THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

WOULD AFRIKANERS MAKE GOOD AUSTRALIANS? | 2003-09-27

If you think America's old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) never enforced the law, you are dead wrong. Hard-working Afrikaners settled in the United States and the old INS (with new names) is fighting to deport them.

Australia is the size of the continental United States, but three-quarters of its population is in the cities. Afrikaners would be just the people they need to settle the Outback, but don't hold your breath.

The respectable conservatives who now rule Australia brag endlessly about how they got rid of Australia's "whites only" immigration policy. There must be no place on earth to which whites can escape, and Australian conservatives have made sure their country is no exception.

The Boers still in Cape Town are largely colored, a mix of white and the Hottentots race the Boers saved. But the Boers who went on the Great Trek, the ones who would settle the countryside of Australia, are white.

Of course the fact that the Boers who would make good Australians are actually white is the reason Australia would not dare take them. So the Boers whose forefathers went on the trek now have nowhere to go.

The Boers trusted their respectable conservatives and they are trapped in a nightmare. Substitute the word "white Americans" for "Boers" in that sentence, and you may be writing the history of America's future history as we are writing it today.

We are building a country our children will want to escape from.

And nobody will take them.