IMMIGRATION: Time for Realism - Brief Article

National Review, June 17, 2002

How do Muslim terrorists get into this country? Any way they can -- and American immigration policy, and the manner in which it is enforced, give them many ways.

A recent report by Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies looks at 48 terrorists with al-Qaeda links who have operated in this country since 1993: the 9/11 hijackers, the first World Trade Center bombers, and others. Twelve were illegal aliens. Nineteen were visa holders, or asylum applicants. The rest were lawful permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Some of them broke immigration laws. Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, should have been denied a visa under Section 214(b) of the immigration law, which says that young, unmarried individuals with little income and no strong ties to an overseas residence should not be given temporary visas -- a description that fit the vagabond Atta to a T.

Other terrorists have profited from our willingness to throw a party, with an open bar, for the world. Most liberals, and some conservatives, have no objection to naturalizing historically high numbers of immigrants. Neither does Osama bin Laden, according to one of his henchmen, Khalid Abu al Dahab (involved in the bombings of our embassies in Africa), who told an Arabic newspaper that bin Laden "emphasized the necessity of recruiting as many Muslims with American citizenship as possible into the organization."

The Center for Immigration Studies recommends tighter policies, and tighter enforcement of them, across the board: more, and more skeptical, consular agents abroad; more INS agents and border guards here; fingerprints and photographs scanned into the watchlists for terror suspects; a computerized system to track entries and exits of foreign visitors; and, most important, lower levels of immigration overall, to shrink the haystacks in which needles must be sought, and to speed the assimilation of insular ethnic enclaves.

The two roadblocks to such reforms are Republican unrealism and liberal PC. President Bush and his demiurge Karl Rove have visions of a GOP Hispanic voting bloc. Hispanic Americans have responded as loyally to 9/11 as most other Americans, and al-Qaeda has not (yet) tried to slip in murderers over the southern border. But concern for Hispanic sensibilities keeps key Republicans immigration-friendly, and unserious about enforcement.

The multiculturalism of postmodern liberals encourages the immigrant populations we have to stay estranged from the mainstream of American life. While only a tiny portion of them will become killers, many more will be unhelpful in hunting killers down. Historically, when Americanism was demanded, immigrants responded. Irish immigrants, first Protestants, then Catholics, were perhaps the worst-treated white ethnic group in our history. Yet they fought well in our 19th-century wars. The German- American community was subjected to intense pressures during World War I. Yet the European commanders in both world wars -- Pershing and Eisenhower -- were Americans of German origin. During World War II, Japanese- Americans on the West Coast were interned. But American nisei military units were among the most zealous. After 9/11, when every sonorous voice, public and private, spoke comfort to Arab-Americans, Arab-American spokesmen carped, and the community responded with a mixture of silent loyalty and sullen indifference. What the proportions of the last two are is anybody's guess.

We have long known that high immigration and slack enforcement were economically null and culturally disruptive. Will we be serious now that we know they are deadly?