Hillary Clinton told Goldman Sachs executives that Americans who want to limit immigration are “fundamentally un-American,” according to the leaked transcript of her private October 2013 speech made public by WikiLeaks.
Clinton’s statement is significant because it suggests that, according to polling data, Clinton views an overwhelming majority of the American electorate to be “fundamentally un-American.” According to data from Pew Research Center, 83% of the American electorate would like to see immigration levels frozen or reduced.
Clinton’s declaration describing those who want to limit immigration as “unAmerican” came in the context of her urging action on “immigration reform.”
“Immigration reform is so important,” Clinton told the Wall Street executives, as she demanded that Congress “get immigration reform done.”
By “immigration reform,” Clinton was referring to the 2013 Rubio-Schumer proposal, which she supported and which would have granted immediate amnesty and eventual citizenship to millions of illegal aliens, would have doubled the annual admission of foreign workers, and would have dispensed 33 million green cards to foreign nationals in the span of a single decade despite current record immigration levels.
Clinton went on to suggest that those who oppose such dramatic expansions to immigration are “fundamentally un-American”:
What I really resent most about the obstructionists is they have such a narrow view of America. They see America in a way that is no longer reflective of the reality of who we are. They’re against immigration for reasons that have to do with the past, not the future. They can’t figure out how to invest in the future, so they cut everything. You know, laying off, you know, young researchers, closing labs instead of saying, we’re better at this than anybody in the world, that’s where our money should go. They just have a backward-looking view of America. And they play on people’s fears, not on people’s hopes, and they have to be rejected. I don’t care what they call themselves. I don’t care where they’re from. They have to be rejected because they are fundamentally unAmerican.”
This is not the first time she has described sectors of the American electorate as “unAmerican.” At a September fundraiser earlier this year, Clinton described Trump supporters as “deplorable,” and “irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America,” Clinton said.
During her Goldman Sachs speech, Clinton went on to argue that being “American” is not a national identity, but rather is “an intellectual invention.”
“American was an invention,” Clinton declared. “It was an intellectual invention, and we have done pretty well for all these years. And these people want to just undermine that very profound sense of who we are. And we can’t let them do that. So it’s not just about politics or partisanship. It really goes to the heart of what it means to be American.”
Clinton’s declaration seems to echo a sentiment that has been expressed by mass migration enthusiast Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan, like Clinton, has previously suggested that America is not a country or a national identity, but is rather an intellectual idea.
“America is more than just a country,” Ryan said just a few months before Clinton delivered her speech to Goldman Sachs. “It’s more than Chicago, or Wisconsin. It’s more than our borders. America is an idea. It’s a very precious idea.”
Ryan’s statement came as he was stumping for the Rubio-Schumer immigration agenda in 2013 with open borders advocate Luis Gutierrez, who has since endorsed Hillary Clinton for President over Donald Trump. Gutierrez was also one of the first members of Congress to endorse Ryan for House Speaker–Gutierrez has called Ryan his “good friend” and “guiding light” on immigration.
Ryan’s statement is significant because while a country has borders, “ideas” do not. If America is an “idea” rather than a “country” that means that refugees in Somali have as much “right” to a job in the United States as the children of the American revolution.
Indeed, like Clinton, Speaker Ryan has a long record of pushing to expand record-high immigration levels and advocating for open borders. This goal is shared by Hillary Clinton, who went so far as to privately tell foreign bankers that her “dream” was to enact “open borders.”
Several reports have documented how immigration is not the only issue of agreement between Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton. As Breitbart News has extensively documented, Ryan’s views on foreign migration, foreign trade, and foreign wars more closely align with the views of Hillary Clinton than they do with the views of Donald Trump and the Republican electorate. Indeed, Sen. Tim Kaine has predicted that Speaker Ryan will be the key to passing a President Hillary Clinton’s agenda–including enacting the largest amnesty in U.S. history within her first 100 days in office.
The overwhelming similarities between the goals of establishment leaders in both political parties and the goals of their wealthy corporate donors, like Goldman Sachs, recently prompted Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein to denounce Hillary Clinton as a “corporatist” and the face of “#TheNewRepublicanParty.”
“Both Democrats and Republicans are funded by big corporate interests,” Stein has written, noting that these members of Washington’s “uniparty” are united in their shared desire to advance the goals of their wealthy donors rather than the desires of the people.
Bernie Sanders has previously explained how open borders–backed by both Clinton and Ryan–is a “Koch brothers proposal” that would dissolve national sovereignty and “would make everybody in America poorer” by allowing corporations to “bring in all kinds of people [who would] work for $2 or $3 an hour” and would drive down wages for American workers.
By Bernie Sanders’ own argument, Hillary Clinton’s “dream” is to enact a policy that would “make everybody in America poorer” and would do “away with the concept of [the United States as] a nation state.”
As a result of current federal policy, every year the U.S. issues one million plus new green cards; admits one million foreign workers, refugees, and dependents; and imports half a million foreign youths sought by college administrators. In 1970, fewer than one in 21 Americans were foreign-born, but today, as a result of the federal government’s four-decade-long green card gusher, nearly one in seven U.S. residents was born in a foreign country.
Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has explained that, far from being “fundamentally unAmerican,” recognizing limits and curbing immigration to protect American jobs and wages is “rational” and is the “mainstream” view held by most Americans.
“It is not mainstream, but extreme, to continue surging immigration beyond all historical precedent. And it is not rational, but radical, to refuse to recognize limits,” Sessions has explained.
Sessions has previously noted that Clinton’s desire to expand immigration beyond all-known historical precedent place her at odds with the vast majority of the American electorate. “Hillary Clinton has embraced a radical and extreme open borders agenda that, properly exposed, will make her un-electable,” Sessions has said.