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Erik Prince was on Tucker Carlson. It was nearly two hours, and I enjoyed most of it. They talked about Ukraine, the CIA, republicans, Afghanistan, drone warfare, surveillance, smartphones, and much more.
https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1792963714779426941
https://rumble.com/v4wl5or-erik-prince-cia-corruption-killer-drones-and-government-surveillance.html
Also youtube, somewhere.
I wanted to transcribe this part, and talk about it. Approximately 1:09.
I have not been shy about voicing my thoughts on citizenship, so to hear them echoed in some part on a platform like this was interesting and unexpected.
What other societies is he talking about? I am most familiar with the Reconquest, where the mohammadeans were driven out of Iberia over centuries. That fits pretty well with what Prince is saying. I'm less familiar with the partition of India, by religion, then the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. This seems less relevant. What else is there? And what would that look like in the USA and Europe?
There's plenty to talk about from this conversation. The parts on drone warfare were particularly interesting to me, but didn't seem to fit with the rest of this post. And I'm out of time, so I post this as-is without any further commentary.
What does that even mean (aside from the obvious white supremacist angle)? Citizenship is not a scarce resource.
What does this mean?
Opposing birthright citizenship is contrary to the ancient traditions of our people and thus unAmerican. But then, Erik Prince is a Dutch fifth columnist and not to be trusted.
Welfare, benefits, legal aid, and increasingly, as in this week in DC and already elsewhere, voting.
An enticing thesis in other contexts, but not here, as they are clearly speaking in reference to people who have American citizenship who feel they didn't deserve it and given the broader context of their conversation.
Also part of the ancient traditions of America
Yes, but what isn't in the ancient traditions of America is welcoming every vagrat who shows up on our shores. When those non-citizens were allowed to vote, they were essentially the same ethnically and culturally as the existing population, and when there were small differences in language or religion, the relative population size was also smaller.
I would be thrilled if we could reclaim the ancient traditions of America.
It literally was. The US had functionally open borders until the late 19th century, when it was decided that vagrants were fine as long as they weren't Chinese.
"These German and Irish papists can never be truly American"
I believed this as well, until I read Hidetaka Hirota's excellent book Expelling the Poor. It documents very compellingly how states with major ports like Massachusetts and New York frequently turned away immigrants arriving from Ireland who were judged to be at risk of entering poor houses. Massachusetts actively deported Irish immigrants from poor houses, including some illegally deporting some Irish who were citizens of the US.
The reality is that prior to the federalization of immigration policy, states have more leeway than is discussed in popular culture to restrict immigration and did use it. While I think historical US policy was more welcoming to immigrants than the policies today, I do not think the US had a policy of virtually open borders.
I'm aware of such policies, but as far as I know the number of people turned away or expelled on such grounds was fairly negligible relative to the overall scale of immigration (tens of thousands over decades versus tens of millions of arrivals). To make an analogy to a hypothetical modern US policy, if the US today said something to the effect of "anyone can obtain legal residence if they aren't a known criminal, mentally ill, or physically incapacitated", I wouldn't have a problem calling that "open borders" even if there are technically some minimal qualifications.
Also of relevance is that these policies weren't universal, and if NY or Boston weren't taking, you'd simply see people going to Baltimore (and indeed a lot of people did).
I agree that deportations were historically less common in the past (by a factor of 5 or 10 after adjusting for foreign born population size.) I think these deportations were still sizable representing around 1% of the immigrant population in 1880 around when the policies ended. I agree that if there were only minimum qualifications, I would consider the US had virtually open borders. I don't share the view that the only criteria were criminality, mental illness, or disability. Instead, it seems clear that some policies were specifically targeted at the Irish, and the poor Irish explicitly, in addition to the aforementioned criteria. The fact that the states with the largest ports had anti-immigrant policies makes me hesitant to characterize US policy as virtually open borders.
I agree that the lack of universality is important. Personally, I would welcome the devolution of immigration policy to the states. I suspect this would result in much higher levels of immigration.
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