The Immigration Mystique: America's False Conscience

by Chilton Williamson

Immigration is essentially a moral rather than an economic issue, concerning questions far more fundamental than whether or not immigration is a fiscal burden or boon. Noting that there have been virtually no new arguments in the immigration debate, which is as old as American history, Chilton Williamson, Jr., observes that arguments for and against immigration, unfortunately, have been stated mostly in economic terms.A morally responsible approach to immigration must include considerations other than the satisfaction of the individual rights and opportunities of immigrants and aliens. What adverse effect does immigration have on our national identity, social and political order, and cultural cohesion? And what impact does it have on population growth and the environment? How does mass immigration affect the immigrants themselves and their countries of origin?Williamson challenges the contemporary religious defense of a generous immigration policy and explains why the ”fairness” demanded by human rights advocates is quixotic and unattainable. While the immigration crisis needs to be resolved by insights drawn from moral and religious grounds, as well as from political and philosophical ones, the standard he recommends is, above all else, communitarian. The Immigration Mystique traces the growth of the immigration myth—or mystique—from colonial times to the present, a construct developed mainly between the Civil War and 1965. This myth is self-congratulatory and propagandistic, intended to justify and promote the growth of American power and influence in the world. Among its many unanticipated consequences is the transformation of the United States into the ”First Universal Nation.”

Genres: Politics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 1996

About the author

Chilton Williamson, Jr. was born in New York City and raised there and on the family farm near South Windham, Vermont where he acquired a lifelong love of nature and of the outdoors, horses, fishing, and hunting.

At Columbia College, he majored in European History and studied voice privately for some years, training to become an operatic tenor. Having given up a musical career, Williamson did four years of graduate work in American history at Columbia before becoming History Editor for St. Martin's Press in New York. During his three years with St. Martin's, he contributed numerous essays and book reviews to many publications, including Harper's, The New Republic, National Review, Commonweal, and The Nation.

In 1976 Williamson became Literary Editor (later Senior Editor) for National Review. The following year he moved to Block Island, Rhode Island, where he spent an isolated winter, gathering material for his first book (Saltbound: A Block Island Winter: Methuen, 1980) and commuting every other week to the magazine offices in New York. In Saltbound, Williamson interwines the history of the island from colonial days down to the present with a narrative account of his own experiences and adventures to depict an isolated traditional community transformed over three centuries by the forces of modernization and "progress."

Williamson moved to Kemmerer, Wyoming in the summer of 1979 to begin work on what he originally planned as the Western equivalent of Saltbound. Still on the payroll of National Review, commuting bi-monthly to his office in New York for four days at a time, he went to work with a crew on a drilling rig in the famous Overthrust Belt, in those days the symbol of the Energy Boom, the Sagebrush Rebellion, and the New West. From his lodgings in the Regency Apartments in Kemmerer, Williamson edited his reviews section, wrote his columns, worked long hours as a rigger and afterward at his desk making notes of all he had seen and heard that day, and completed his education as an outdoorsman begun years before in Vermont. By paying close attention to experienced people who had something to teach him, he learned to shoot a rifle fast and with accuracy, to navigate and survive in the backcountry, to break his own horses and train them to the mountain trails, load a packhorse, and butcher and pack big game. The literary result of his first year in the Rocky Mountain West is Roughnecking It: Or, Life in the Overthrust (Simon & Schuster, 1982): a thoroughly reprehensible work that has been described as a "kickass" book. Inspired by Mark Twain's classic, Roughing It, the book's theme is how the New West was foreshadowed by the Old, and how the Old West lingers on in the New. Roughnecking It was excellently reviewed, and is said to have found its way into the syllabus of a University of Wyoming course devoted to the study of social problems in Wyoming. Best of all, from the author's point of view, it won acceptance in the West as a kind of Oilriggers' Bible. Though presently out of print, it is still in demand by oilpatch veterans twenty-four years after its publication.

Williamson made his permanent residence in Kemmerer after arranging with National Review to become a long-distance editor and contributor, working from his home. In 1989 he left NR for a similar position at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, published by the Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois. Early in 1994, Williamson inaugurated a regular Chronicles column, "The Hundredth Meridian," that continues today. Here he has recorded, for more than a decade now, espisodes from his life and adventures as a Westerner-hunting, fishing, horsepacking, backpacking, pushing cattle, breaking horses-and his travels throughout the West, in particular the southwest and northern Mexico and including the great Indian reservations where he has many friends and acquaintances. (The first twenty-two columns, deliberately planned as a serial book, have recentl

Reviews

[Jonathan Sargent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to see why this book wasn't even on my radar, or anyone's for that matter. Written by the editor of Chronicles Magazine in the mid 90s, it was overshadowed by Auster and Brimelow's works. Plus it's rather meandering at times and lacks some structure. Still a good read for those who are immigration restrictionists.