Steve Bannon: ‘We’re a Nation of Citizens; We’re Not a Nation of Immigrants’

Breitbart News Executive Chairman and former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon says the United States is a “nation of citizens” and “not a nation of immigrants” in Keith Koffler’s new book Bannon: Always the Rebel.

In the book, Bannon shoots down a generational campaign by Washington, D.C. politicians and the open borders and cheap labor lobby that describes the founding of America as one based on a “melting pot” of immigrants.

Bannon says the U.S. is founded on its citizens, and therefore the needs of its citizens should come before those of foreign nations and foreign nationals.

Koffler details in the book:

Bannon says, “We’re a nation of citizens; we’re not a nation of immigrants,” correcting what he believes is a common misperception. “So now we have to start to act like citizens come first. All policy should be oriented to making the working people in this country and the middle class in this country have a better shot at success. And we’ve gotten away from that. What we’ve done is brought in huge global competition for their jobs, for their schools.”

Bannon, on his Breitbart radio show, interviewed Trump on November 19, 2015. At the time, Trump was more liberal on immigration than Bannon was, making the case that the United States should try to keep talented foreign-born students. “When somebody is going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, all the greats, and they graduate, and not only graduate, but do great, and we throw them out of the country, and they can’t get back in, I think that’s terrible. We’ve got to be able to keep great people in the country.” Trump said. “We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country.”

Bannon: “Um.”

Trump: “I think you agree with that. Do you agree with that?”

Bannon did not. “A country’s more than an economy,” he said.

“We’re a civic society.”

The book further explains Bannon’s assertion of how mass illegal and legal immigration — where the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million immigrants into the country every year — turns a profit for wealthy CEOs and big business, but is a detriment to American workers who see their wages stagnate for more than a decade and their jobs being taken by foreign nationals.

Bannon explains in the book:

The low-skill, low-wage, non-English speaking people entering the United States from Mexico are taking jobs from Americans, Bannon strongly believes. “The people most affected by illegal alien labor, is the black working class and the Hispanic working class,” he said. “Go into the inner city. That’s why they’re not paying a guy 12 bucks or 13 bucks to flip burgers at McDonald’s. Because they don’t have to! They get all the labor they want.”

Bannon seeks not just to end illegal immigration, but he wants to vastly curb legal immigration and reduce the number of refugees the United States takes. “Until we have the black working class and the Hispanic working class getting high-value-added jobs, we’ve failed as a society. To me: citizens first. And we don’t need a million immigrants in this country. Particularly, we don’t need a million immigrants that don’t come with a real set of skills.”

Koffler’s Bannon: Always the Rebel will be released for purchase on November 13 but can be pre-ordered on Amazon.