Tag Archives: immigration

Immigration and Integration

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Michael Adebolajo, the terrorist who butchered a British soldier, is along with his accomplice, a man who has no use for British culture, British economics, British politics, British mores, British anything.  He is a soldato [sic] in an Islamic jihad that seeks to destroy Great Britain.

[Founder of the now-banned Islamist organization al-Muhajiroun Anjem] Choudary says that he was [Omar Mohammed, a radical Islamist cleric who urges his followers to fight the jihad] Bakri’s right hand.  Working together, he says, they aimed to rally Muslim youth throughout the country against the policies of the British government and usher them onto the streets.

When he is asked how he wants to change the UK, Choudary smiles gently.  …  He insists that he wants to introduce Sharia law throughout the country as well as ban alcohol and gambling.  And, of course, abolish the monarchy.  He wants to transform Buckingham Palace into a mosque.  Choudary sees jihad as a means of defending Islam.  He has praised the 9/11 terrorists—and he refuses to condemn the London bombers from 2005.

And

A friend of Choudary’s steps up to the table.  He calls himself Mohammed and also wears a black robe.  He is in an excellent mood.  “The entire country’s afraid now,” he says with glee.  Mohammed says that he happened to run into Adebolajo a few weeks ago, “but didn’t notice anything special about him.”

These people did not “immigrate” into Great Britain in order to participate in and take advantage of all that Great Britain and British culture had to offer.  They came to radically change the very culture that made the country great, to make it over into the country from which these people came.

They refuse to assimilate into British society; instead they demand that British society assimilate into their homeland’s society.

The British have no obligation to accommodate them, nor do the British have an obligation to accept into their country people such as these—indeed, no nation has an inherent obligation to accept any individual or group who wishes, for any reason, to enter.

The British should accommodate these people and their ilk in one respect, though: accept their refusal to assimilate—send them back home.  The safety, the very identity, of the country demands it.

And so does the safety and identity of the United States demand similar responses to those who do not wish to integrate themselves into that which has made us so great, but who, on the contrary, wish to radically change us, to make us over into an extension of their homeland.

All Immigrants Look Alike

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That’s what Republicans say when they attempt to block immigration reform on the basis that all those new immigrants—whether newly arrived or newly legalized—will vote Democratic and change the dynamic of American politics, if not the fabric of American society.

These Republicans, apparently, also so much lack confidence in the Conservative message that they won’t get off their dead a*es and go talk to the new immigrants about the wonders of conservatism.  But, then, they won’t even leave their Congressional offices to go talk to present Americans about the strengths of Conservative values, preferring instead to hold the odd press conference on the Hill, or to toss a speech over the podium at some high-minded Center for This or Library of That, or to summon the plebes to an audience at a “Town Hall” meeting.  At which they blather on in vague glittering generalities.

You know, it’s just barely possible that the folks who run the high stakes risks for the high stakes payoffs just to get here, and then pick our crops or clean our houses or work in our factories (such as they are) or start their businesses from scratch are the sort of folks we actually want in our country: conservative, hardworking, self-reliant, responsible future citizens.

Maybe Republicans should get out of their way, and welcome them.  Yes, there are deadbeats and criminals who come in on the flood.  That’s what border security and visa controls are for.  However, a filter only works when it lets stuff (and people) through, and it’s only practically useful when it lets the flow run (generally) freely.  So Democrats and unions need also to get out of the way of these future citizens, and let visa caps be eliminated and serious border security be implemented.  (Or are they afraid of the Conservative message, too?)

The primary problem, though, is those Republicans who insist, as they did of the monolithic nature of Communism during the last century’s Cold War, on the monolithic Democrat nature of immigrants.  And fear them for that.  The competition of ideas is not a thing a Conservative fears.  Neither should Republicans.

Our Founders insisted on treating people as the individuals they are.  Our modern Republicans should do the same.

Immigration and Assimilation

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National Review Online has an article on the unfolding (immigrant) terrorist attack in Boston (unfolded: the two proximate terrorists are dead or caught; unfolding: learning from the surviving terrorist whether they acted alone or as part of a larger op).  In the article, John O’Sullivan talks about the assimilation into British society of the immigrant terrorists who attacked the British subway system 7 July 2005.

For almost the entire youth of the 7/7 bombers, the British had acted as if they were ashamed of their national identity and history.  So young men, with the usual propensity of young men to want to identify with patriotic and idealistic causes, had been told that there was nothing admirable or heroic about being British.  It was a sort of swindle, and one, moreover, that had been perpetrated especially upon people of their ethnic backgrounds.  They had therefore looked around for a heroic cause they could identify with.  The radical Islamists provided them with the cause of radical Islamism—and they embarked on the relatively short road to mass murder.

Sound familiar?  O’Sullivan thinks so, too:

The fact that Senator Schumer has declared ex cathedra that the Boston bombings have no significance for the immigration bill before Congress merely shows that folly has no natural internal limit.

Particularly in light of the older brother’s continued feeling of alienation from American society:

I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them[.]

Of What are the Senate Progressives So Afraid?

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Or is it that, since they already know all the answers, they have no need for actual facts or discussion of them?

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D, VT) has decided that the massive immigration overhaul bill on which the Gang of Eight are working behind locked doors, only deserves a single hearing before the Democrats vote it up and send it to the House.

Shades of Obamacare.  How’s that working out for us?

Plainly, since Democrats are so embarrassed by this pending legislation that they don’t want it discussed in public in any serious form, it’s a bad bill and needs to be voted down.

Some Questions about the Labor-Chamber of Commerce Accord on Immigrant Labor

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Over the last few days, Big Labor and Big Business have reached a working agreement on one the last (apparently) sticking points in the immigration reform idea being worked by the Immigration Gang of Eight in the Senate.  This agreement, which centers on low-skill “guest workers,” has the following outlines.  These guest workers

  • would be paid the higher of the prevailing industry wage as determined by the Labor Department or the actual employer wage
  • would be allowed to pursue a path to citizenship and to change jobs after they arrived in the United States

Moreover, the visas

  • would be issued under a W Visa program that would start at 20,000 visas, rise to 35,000 visas in the second year, 55,000 in the third, and 75,000 in the fourth.  In the fifth year, the program would expand or shrink based on the unemployment rate, the ratio of job openings to unemployed workers and various other factors.  A maximum of 200,000 guest visas would be granted each year after the fourth, with a maximum of 15,000 visas per year for some construction occupations
  • although low-skilled construction workers would be included, trades like crane operators and electricians would be explicitly excluded
  • one third of all visas available in any given year would go to businesses with fewer than 25 employees

Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, says of this agreement

We have created a new model, a modern visa system that includes both a bureau to collect and analyze labor market data, as well as significant worker protections.

I have a number of questions about this.

  • Why do we need another government bureaucracy to assess this program and to determine the allowed limits—and wages—to the expanding and contracting visa program?  Why not let the free market determine the demand for labor?
  • Why do we need a minimum wage—which suppresses hiring?  Why not let the market for those low skills determine the wages paid?
  • Why does this guest worker program need a special path to citizenship?  If the immigrants are here legally, and if they’re allowed to stay and to change jobs, they already have the existing citizenship path that any other legal immigrant has.
  • Why do we need a quota on visas?  If the end game is to let the program expand or shrink based all those government-assessed factors, why not, instead, let it expand or shrink more responsively and efficiently based on market factors: demand for labor as driven by demand from consumers and businesses for the product on which that labor will work?

To abuse an old sitcom’s tag line: hold it.  I don’t think you’ll like this picture.