Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster [Paperback]

Peter Brimelow (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 30, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forbes senior editor Brimelow's alarmist, slashing anti-immigration manifesto is likely to stir debate. He maintains that the 1965 Immigration Act and its recent amplifications choked off immigration from northern and western Europe while selectively reopening U.S. borders to a huge influx of minorities from Third World countries. Many of these latter entrants are unskilled and require welfare support, and those who do work may adversely affect opportunities for poorer Americans, especially blacks, according to Brimelow. Because of multicultural programs, he charges, the new immigrants are not expected to assimilate, and thus they retain their separateness. Illegal immigration?two to three million entries a year?plus one million legal immigrants annually are causing, by his reckoning, an "ethnic revolution," because Asians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners and others shift America's balance away from the white majority, creating a strife-torn, multiracial society. Brimelow calls for an end to all illegal immigration, a drastic cutback in legal immigration, policies favoring skilled immigrants and elimination of all payments and free public education for illegals and their children.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"Immigration has consequences," Brimelow (a Forbes senior editor and a contributor to the National Review) interjects repeatedly through this scattershot, argumentative tract against current immigration policy and practice. Claiming that the 1965 Immigration Act and later legislation in 1986 and 1990 have worsened a host of economic, political, and social problems in the United States, Brimelow cites supporters and critics alike of American immigration policy and his own interpretation of immigration statistics to disprove commonly held beliefs about immigrants' contributions to America, which he believes have been overemphasized. Brimelow argues that our environment is endangered, our public health threatened, our economy strained, our national unity diluted, and our politics fragmented?all by an immigration policy that is out of control and captive to a ruling "elite," which he associates with the liberal establishment and political correctness. Though Brimelow scores some points in his shrill attack, his highly politicized and provocative language?which often relies on ethnic stereotypes?makes this book a polemic guaranteed to rally the faithful and offend most others.?Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060976918
• ISBN-13: 978-0060976910
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #890,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book July 14, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

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".

86 of 97 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Blade Runner America August 27, 2005

By Tom Andres

Format:Paperback

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 of newcomers into how to be properly Chinese, and Chinese civilization will not only continue to move majestically forward, but will be wonderfully transformed, strengthened and enriched by its new majority of Italians or Eskimos.

Of course America is not China. From the beginning we have been more diverse and inclusive, but our core founding culture is no less unique; it is not a rubber band that can be stretched to infinity. What was so unsettling about the 1982 film "Blade Runner" was not that America had been overrun by any particular race, but how thoroughly alien Los Angeles had become to Western civilization, and how eerily plausible it somehow seemed.

If our culture, our environment, and our form of government can somehow be saved from this coming Bladerunnerization, the calm, erudite, witty, systematic and devastating arguments of Peter Brimelow, a true patriot, will be partly responsible. All who care about America and Western civilization should read Brimelow's brilliant and historic "Alien Nation."

158 of 183 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If we continue on this path... November 29, 2001

By James P. Brett

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.