Here is my immigration piece, recently published in the American News.
Immigrants don't pose security threats
Do you have to be a racist or some other sort of bigot to believe that certain groups of immigrants pose a threat to national security? No, but it surely helps.
If you nurture a deep and irrational loathing for left-handed Lithuanian Lutherans, it won't take much to convince you that they represent an insidious, slow-motion invasion by hostile powers abroad. That, after all, was the basic message of Hitler's Mien Kampf, that the Jews were an infection in the body of the German Volk. But even my sainted grandmother, no Nazi by any stretch of the imagination, worried that a Catholic president would be more loyal to the Pope than to the Constitution.
In the past, and especially in America, reasonable people could always see that this was nonsense. German-Americans were no more likely to support the Kaiser or Hitler than the Bostonians over in little Italy were to back Mussolini. Of course, we have not always been reasonable about this, as the incarceration of a 120,000 Japanese-Americans in WWII demonstrates.
But even as that nasty business was going on, Nisei men in U.S. uniforms were fighting in Europe. In April 1945 in Italy, Tech Sgt. Yukio Okutsu took out three machine gun emplacements that had pinned down his platoon. He crawled through heavy fire to silence the first two with hand grenades. He flushed out the third by charging with his submachine gun, after he was momentarily stunned by a bullet glancing off his helmet. If Sgt. Okutsu isn't an American, well, I ain't neither.
Of course having a lot of German or Japanese immigrants made it easier for the odd spy to move around unnoticed, but trying to quarantine these groups for that reason would be like draining your rice fields because they hide the occasional snake. For every bad egg, our Germantowns and Chinatowns produced a thousand pairs of industrious elbows and more than a handful of heroes.
One odd case confirms the rule. Irish-Americans, representing one quarter of my pedigree, provided a lot of support to the Irish Republican Army. But this had the paradoxical effect of protecting the U.S. from IRA mischief. Our lads could afford to contribute to "the cause" precisely because they were so profitably invested in America. An act of IRA terrorism in New York or Chicago would have shut off the tap immediately and permanently.
What is true of the Italians and the Irish will turn out to be true of our Muslim immigrants. What matters is not who is stepping off the boat, but what they are stepping onto. Unlike Europe and pretty much everywhere else, American patriotism isn't attached to land, or language or lineage. It's attached to ink on parchment.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are all the fatherland we have or ever will have. However odd the syllables in your last name, sign it somewhere after John Hancock and you're in. Being in means that you and your children and your brother's children have a fair stake in America's liberty and prosperity. Why blow that by blowing something up? It's no accident that the dark souls behind 9/11 weren't from around here. No immigrant group in America has yet presented a demographic challenge to our security.
Unfortunately, this just isn't true for England. The 24 suspects arrested for plotting to blow up 10 jumbo jetliners were British born, as were the murderous clowns who last year planted bombs on London's subway trains. More than 80 percent of Britain's Islamic population consider themselves Muslim first and British second, if at all. The Guardian points out that this is higher than in "Jordan, Egypt or Turkey." It isn't just England that's in trouble. All over Europe, Muslim populations have been fertile breeding grounds for the noxious knuckleheads of radical Islam.
Of course some Americans have committed acts of terrorism, while others sympathize more with Hezbollah or the Iraqi insurgents than they do with the U.S. But they are about as likely to have a great-grandfather buried in American soil as to be recent immigrants. It has always been easier and more attractive to switch than to fight.
Kenneth C. Blanchard Jr., is a professor of political science at Northern State University. His columns appears occasionally in the American News. Write to him at the American News, P.O. Box 4430, Aberdeen, SD 57402, or e-mail [email protected]. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent those of Northern State University.
Recent Comments