some problems are literally tied to geographic conditions. Andrew Balls, Pimco's Chief Investment Officer for Global Fixed Income, former Financial Times journalist and also ex-teacher of economics at Oxford University, published an article in the National Bureau of Economic Research remarking on such as the correlation between geography (temperate vs non-temperate zone) and its impact on societies. [14] How can Africans bring harsher crop conditions or hotter weather to places they immigrate to?
2. According to a 2014 Report from the US Census, “The Foreign-Born Population From Africa: 2008–2012” black African immigrants in general have higher degrees compared to white people, with 41% of African immigrants having degrees compared to only 36% of native white people. [15]
   1. The same report shows that 60.9%Nigerians in the US have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. [16]
   2. A 2012 report by the US Census “The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2010,” shows that If you come from Africa you have a 10% higher chance of having a Bachelor’s degree than if you came from Europe. [17]
   3. Nigerians are the most educated immigrant population in the United States. “Although they make up a tiny portion of the U.S. population, a whopping 17 percent of all Nigerians in this country held master's degrees while 4 percent had a doctorate, according to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.”  [18]
1. Communities of white people exist that do commit crime.
   1. The Italian Mafia in New York.
   2. The Ku Klux Klan south of the Mason Dixon line.
   3. Biker Gangs ie: Hells Angel
   4. Meth labs and drugs in the rural Midwest.
   5. The Aryan Brotherhood, a gang that makes up less than 0.1% of the prison population but is responsible for between 18-25% of the murders in the federal prison system. [source]


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1. “What If an Immigrant Kills Your Child?” Argument


Argument - We have the potential to reduce the number of people killed in this country by immigrants to zero by eliminating all immigration.


Counterclaim - We will never reduce something that benefits society to eliminate all risk of fatality.


Counterargument - There are plenty of things that we have in society that benefit us that carry a significant risk of danger, but we accept them because of the trade-offs in freedom, economic productivity, and happiness.
1. Firearms kill over 30,000 people annually, 10,000 by homicide and 20,000 by suicide. [19]
2. Vehicle fatalities kill over 30,000 people annually. [20]
3. Heart disease kills over 600,000 people annually but we still allow things like fast food which contribute to obesity and heart disease. [21]


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1. Immigrants are a Net Negative Argument


Argument - We pay out more in taxpayer benefits (ie: welfare) than we get back from economic activity from low-skilled immigrants. Immigrants are, therefore, a drain on the economy.


Counterclaim - Immigrants provide great economic benefit and have a negligible fiscal impact.


Counterargument - Through a wide variety of meta-analyses and studies it has never been demonstrated that immigration has ever presented an undue burden on state or government budgets. It is widely accepted that immigrants present a massive boon to economic activity.
1. A 2014 Cato institute paper asserts that most studies state the fiscal impact of immigration being negligible, and cites many ways that immigrants have had positive impacts on the economy, and predicts that future immigration should have no dramatic fiscal impact. [22]
2. A 2017 report by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine asserts
   1. "Immigration's Long-Term Impacts on Overall Wages and Employment of Native-Born U.S. Workers Very Small, Although Low-Skilled Workers May Be Affected, New Report Finds; Impacts on Economic Growth Positive, While Effects on Government Budgets Mixed"
   2. "When measured over a period of 10 years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small."
   3. "Immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S."
1. Even though we’re not arguing illegal immigration, even those immigrants put into the system in unexpected ways
   1. “Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA), told VICE News that an estimated 7 million people are currently working in the US illegally. Of those, he estimates that about 3.1 million are using fake or expired social security numbers, yet also paying automatic payroll taxes. Goss believes that these workers pay an annual net contribution of $12 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.” [23]
1. Borjas, in the totality of his immigration studies, one of the most cited “anti-immigration” economists, asserts that immigration has a net wash impact on fiscal budgets. [24]
2. African countries are joining the 1st world at accelerated rates, there’s no reason to expect this to stop.
   1. According to Economic research published from the Federal Reserce Bank of ST. Louis, birthrates are falling across Sub-Sarahan Africa [25]
   2. Stats from the site Our World in Data (sourced from Gapminder and the World Bank) show Child mortality and under 5 mortality have decreased substantially across all of Africa. [26]
   3. The same source shows that life expectancy has grown at its fastest rate in Africa over the past 15 years. [27]
   4. The same source African countries are becoming increasingly literate. [28]
   5. Hilton building 100 hotels in Africa over the next 5 years. [29]
1. Some successful immigrant business founders
   1. Mike Krieger--Brazilian--Instagram co-founder
   2. Arash Ferdowsi--Iranian Parents--Dropbox co-founder
   3. Sean Rad--Iranian Parents--Tinder founder
   4. Sanjay Mehrotra--Indian--Sandisk co-founder
   5. Iqram Magdon-Ismail--Zimbabwean--Venmo co-founder


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1. Social Cohesion Argument


Argument - Any benefit that we gain economically can be dismissed if it’s gained at the cost of social cohesion. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that immigrants of non-European origin can cause divisiveness and loss of trust in communities.


Counterclaim - This social cohesion can exist even with immigrants of different color, and the economic and social payoff is worth working towards.


Counterargument - The main researcher that was cited for this argument was Robert D. Putnam. He claims that his work has been taken out of context to make arguments that he or his research would not agree with. It needs to be sufficiently demonstrated that long term harm will come to America if we continue to integrate different people into this country and change who we consider to be American.
1. A quote from in an interview about our civic life: “I think immigration is a big success story in America, I absolutely do. You won’t find me not saying immigration is an important success story in America.” [30]
2. In a brief filed to the Supreme Court for Fisher vs University of Texas (Fisher I), defending the affirmative action program there, “Quite to the contrary, Dr. Putnam’s extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society. In his essay, Dr. Putnam concluded that, while increased diversity may present challenges in the short to medium term, greater diversity can lead to significant benefits to society in the medium to long term. These benefits are manifest in higher education, as Dr. Putnam’s more than 40 years of experience as a professor at Harvard University and the University of Michigan demonstrate.” [31]
   1. “These results also have been observed in other American institutions. The integration of the United States Army has progressed over the last 30 years, to the point where studies in the 1990s found that “the average American soldier has many closer interracial friendships than the average American civilian of the same age and social class.””
   2. In a 2007 publication, ‘Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture, Putnam states “Scientific examination of immigration, diversity and social cohesion easily could be inflamed as the results of research become part of the contemporary political debate, but that debate needs to be informed by our best efforts to ascertain the facts. It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity. It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable.” [source]
1. Great social pain was felt during the Irish and Italian integration periods, but those people were eventually accepted as Americans like everyone else.
   1. Irishmen came to the US for labour reasons, such as the construction of the Erie Canal, and also settled into urban areas so they could form Irish communities. [32]
   2. During this period of mass migration (The Italian Diaspora, the largest emigration from any country in recorded history[33]), 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States, the majority from 1900 to 1914. Once in America, the immigrants faced great challenges. Often with no knowledge of the English language and with little formal education, many of the immigrants were compelled to accept low-wage manual-labor jobs, and were frequently exploited by the middlemen who acted as intermediaries between them and the prospective employers. Many sought housing in the older sections of the large Northeastern cities where they settled, that became known as "Little Italies", frequently in overcrowded substandard tenements which were often dimly lit with poor heating and ventilation. [34]
      1. The March 14, 1891, lynchings were a series of lynchings of eleven Italian Americans in New Orleans, Louisiana, for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy. It was the largest mass lynching (as distinct from a massacre) in U.S. history. [35]
   1. You would have an even stronger constitutional argument if you advocated for the deportation of Irishman and Italian because they were Catholic.


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1. Intrinsic Spirituality Argument


Argument - Ethnic groups of people have different types of “souls,” which makes it hard for them to mesh with other types of people.


Counterclaim - There is no such thing as a soul.


Counterargument - Nothing can be demonstrated that is metaphysical. If it exists, it almost by definition is unfalsifiable, which makes it unworthy of any sort of moral or intellectual consideration.


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1. Brain Drain Argument


Argument - We should prevent high skilled immigrants from coming to the United States as it weakens the high skill labor pool of the country they are leaving.


Counteargument - High skill immigrants should not be forced to stay in a country in which they have no opportunity. This can serve to disincentive seeking higher education in said country and can lead to a number of other negative effects. High skill labor leaving your country also leads to some surprising positive effects as well.
1. A 2012 comparative study by International Migration The Migration and Development Pendulum: A Critical View on Research and Policy,” many surprisingly positive effects are found when high skill labor emigrates. [36]
   1. “One of the earliest arguments against the concept of the “Brain Drain” was the “Emulation Model” (Grubel and Scott 1977). According to this model, the migration of skilled and educated persons results in those remaining in the source country demanding higher wages and better education.”
   2. “Another argument suggests that even when the migrants don’t return home, the knowledge they acquire often does...As communication channels improve, it has become easier for these migrants to share their newly acquired knowledge with those at home.”
   3. “Another important factor is the effects of remittances.”
      1.  “In 2003, remittances in Jamaica represented nearly 18% of its GNP. Remittances in Guyana accounted for 8.1% of GNP, 5.3% in Grenada and 4.5% in Barbados (Sanders 2007). A study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDP) found that in 2002, remittances to the Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to $32 billion. It is not uncommon for the total remittances to exceed foreign aid for many Caribbean countries.”
   1. “Kapur and McHale (2003) discuss remittances as the difference between abject poverty and food on the table for many of the people receiving the funds. They also talk about remittances in terms of “Trickle-Up Economics” since when remittances go to the households; they are firstly spent on basic needs such as clothing, food and basic health care. The remaining money may then be invested in land, farm tools, livestock and possibly travel expenses to send another family member  abroad to work (Kapur and McHale 2003).”
   2. “Assuming that this spillover of knowledge (which I discussed earlier) happens, how applicable are the skills and information to the source country? According to Hart, these countries may lack the absorptive capacity to make the most efficient use of the new technological knowledge and expertise acquired by expatriates (2006).”
   3. “This shows the need to reframe the debate on migration and development. Because development is a condition for attracting migrants’ income-generating investments rather than a consequence of it, policymakers would be wise to reverse their perspective on migration and development. Rather than asking what migrants can do to support development, or to forcibly, unrealistically and harmfully link the issue of return or temporariness to development, governments would be much better off identifying how to make conditions in origin countries attractive for migrant to invest socially, politically and economically. The second question that they should be asking is how they can design immigration policies that empower (instead of exploit) migrants and that maximize their social, human and economic capabilities to contribute to development in origin countries.” [36]
1. A 2005 paper “A gain with drain? Evidence from rural Mexico on the new economics of the brain drain.” assert “the returns to -- and the continued possibility of -- internal migration appear to create dynamic incentives for investment in schooling which, in turn, reverses the static, human-capital depleting effect of internal migration.” [37]
2. China educates Africans and is building a good relationship with the country in doing so. China is the second most popular country for African Students. [38][39]
3. Countries already are starting to incentivize students from leaving after becoming educated. [40]
Bonus counteargument - Even if we accept that “brain drain” is real and harms other countries, we could alleviate that loss in other ways.


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1. White Guilt Argument


Argument - Only white countries are expected to take on and help ethnically divergent populations, non-white countries do not share this burden.


Counterclaim - Non-white countries do indeed help refugees and other people coming into their countries.


Bonus counterclaim - Even if they didn’t, we don’t base our values on the values of other countries, we would never use this argument for any other type of value we hold to be important in this country.


Counterargument - Just look at the numbers.
1. Refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons, returnees, stateless persons and others of concern to UNHCR from 2015. [41]
   1. Germany - 749,309, or 0.9% of total population.
   2. Sweden - 357,628, or 3.6% of total population.
   3. Turkey -  2,754,540, or 3.5% of total population.
   4. Iran - 979,491, or 1.2% of total population.
   5. Lebanon - 1,088,231, or 18% of total population.
   6. Jordan - 689,053, or 7.3% of total population.
   7. USA - 559,370, or 0.17% of total population.