NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE Y ou know you shouldn’t have done it. You know that it was wrong to begin your life as an American by breaking an American law. You should have waited your turn. You should have responded to all those questions, the answers to which, collated, would answer the only question that really matters, “Will you be a good American citizen”?

You had heard the grapevine news that the Americans were now letting anybody in, no questions asked. You didn’t believe it. Why would America, big and smart and rich, not protect her own border? Why would America not place a value on her precious homeland as high as the rest of the world does?

You waited. You listened. The reports kept coming. One day you heard from a villager that her brother, just last week, had walked across a sandbar into America. As easy as that.

You knew there was risk — the border could close at any moment, the patrols could start shooting — but you knew in your gut that it was a chance that might never come again. And you knew, or thought you knew, that in the end the Americans might forgive you for believing in their dream, or at least they might admire you for taking the risk to be part of it.

You hugged the women goodbye. Your mother was too weak to make the trip, your sisters too young. You stuffed a few things in a backpack and began the long trip north. You overpaid a hustler to hitch a ride. You walked forever, usually in the company of people who, like you, were frightened to recognize in their midst a drug dealer, and even worse, a girl-dealer. What dream were they chasing, you wondered? Were they trying to hurt America? You hoped that they would get hassled, or for some reason forced to turn back.

And finally, when you thought you couldn’t walk another 50 yards, you came to a rushing river and you waded across and then swam, as it tried to carry you far downstream. And then you were there, on the good side, the northern side of the border. You were, finally, in some real if unrealized sense . . . an American.

The question for both of us now is: What kind of American will you be? Under the people who currently run the country, you won’t be awakened by a knock on the door. Armed and resolute men will not be chasing you down and throwing you in jail or back into that rushing river. You’re here for good, and we both know it. So let’s talk, bluntly.

Do you deserve the privileges of American citizenship? No, you don’t. The rule of law still means something here. Could you change our minds by taking up the responsibilities of American citizenship? You might. And, frankly, it’s the only way we could ever find it in our hearts to forgive you.

So you should start by paying your dues. They’re in arrears, but you might be able to catch up.

Remember why you came. Many Americans think you came for the free stuff. Some of the bloggers and cable squawkers say you came to climb aboard the gringo gravy train with its free health care, almost-free food, and cut-rate housing.

That’s not why you came. We both know that. You had plenty of free stuff where you came from – or, to put it more directly, you had endless promises of free stuff from your large and rapacious government. You heard those promises year after year, but you learned early on that the free stuff came at a high price: You were dragged back and forth across the sandpaper reality of socialist pretension. And later you learned that the free stuff always became scarce stuff, as it was siphoned off by the middlemen and the bureaucrats, for themselves and their friends.

No, you came here for the chance at a better life, a free American life. You came here to build something solid for yourself and the people you love.

And you can’t wait to get started. You couldn’t miss those signs as you walked through town. In almost every store window, you saw a handmade poster shouting not “Free Stuff,” but “Now Hiring.” Those jobs, the ones you will soon learn are demeaned by fancy Americans as “minimum-wage jobs,” look just about perfect to you. They look like a great place for a new American to start. Who knows, you might wind up running the store. Or owning it.

Mind your mother. She didn’t know much history, but she knew the big things. She knew that every country in the world had practiced some form of slavery, but that one of them – one of them – had fought a civil war to free its slaves. It was a bitter and bloody war, pitting neighbor against neighbor, cousin against cousin. It went on for years, but the righteous side finally won and America became, uniquely, the land of the free. Your mother loved America.

And you know exactly what she would say about the talk you’re already hearing about “systemic racism.” She would say that she knew systemic racism and this ain’t it. She had lived her whole life in a mono-racial society where racial discrimination was not only illegal but went officially unremarked. But it’s a funny thing, she would say, about a big, happy, one-race society: It was the light-skinned people who had the indoor jobs and drove the new cars and lived in the big houses. And it was the dark-skinned people who worked the menial jobs and drove the clunkers and cleaned the toilets in the big houses.

Bring your values, not your habits. America is the best country in the world, we both know that. But it’s not heaven on earth. We have problems, and you can help with two of them.

The first problem is that Americans have stopped going to church. Protestants, Catholics, Jews – religious observance is down, down, down. The number of people saying they believe in God is sliding steadily.

This is a special problem for America because, as political philosophers have been telling us for 300 years, a democracy can thrive only with a virtuous people. Now, nobody is saying that there’s a one-to-one relationship between a regular churchgoer and a virtuous citizen — between somebody who believes in a transcendent moral order and somebody who takes personal responsibility — but the correlation is tight and the implication clear. From its very first days to its very recent days, America has depended for moral equilibrium on its faith community.

So, go to church. Save a democracy.

The other problem is that white American women have stopped having babies. (I could tell you why, but you wouldn’t believe me.) They aren’t even having enough babies to replace themselves, which is to say that, absent a trickle of immigration from Europe and the Anglosphere, white America would be shrinking rapidly. This isn’t the America you signed up for. Before you know it, she could become old, unproductive, listless.

So meet a nice girl and start a family. Save the country.

One last word about demography. Here in America’s multiracial society, where the white population is shrinking, the Asians are growing slowly and the blacks are flat-lining. Only the Hispanic population is growing rapidly. Demography is not quite destiny, but it can tell you what the future will look like if present trends persist. So while it won’t happen next year, or probably in the next decade, it could very well happen in your lifetime: We may see here in America the transfer of political power from one race to another.

So take care of America. It could soon be yours.