Limiting Muslim Immigration
There are lots of good American citizens who are Muslims. However, until (and if) the spread of worldwide Islamic radicalism subsides, we should severely limit the number of Muslims allowed to immigrate to the US. Consider this:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities are discovering new home-grown cells of Islamist radicals in the United States that draw inspiration and moral support from al Qaeda, officials said on Tuesday.
Like local terrorism cells that have recently come to light in Canada and Europe, officials said the groups are comprised of disaffected young men in their teens and 20s who rely on the Internet to try to organize and plan potential attacks on the U.S. homeland.
We can pretend, putting on our politically-correct multicultural hats, that having a growing population of Muslim immigrants is no threat to our freedoms. That is just what Western Europeans did for decades. The results?
Well consider Hirsi Ali, who is a member of parliament in the Netherlands. She speaks out about the problems for Muslim women in the Netherlands. So if you speak out strongly about the problems with Islam in Western Europe, what is your life like? Here is an excerpt from a speech she gave last month (via PeakTalk):
It is common knowledge that threats against my life began building up ever since I first talked about Islam publicly, in the spring of 2002. Months before I even entered politics, my freedom of movement was greatly curtailed, and that became worse after Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004. I have been obliged to move house so many times I have lost count. The direct cause for the ending of my membership in parliament is that on April 27 of this year, a Dutch court ruled that I must once again leave my home, because my neighbors filed a complaint that they could not feel safe living next to me.
… To return to the present day, may I say that it is difficult to live with so many threats on your life and such a level of police protection. It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live. All that is difficult, but not impossible.
Across Europe dozens of people are in hiding and under police protection because of threats from Muslim extremists. Many seek refuge in the US. Hirsi Ali is moving to the US.
It may be hard to imagine this occurring in the US. We think of Muslims here as more assimilated and moderate. Some research says this is the case. But if we allow massive immigration of Muslims from backward societies like the Europeans have, we will surely end up with the same problems. One survey says that “81% of Detroit Muslims want Sharia law in Muslim countries”. And 250,000 Muslims now live in the Detroit area.
So can America really assimilate Muslims much better than Europe - or have we just not yet reached critical mass where enough population concentrations occur to cause things to take a turn for the worse? We should not be blindly experimenting to find out - pretending our society is so superior to the countries of Europe. Instead, we should strictly limit the number of Muslim immigrants each year.
How can we have a worldwide war on terror - that is fighting the effects of Muslim backwardness - yet pretend that there will be no problems if we allow large numbers of the same backward masses to immigrate to the US? That is exactly what the Europeans did - and we should be learning a lesson here.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:28 am
This is a problematic suggestion on many levels. We are fighting muslims who happens to be terrorists or terrorists who happens to muslins? This administration correctly pick the position that we are not fighting muslims, but terrorists. If we are serious about fighting terrorism, we need muslims help abroad and here at home.
If we are going to base our immigration policy on the level of threat to us, then what do we do with the extremel large hispanic population (Mexican, central americans) here. Shouldn’t we reduce their numbers first? Some of these people are actively involed in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and from thse two trades comes all sort of illegal activities. Why isn’t anyone making a big deal about it? It is because the hispanic lobby got cloud and can mobilized a million people demostration?
Some might say, these people didn’t blow anything up. Well, the cost in human life from of these activities far exceeded any terrorists again committed by radical terrorists thus far. Just look at our inner cities.
The issue of assimulation is a seperate problem. Any groups with strong religious/ethnic affiliations will be hard to assimulate. Example, can we say we have successfully assimulated the large migration of jews from Europe before WW2? How many of them and their decendants would say this country should unconditionally support Isreal even it might be contrary to US interest? If you ask this question in public, you risks being automatically labeled a racist. Why the double standard?
This is the problem with the salad bowl idea promoted by liberals. It weakens our national identity. We need to put the lid on the border and start the melting pot process once more. Otherwise, we might become balkanized beyond repaired.
June 15th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
I would say that high Muslim immigration as well as high immigration of low-income, low-skill Hispanics are problems. Having many more poor people (Hispanics) in future generations, as well as higher crime rates that accompany a larger lower class, will be a big problem. High Muslim immigration presents a somewhat different problem. It may introduce a small scale yet always present local terrorism that threatens anyone that criticizes Islam, just like in Europe now. In a way this is worse because it undermines one of our core freedoms - the freedom of speech.
August 6th, 2006 at 9:21 am
[...] Even if their parents are more moderate, there is no assurance that 2nd and 3rd generation American Muslims will not become radicalized and hostile to the US. This can easily occur. From a fundamentalist Islamic point of view, our culture is a descendent cesspool and our government is imperialistic and wrongly permits people to say offensive things about Islam (like printing cartoons!). [...]
September 4th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
[...] Hirsi Ali is the former member of the Dutch parliament who was run out of Europe by death threats from European Muslim fanatics (as I wrote about here). Her crime? Speaking up for Muslim women. [...]