(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A senior columnist at the New York Times said that it was a mistake for Americans to accept the radical 1965 pro-immigration law implemented by President Lyndon B. Johnson, suggesting Democrats become more moderate when it comes to their immigration policies.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the [post-1965] immigration system we have, we sold to the American people partly on false pretenses,” David Leonhardt said, according to Breitbart.
Leonhardt is a columnist at the Times who recently wrote a book about the decline and the potential return of the prosperous middle class in the United States, dedicating mass immigration an entire chapter due to how it negatively affected American society.
“[LBJ and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.] repeatedly promised that they were not changing the level of immigration. They were just changing the mix… And in fact, the law’s authors were totally wrong about that — it led to a huge surge of immigration,” he said.
In his book, Leonhardt also wrote about how corrupt bureaucrats from Washington, DC, decided to destroy the American dream by implementing free trade and allowing mass immigration.
“The Democratic Party’s [pro-migration] position is unpopular with swing voters… We do not have laws on the books now saying that we just are going to allow millions and millions of people to come every year,” he said, adding that Democrats must adopt a centrist immigration policy.
“I think it often is based on an assumption that immigration has no trade-offs, either economic or political, and I really do think immigration has trade-offs, and it’s important to grapple with them,” he said.
The most ironic thing, according to Leonhardt, was that the leftists became so radical when it came to immigration that they never noticed how they started sharing the open-border views of Milton Friedman, a free trade economist who was touted by the American President that the left hates — Ronald Reagan.
