Victor Davis Hanson: We’ve Had Enough of the Fraud and Failure to Assimilate

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc discuss the Democrats’ acceptance of fraud and today’s immigrants who refuse to accept our culture.  
 
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.    

Sami Winc: So, Victor, let’s turn to a very interesting article in the New York Post by Jonathan Ingram. I think his first sentence is something to the effect of “What Democrats offer us is fraud.” 

And, of course, he was talking about the Minnesota fraud first, but then he turned more importantly and a greater a part of the article to Obamacare and how it has been subject of a lot of fraud, either fake customers being created by insurers so that they could get $1,000 per enrollee, or false income statements by people who are trying to get insured and they want as much subsidies as they can possibly get. 

So, there’s a lot of fraud in the Obamacare system, according to Ingram’s article. I was wondering your thoughts.

Victor Davis Hanson: We’ve got to remember how the Democratic mind works. They create a federal program. They put people in it to run it. Those people have friends and contractor companies that do business with it. No one’s salary is dependent on whether they do a good or bad job.

They’re there for life. They got a GS salary. Maybe the contractors have to worry a little bit. And so, if they allow the contractors to cheat or whether they cheat, there’s no downside. When you look at the Democratic reaction to this, they’re not angry.  

And Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, I don’t know why he did it. It was so candid. He summed it up. He said: What’s the big deal? They buy cars and junk and stuff.  

In other words, in their way of thinking, you just steal money from the government. Poor people get to have it. They buy nice stuff. It gets back and reinvested. It’s not the moral principle. Who cares about that? They don’t care.

I think what’s happening to people in this regard for the Democrats is the anecdotes are starting to add up. All over the 340 million people in the United States, there’s been one too many Minnesota frauds, one too many stories about these thefts in Obamacare, one too many stories about semi-trucks killing people with fraudulent driver’s licenses. One too many stories about this person and that person raped, killed by someone that came across the southern border. One too many personal incidents.  

You go into a store, and somebody’s ahead of you that does not speak the language of the country they wanted to come in. And they pull out like they’re playing cards. You know, it’s like, here’s a Jack, here’s a Queen, or here’s an EBD card. Ooh, it doesn’t work. Here’s another one. Another name, no problem. Here’s another one, another one, another one.  

And people are just saying it didn’t work, doesn’t work. And then they’re saying, “They’re gonna starve people.” And then we look at obesity and it’s epidemic in people on EBD cards. 

I just think they have something that nobody wants to buy anymore.  

And I think the whole welfare state is vestigial, ossified, calcified, that if somebody just kicked it, it would fall apart. Nobody wants it anymore. It has to have some free market substitute, incentives.

Winc: Can I ask you one thing on that since we did bring up the Somali fraud case in Minnesota? One of your readers, as I was reading comments, said it’s not 1 or 2 billion we’re talking about. It’s eight billion. It’s unconfirmed, and I’m not sure, but it’s a lot.

Hanson: We don’t know how much it is, but people have speculated. I always try to use the conservative figure.

Winc: Yeah, but I was wondering how you think this case … I mean, it seems completely unusual how at least the Right is willing to address this case as they are now saying the culture that came in here had flaws and it brought in flaws—i.e., thieving and stealing from government—that are destroying our society. You just really can’t handle it on broad scale.  

And the question is this, though: How do you think this is going to impact future assessments of immigration? Are people going to start considering the culture that’s brought in by each of the immigrants? 

Hanson: Yes, that’s what [President Donald] Trump said. But Trump just puts it in the crudest possible terms, Third World, destroying our own society. 

When I wrote ”Mexifornia” 23 years ago, I said if a person comes from Mexico, they have voted with their feet in saying this doesn’t work. I don’t have enough liberty, freedom, protection, prosperity, security. So, I want to come to this gringo country. Different traditions. But once he gets here, everybody likes Cinco de Mayo, piñatas, tacos, mariachi movies. Enriches the culture.

But if he has the same attitude that he had in Mexico: Oh, I have a dog, I can’t feed it. I’m just gonna drive out and dump it in front of somebody’s house. Or, well, I have a washing machine, I’ll do what I do in Mexico. I’ll just drive out, throw it outside into an orchard. Or my kids are in gangs, no big deal. If they have that attitude, then immigration doesn’t work.

So, it requires two things. It’s called the brutal bargain.

And that is the immigrant must disown his primary allegiance to his homeland, endure the taunts of being a traitor, prostate.

And the host must say, welcome. You want to be an American? Here’s what you have to do: Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Sing to me “God Bless America.” Tell me all about the Gettysburg Address. Tell me the difference between Queens and Manhattan.

I want to know something about the country. That’s what we have to do. And we don’t do that. And so, then we get shocked. Wow, these Somalis are … I mean, [Rep.] Ilhan Omar said Somaliland for Somalis only? My gosh, she’s an ethno-nationalist, isn’t she? But she doesn’t say that here.  

We should just say to her, “If you’re going to be an ethno-nationalist in Somalia, and there’s credible allegations you married your brother for immigration fraud, why don’t you just go back and create a good Somalia so people don’t have to flee their beloved homeland? But don’t come over here and make millions of dollars by playing a victim and call the president every day a racist, racist Islamophobe.”

It’s just like on spec. While you’re the biggest antisemitic, I mean, she was almost censored by the House for her antisemitism.

Yes, there is no more support for it. And people are going to get more and more emboldened. They’re going to say, you know what? I don’t care. Call me a racist. You call me anything in the world. But if I have a choice from letting somebody come into this country from the Congo, or Nigeria, that does not speak our language and has a whole different religious framework and has a whole different cultural assumption versus somebody who comes in from France or the Czech Republic who speaks perfect English and is educated and is here to make money and be prosperous, we’ll take him. That’s what we’ll do.  

And we’re not going to argue anymore and say you can’t bait us because you know what? You guys have run since the Hart-Kennedy Bill of 1965, and you changed immigration for the various point of not allowing anybody to come in under merit, and anybody to come from a European or British Commonwealth country. 

So, you had basically 60 years. 60 years you got your way, and you brought everybody in from the Third World, and it’s been very expensive.  

We’re not going to do it anymore. We’re not going to go after people from the Third World. We’re just going to say, we’re having a timeout. If you want to come, you have to have certain skills. If you’re from Oaxaca and you have a B.A. and you’ve got some skills and you have an engineering degree, you want to come in, you speak perfectly, no problem.

But otherwise, don’t try. 

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