Egyptian national convicted in Virginia of lying about business dealings with Hamas leader

"but he suddenly drew a blank when it came to Mousa Abu Marzook, a designated terrorist."

'Cranial Rectosis' is frequently observed among those caught engaging in Jihadi activities. The cure involves extended time in isolation to insure that the disease is contained.

I would suggest to put him on a helicopter, and fly over some Arab desert and drop him off home, I'm sure that a kind beduin will find him and they can drink Camel Pi**( I hear its a delicacy with them ) on the way whilst he relates his experience at the hands of the infidels.

Joe Bannanas.....

I strongly disagree with your statement.

The reason being, if he was dropped fro a helicopter over an arab desert, there's a distinct possibility that he might survive being a sand-snake and all (and the sand providing a soft landing).

I'd opt for booting his hog-ass out of the cargo-door of a plane 10,000ft up, while flying over the Swiss Alps.

Rikki, you're just plain mean.......I knew I liked you for some reason......

Hi everyone,

This is not a comment on the article but please help me gather some signatures.Here is a message to you all from me ..

Dear friend,

As you know the french press is anti Bush, America and Israel

Please sign this petition against the FRENCH PRESS.

http://www.acmedias.org/petition_e.asp

It takes only a few seconds, please, pass it to your friends and

groups you belong to.

Thank-you. Kristian

So why aren`t these people expressing their pride and deep beliefs in these militant tenants of the Quran,Hadiths,or the 36 articles of the Hamas Charter?

No,it can`t be that they are ashamed of such activities if they are doing them for the love of Allah? If it is such a wonderful thing they are participating in, why not share it with all of us?

Yes like; praise us oh Allah for we have killed some more of those evil children of the infidels.Recognize how brave we are oh Allah!

18th September 2004

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/09/18/634579-ap.html

"He said in May they had told the U.S. officials that Pakistanis detained at Guantanamo Bay were not members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, and that the men had gone to Afghanistan in response to appeals by Islamic leaders"

13th October 2004 (less than one month later)

"Militant refuses call to release Chinese hostages: TANK, Oct 13: An Al-Qaeda-linked tribesman who spent time in Guantanamo Bay has rejected an appeal by tribal elders to free two Chinese hostages whom he has threatened to kill, mediators said today. Abdullah Mahsud told a delegation that he would not negotiate releasing the Chinese engineers unless his men were allowed to leave their besieged base with the hostages, chief negotiator Mirajuddin told AFP. (AFP) (Updated @ 12:10 PST) "

Making him gatorbait might be more effective!

Concerning released detainees from Guantanamo. Some are coming back as PLANNERS and fighters. It appears that their countries of origin don't mind if they rejoin the jihad, and are actually complicit!

>As you know the french press is anti Bush, America and Israel
>Please sign this petition against the FRENCH PRESS.
>http://www.acmedias.org/petition_e.asp

This is silly. Sure, France is anti-American, have been for decades, but what is this petition going to do? Are all the French Press going to quit suddenly? What's next, a petition that Muslims have to be friendlier to Jews? Nobody will follow this.

Second, I'm not from Israel, and no offense, but Israel is not my problem. I sympathize with their plight, but I think the US has enough to deal with all by itself.

Third, half of Americans are anti-Bush, so watch it.
http://www.republicansforkerry04.org
http://www.independentsforkerry.org
http://anotherrepublicanforkerry.com

The Liberal Government up here in Canada was so worried about losing the "Arab/Muslim" vote that they got tough with fund-raiser for Hamas and Hezbollah by taking away their "Charity" status so donation can't be claimed on Tax-returns.

Wow,that's got them running,this explains why we now don't have working Submarines,safe Sea-King helicopters,fully usable C-130 cargo plane,desert uniforms,Tanks for our "Tank Squad",and the epitome of insults,the removal of the word "Armed" forces from the Military title.

The tree-hugging peacenik's are convinced that if we take the guns away from the Police that the crime will go down because the criminals only carry weapons to proyect them from the Police when they use their guns.
So lets all get rid of any form of National defences and terrorism by the Jihadists will stop and Islam will be peaceful and tolerant.
Blah blah,blah blah,blah blah blah blah.

NO ISLAM - KNOW PRACE

I don't really believe that half of voting America is anti-Bush.

I predict that we will follow in the footsteps of the Australian voting public.

There was a lot of Howard bashing in the weeks and days leading to the election in Australia. Even Kerry's treasonous sister was over there campaigning against Howard and for 'Americans for Kerry.'

But lo and behold, the people who have been by our side in every war voted overwhelmingly (52%)for the re-election of Prime Minister John Howard!

This is going to happen here in the US on November 2nd. Americans do not want a wavering, capitulating, pro France, pro partial birth abortion, anti military, pro leftist agenda, more liberal than Ted Kennedy, talking out of both sides of his mouth President in the Whitehouse.

He complains that Bush wants bunker busting nukes! This is how naive Kerry is.

Kerry said if elected he will give Iran nuclear material for G-d's sake! That sends shivers down my spine.

Kerry thinks if we give up our nuclear arms all the other nations will follow suit!(Iran, North Korea) Riiight...

George Bush isn't a great orator -- he has feet of clay like many of our heroes. But he isn't a blue nosed, anti-American international socialist elitest hypocrite!( with a trial lawyer for a vice President)

If John Kerry wins in November, G-d forbid, we deserve him and under his administration we will learn some very hard lessons. And should any harm befall him, our Commander-in-chief will be the little twerp, John Edwards!

Mega! It's been a while.

You know, lots of countries were not our problem in the last century, and we should have just left them be:

England.
France.
The Phillipines.
China. (Remember the Flying Tigers? Probably not)
The list is endless....

Kemaste said:

"I predict that we will follow in the footsteps of the Australian voting public."

I hope you're right, Kemaste. If Kerry wins, the whole burden of the terror problem will fall on the shoulders of the Brits and the Aussies.

Geez--when you realize that only three countries in the entire world constitute the major defense of civilization itself against the global conquest ambitions of Islam, it's kind of depressing.

No offense intended to the several nations such as Poland, Japan, etc., who are also bravely facing this enemy, but if the U.S. goes, and then the Brits and the Aussies, they can't really be expected to win this thing.

Where the hell IS everybody?

Rikki

ROFLMFO.....that was a good one.

I hope Soliman Biheiri is deported forthwith after completion of his term in prison. It is also important that those of his relatives who are in the US as a consequence of his residence, are also deported.

"Militant refuses call to release Chinese hostages: TANK, Oct 13: An Al-Qaeda-linked tribesman who spent time in Guantanamo Bay has rejected an appeal by tribal elders to free two Chinese hostages whom he has threatened to kill, mediators said today. Abdullah Mahsud told a delegation that he would not negotiate releasing the Chinese engineers unless his men were allowed to leave their besieged base with the hostages, chief negotiator Mirajuddin told AFP. (AFP) (Updated @ 12:10 PST) "

This is at least the third Guantanamo prisoner I've read about who re-joined the jihad the minute he was released.

There was the guy killed leading an attack in Afghanistan. Then there was the Arab 'Danish' citizen released back to Denmark, who promptly announced he was leaving for Chechnya to join in attacks there.

And now this guy holding Chinese hostages. And these are the ones no longer considered a threat!

Anyone know of any other backsliders? We should be keeping a scorecard.

Needless to say, I haven't seen anything about this in any mainstream media. You'd think it would make a pretty good story for a decent reporter. (oxymoron alert?)

DP111

"also important that those of his relatives who are in the US as a consequence of his residence, are also deported."

Finally . . .I'm so relieved to hear someone else voice this opinion! I would hate to think that the dependants of a deported (terror linked) convict could remain and seek revenge against us - or - provide a safe house to others connected to terror.

Mega's post:

"Israel is not my problem. I sympathize with their plight, but I think the US has enough to deal with all by itself."

Based on your attitude towards Israel I can see why you are voting for Kerry.

Before 9/11, I thought the same way. I even blamed much of the terrorism in Israel on the non-stop construction of Jewish settlements. My first reaction following 9/11 was anger against Israel and anger against our government for not being "even-handed" in the Olso "peace process."

Then I read the Koran.

That turned upside-down the PC paradigm of "all religions being good/bad in their own way." It exposed the lie I had been believing, and more research I did with books and websites made me understand exactly what the people of Israel are up against.

If you love civilization, human decency, freedom, and life, Israel is your problem.

Those who understand the global context of jihad also understand that Israel has been on the front line of this jihad for more than 50 years.

America's alliance with the Jewish state has saved America from the relentless Arabization faced by Europe.

If Israel goes, the Islamofascists will see this as a much bigger victory than the withdrawl of the Soviets from Afghanistan.

They will not be satiated. They will be emboldened.

I sudder to imagine their next move.

If Israel goes, so goes the world...

God bless America, the leader of the free world,

and God bless Israel, the keeper of the flame.

I know this is OT, but I hope everyone gets a chance to read what the Guardian Newspaper in England is doing to try to influence our elections.

My fellow non-Americans ...

The result of the US election will affect the lives of millions around the world but those of us outside the 50 states have had no say in it - until now. In a unique experiment, G2 has assembled a democratic toolkit to enable people from Basildon to Botswana to campaign in the presidential race. And with a little help from the folks in Clark County, Ohio, you might help decide who takes up residence in the White House next month. Oliver Burkeman explains how

Get the name of a US voter

Wednesday October 13, 2004
The Guardian

It's just possible that you have heard this once or twice before recently, but the forthcoming American election, on November 2, may be the most important in living memory. People have been saying this about every presidential race for decades - but, as one environmentalist put it recently in a US newspaper interview, precisely the problem with crying wolf is that sometimes there is a wolf. You would be forgiven, though, for feeling increasingly helpless as you hear the "most important election" mantra repeated daily: unless you happen to be a voter in a handful of swing states, there's little you can do about the final result. If you're not American, the situation is more acute. Certainly, the actions of the US impact on our lives in overwhelming ways; British political life may now be at least as heavily influenced by White House policy as by the choices of UK voters. And yet, though the US Declaration of Independence speaks of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", you don't, of course, have a vote. You can't even donate money to the campaigns: foreign contributions are outlawed. And you're unlikely to have the chance to do any campaigning on the ground. All you can do is wait and watch: you're powerless.

Or are you? At G2, that sounded like fighting talk. Where others might see delusions of grandeur, we saw an opportunity for public service - and so, on the following pages, we have assembled a handy set of tools that non-Americans can use to have a real chance of influencing the outcome of the vote. We've identified ways to give money to help your preferred candidate, even though direct campaign contributions from foreigners aren't allowed. There are ideas for making your voice heard in the influential local media outlets where it could really count. And at the core of it is a unique scheme to match individual Guardian readers to individual American voters, giving you the opportunity to write a personal letter, citizen to citizen, explaining why this election matters to you, and which issues you think ought to matter to the US electorate. It may even be a chance to persuade somebody to use their vote at all.

To maximise the likelihood of your efforts making a difference, we've zeroed in on one of the places where this year's election truly will be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor's edge between Republicans and Democrats. In the 2000 election, Al Gore won Clark County by 1% - equivalent to 324 votes - but George Bush won the state as a whole by just four percentage points. This time round, Ohio is one of the most crucial swing states: Kerry and Bush have been campaigning there tire lessly - they've visited Clark County itself - and the most recent Ohio poll shows, once again, a 1% difference between the two of them. The voters we will target in our letter-writing initiative are all Clark County residents, and they are all registered independents, which somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable.

Several of the ideas described here can easily be applied across the US too, though, and we have provided further resources on our website for this purpose. While there's no point being coy about Britain's preferences in this election (never mind those of Guardain readers) - a poll last month put backing for Kerry at 47%, against 16% for Bush - we have included information for supporters of both main candidates.

It's worth considering at the outset how counterproductive this might all be, especially if approached undiplomatically. Anybody might be justifiably angered by the idea of a foreigner trying to interfere in their democratic process. But this year the issue is more charged than ever: the Bush/Cheney campaign has made a point of portraying Kerry as overly concerned about what other nations think, and the Democrat's ambiguous debate point about American foreign policy decisions needing to pass a "global test" has become one of the president's key lines of attack. "People don't necessarily want to hear what people from other countries have to say," says Rachelle Valladares, the London-based chair of Democrats Abroad. "If you contact someone you know personally in the States, and urge them to vote, it would probably carry twice the weight." Michael Dorf, a Columbia university law professor who has studied foreign influences on US elections, points out that it would not be to either candidate's advantage "to be seen as the candidate of the foreigners. Part of it's just xenophobia, but there is also a sense that, you know, this is our election: you vote for your parliament and prime minister, we vote for our president and Congress."

On the other hand, being from Britain ought to give you a certain leverage: in stump speeches and debates, Bush has repeatedly praised Tony Blair's cooperation over Iraq, making America's long-treasured alliance with the UK key to the president's defence of his foreign policy. Kerry, too, knows that he's speaking to a resilient strand of opinion when he emphasises the need for strong international alliances: a better coalition in Iraq, he constantly reiterates, might have saved US lives. (One recent poll suggested that 43% of Americans think that declining world respect for their nation is a "major problem".) As a British citizen, you can certainly wield some influence, but you could seriously alienate people too.

Write to a voter

The most powerful transatlantic connection is a personal one, so we have designed a system to match individual Guardian readers with individual voters in Clark County, in the crucial swing state of Ohio. To join in, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty and enter your email address. You'll receive, by email, the name and postal address of a Clark County voter. We have included only those voters who chose to list themselves as unaffiliated, instead of as Republican or Democrat: that is no guarantee that they are persuadable, of course, but it does increase the chances. The data on which our system is based is publicly available, but we have designed it to give out each address only once, so there is no danger of recipients getting deluged.

In formulating your letter, you will need to introduce yourself: no individual Clark County voter will have any reason to be expecting your communication. And in choosing your arguments, keep in mind the real risk of alienating your reader by coming across as interfering or offensive. You might want to handwrite your letter, for additional impact, and we strongly recommend including your own name and address - it lends far more credibility to your views, and you might get a reply.

Finally, post your letter soon. Letters sent by regular airmail from the UK to the US usually take five days to reach their recipient, and there is little time to waste. Postage costs 43p for a postcard, 47p for a letter weighing 10g or less, and 68p for a letter weighing up to 20g. You don't have to visit a post office, but Royal Mail recommends writing "Par Avion - By Airmail" on the front of the envelope, and your return address on the back.

Give money

American law forbids foreigners from giving money to affect the outcome of a federal election - except that, on closer inspection, it doesn't. You're banned from donating to the campaigns themselves, or to many of the independent campaigning groups that fight explicitly on behalf of one candidate. So you need to identify officially non-partisan groups whose activities, none the less, have the practical effect of helping one candidate over the other. "Perhaps the most important way foreigners could help John Kerry would be to help out those organisations which have, as part of their mission, fostering African-American voter turnout," says Nathaniel Persily, a Pennsylvania university expert on election law. "It's quite clear that if there was 100% African-American turnout in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, John Kerry would win this election running away." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the most obvious choice here - an influential, well-organised, non-partisan body whose get-out-the-vote activities are extremely likely to end up helping the Democrats.

"On the Republican side, it would be the Christian conservatives," Persily adds. "[Bush adviser] Karl Rove has tried to register four million additional Christian evangelicals, and if they all turn out, then Bush wins." The leading option here would be the Christian Coalition, which describes itself as "America's leading grassroots organisation defending our Godly heritage". As for more overtly partisan organisations, we don't recommend trying to donate - but it's worth pointing out that much of the law banning foreign contributions has never been tested in court and, argues Michael Dorf at Columbia, may even be unconstitutional on grounds of free speech. "If a group calling itself Europeans for Truth wants to run ads giving their view of the truth," Dorf says, "it's hard to draw a principled distinction between that and a British newspaper available at a US newsstand that has an editorial calling Bush and Blair liars."

Visit the NAACP website: http://www.naacp.org
Give to the NAACP: https://www.naacp.org/contribute.php or fax a credit-card donation to 001 410 580 5623.
Give to the NAACP in Ohio:
Send a money order marked "donation" to NAACP, 233 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 USA. Give to the Christian Coalition: www.cc.org or phone 001 202 479 6900.
Give to the Christian Coalition in Ohio: www.ccohio.org or phone 001 330 8871922, or send a money order to Christian Coalition of Ohio, PO Box 852, Westfield Center, Ohio 44251, USA. For resources on giving money in other swing states, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.

Make your voice heard

If you want to broadcast your views to a wider audience, focus on the media outlets swing-state residents are reading and hearing. Take care: deluging the same organisation with numerous near-identical messages rarely impresses (we speak from experience), and some activists have run into controversy recently by disseminating "astroturf" - letters purporting to be personal but emanating, in reality, from party headquarters. Springfielders read the Springfield News Sun (www.springfieldnewssun.com;) and the Columbus Dispatch (www.dispatch.com), based in the nearby state capital, is another influential outlet.

If you're feeling brave, though, you might want to explore the highly influential talk-radio airwaves. On the right, the overarchingly dominant figure is Rush Limbaugh, heard on hundreds of stations nationwide, including 19 in Ohio, some of which can be heard in Clark County. This is a strictly at-your-own-risk proposition, but if you want to join the debate, listen to the show live on the web at www.rushlimbaugh.com, between 5pm and 8pm UK time every weekday, and call in on 001 800 282 2882. Among yesterday's topics: why John Kerry doesn't understand the significance of 9/11; why John Kerry would be dangerous for America; how John Kerry politicised the death of Christopher Reeve.

Air America, the upstart liberal radio counterweight, is still in its infancy, but it can be picked up in parts of Ohio and other battleground states. Listen to the flagship show presented by the leftwing humourist Al Franken at www.airamericaradio.com, also between 5pm and 8pm on weekdays, then call in on 001 866 303 2270 (neither call will be free from the UK). Franken's focus yesterday was the "absolutely shameless" behaviour of the conservative media in America.

You can target your message on other key states by visiting a website such as www.electoral-vote.com, which updates regularly with the latest local polls, so that you can identify where the race is currently closest. Select your state, then call up a list of relevant media contacts - or even send them emails directly - via the impressively comprehensive Capitol Advantage site at http://ssl.capwiz.com/congressorg/dbq/media/.

Win the chance to campaign on the ground

We are offering the four people who write the most persuasive letters to Clark County voters the chance to travel there and campaign in person. At the end of October, the winners will accompany a group of Guardian journalists to Ohio to meet voters and participate in the closing days of the race. For a chance to take part, you should email a copy of your letter to clark.county@guardian.co.uk, or send a copy to Clark County competition, G2, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Letters should arrive no later than October 20.

· For more details on how you can get involved and latest news from the US campaign trail, go to guardian.co.uk/uselections2004. For terms and conditions of the Clark County competition, see www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.

Special report
US elections 2004

Have your say
13.10.2004: How you can have a say in the US election
13.10.2004: A brief guide to Clark County
13.10.2004: Dear Clark County voter: three prominent Britons reach out
13.10.2004: How to contact the US media

Sorry, but another OT MUST READ ARTICLE !!!

This about immigration.

Please take the time to look at it.

Exposing the Open-Borders Arguments
By Lawrence Auster
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 14, 2004

Anyone who has followed or participated in America's long‑running immigration debate knows that opposing the open‑immigration ideology is like wrestling with Proteus: as soon as you think you have your adversary pinned, he changes his shape, maybe into a bird or sea‑monster, and escapes your grasp. As a result of this mercurial quality of the open-borders arguments, there never seems to be any closure in the immigration debate, even on the most obvious and irrefutable points.

For example, one of the perennial assertions of open‑borders wisdom is that "current immigration is not high by historical standards," a plausible‑sounding statement that has the effect on many people of sweeping away, or at least of silencing, all doubts they may have on the subject. But as a matter of fact the statement is untrue, because the "historical standards" it refers to are based on just two decades of exceptionally high immigration at the turn of the twentieth century. It is also irrelevant, since large‑scale immigration in the past tells us nothing about how much immigration we should have today. But no matter how many times the "not high by historical standards" slogan is discredited, the open-immigration advocates will just turn around and say that America is a nation of immigrants, or that immigration is a historical force that cannot be stopped, or that immigration restrictionists are intolerant and racist. And as soon as the next opportunity presents itself, the mass-immigration advocates will come back and repeat the argument that "immigration is not high by historical standards," and with the same triumphant, conclusory air.

It is not only immigration reform activists who find themselves discouraged at times by the inexhaustible energy (backed by the seemingly inexhaustible funds) of the open-borders lobby. A large majority of Americans are deeply troubled by current immigration and would like to see it reduced, but they are perplexed and intimidated by the never‑ending stream of clichés, myths, catch‑phrases and fallacies, disseminated by the news media, the political parties, and other powerful institutions, that are used to promote it. In this article, which is adapted from a longer work, I will examine a few of these slogans. The discussion will not be systematic. Think of it rather as an attempt to pin the open‑borders Proteus to the ground even as he keeps changing his shape before our eyes. Or think of it as a series of forays against the outposts of an occupying army, in which I will seek to expose the false premises, the deceptive assertions, the illogical leaps of thought, and the brain‑numbing sentiments by which the open immigrationists have kept America in thrall.

In doing so, I will make no attempt at "balance." Since immigration is a vast phenomenon involving millions of human beings, it would be astonishing if there were not many good and wonderful things to be said about it. And these things have, of course, been said for many years, but in such emotional and all‑embracing terms that they paralyze critical thought. Since the American mind is already soaked with open‑borders clichés, true balance only requires us to show how those clichés are wrong.

The idea of "balance" (so beloved—in theory!—by the news media) is supposed to mean that the pros and cons of any issue must be given a formulaic equal weight, regardless of their inherent merits. To get an idea of how misleading and dangerous this notion can be, consider the following statements:

‑ "Third‑World immigrants are not assimilating."

‑ "Third‑World immigrants are assimilating."

Let us imagine that we accept the first statement (that Third-World immigrants are not assimilating) and radically reduce immigration. If it turns out to be wrong, no permanent harm will have been done to the country. But if we accept the second proposition (that the immigrants are assimilating) and continue our current immigration policy, and if that statement turns out to be wrong, we will have irretrievably damaged the country. Thus the two statements are not of equal importance. To put it another way, if it is true that many immigrants are not assimilating, that fact would not be "balanced" by the fact that other immigrants are assimilating, since the net effect of immigration is to introduce a non‑assimilating population into this country.

Another specious "balancing" device used by immigration proponents is the non sequitur, in which some negative fact about immigration is countered by some positive—but wholly unrelated—fact about immigration. For example, if you say that "Immigration is balkanizing America," you're likely to hear responses such as these:

‑ "Hispanic immigrants are better workers than blacks."

‑ "Diversity enriches us."

‑ "Immigrants are needed to fill jobs."

‑ "Immigrants strengthen the economy."

‑ "Immigrants bring good family values."

Even if all of those assertions were true, they would be completely beside the point. If you learned that a glass of milk you were about to drink contained an ingredient that would make you seriously ill, the fact that the milk also contained lots of vitamins and minerals would not matter to you. Similarly, if current immigration is causing irreversible harm to our country, then the fact that immigration may also provide some benefits is irrelevant. It is the total impact of immigration that matters. Immigration proponents who stress the positive, transient effects of immigration while ignoring the negative, irreversible consequences are engaged in a dangerous con game.

In the same way, it is dishonest to stress the "desirable" immigrants while ignoring the "undesirable" ones. Joel Kotkin, an open‑borders enthusiast, once wrote that "already roughly one‑quarter of all new immigrants possess professional or technical backgrounds, compared to only 15 percent of our overall population."(1) But what about the other 75 percent of immigrants who are not skilled? As Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform pointed out:

[N]early 50 percent of all immigrants are working in the low‑skilled category, a much higher percentage than is found in the U.S. labor force as a whole.... Joel Kotkin has conveniently manipulated statistics to show a supposedly cost‑free boon from immigration in the 25 percent, while virtually ignoring the impact and implications of the other 75 percent. That's not fair.(2)

It may not be fair, but it is typical of the deceitful manner in which immigrationists have conducted the debate. Writing in the pro‑open borders Wall Street Journal some years ago, author George Gilder denounced proposed cuts in legal immigration because a tiny number of recent immigrants (the ones he mentioned were all from Europe or East Asia) were scientific "geniuses" who had made valuable contributions to U.S. industry, particularly in the computer field. "A decision to cut back legal immigration today, as Congress is contemplating, is a decision to wreck the key element of the American technological miracle," Gilder wrote.(3) But how did the acquisition of a few talented inventors justify the continued immigration of a million Third‑World people per year, most of whom were low‑skilled and poorly educated? Gilder didn't expect his readers to ask that question. He just wanted them to get so excited about all those immigrant "geniuses" that they would reject any immigration restrictions. Which, by the way, is exactly what the Republican‑controlled Congress did a few months after Gilder's article was published.

Far from raising American intelligence, as Gilder claims it will do, continued Third‑World immigration will result in a serious decline in American skill levels over the coming century. In the sort of frank analysis of American racial and cultural problems that seems to come only from foreigners, Japanese economist Yuji Aida has argued that it will be very difficult for America to remain a leading industrial power if Hispanics and blacks at their current skill levels become the majority in this country:

Do blacks and Hispanics, for instance, have the skills and knowledge to run an advanced industrial economy? If the answer is yes, America will maintain its vitality through the next century and beyond. But I'm skeptical.

To compete in a high‑tech age dominated by microelectronics requires a disciplined, well‑trained labor force. Brilliant inventors and innovative engineers are not enough. [Italics added]. Workers themselves must be highly motivated and equipped to meet the stringent norms of standardization imposed by precision‑perfect high‑tech manufacturing.

Blue‑collar employees have to work steadily, day in and day out, at jobs requiring great concentration and manual dexterity. They must continually hone skills and improve personal performance and products through quality control.

Unfortunately, relatively few national groups meet these exacting requirements. I doubt that many African or Latin American countries, for instance, will become high‑tech societies in the foreseeable future.... [T]he experience of the last 500 years leaves little room for hope. Blacks and Hispanics will not be able to run a complex industrial society like the United States unless they dramatically raise their sights and standards in the next 40 years.

Burdened with a handicap of this magnitude, how will the United States cope?(4)

How indeed? Aida suggests that as the United States becomes increasingly Third-World it will have no choice but to employ its vast low‑skilled population in agriculture. America will thus become "a premier agrarian power ... the breadbasket of the world," while ceasing to be a great industrial power.

A brutal prognosis such as Aida's—which does not evade reality by means of slogans and non sequiturs, but instead calculates the ultimate costs of mass Third-World immigration—appears in the U.S. media only at rare intervals, while every day America's elites keep spreading their unceasing barrage of propaganda about the wondrous benefits of immigration, the absence of any harm from immigration, and the immorality of opposing it. In this article, let us begin to redress the imbalance somewhat.
The Economic Argument

The prevailing view of immigration among mainstream elites is that it represents a great boon to the economy. That immigration is only to be considered from the standpoint of its economic effects has become such an accepted notion over the past 25 years that it has not occurred to many people what a bizarre idea it really is. The implication is that our well‑being as a society is solely a function of economic output. Matters of quality of life, social cohesion and continuity, aesthetic enjoyment, political liberty, national identity, and all the other intangibles that make up the life of a society—since these cannot be stated statistically, they don't count. Or so the economists seem to believe. The late Julian Simon, with his crack‑pated idea that every immigrant, regardless of his cultural origin, level of education, or legal status, represents a net economic gain for this country, was the most extreme of these "economystics."

Notwithstanding the veneer of scientific expertise with which its claims are advanced, the economystic faith boils down to an almost vacuous proposition: immigration is good because it increases population, and thus (assuming more economic output from more people) proportionately increases gross product. A doubling or tripling of the U.S. population will lead to a doubling or tripling of economic output. Voilà—immigration makes us a "wealthier" nation! One of the problems with this logic is that individual wealth does not necessarily increase, only the aggregate wealth. Meanwhile, our congested coastal and metropolitan areas have become two or three times more crowded. Pressure on open spaces and parks, stress on resources (increasing the need for burdensome regulations), crippling traffic congestion, displacement of older residents, as well as ethnic conflict, all become worse. Even as economic output goes up, overall quality of life can decline. But the economystic cannot see these things because for him the only reality is that which can be stated in economic terms.

For the economystic, the swelling of Los Angeles due to immigration has been a wonderful thing. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Development policies over the last decade have sought to make the Los Angeles area the magnet of the burgeoning Pacific Rim economy. The region's growth has been phenomenal, as measured by trade revenues, number of building permits issued and aggregate income." Sounds great, right? But the article continued: "The success of Los Angeles' integration into the international economy, however, is not matched by success in integrating its immigrant and ethnic minority populations." The article then discussed the uncontrolled ethnic rivalry and violence in this new "world‑class" city of Los Angeles.(5)

In other words, the great economic growth of Los Angeles has not necessarily been a boon for the people living there. By most standards, Los Angeles over the last 30 years has become an immeasurably worse place to live in as a direct result of the very things that have led to the growth of its aggregate wealth. The economystic cannot see this. He looks at a table of statistics, notices the upward trend in population and aggregate income, and rushes into print telling us how immigration is turning America into an earthly paradise.

The deeper problem with economism is that no true values, including the values of a distinct political system, culture and way of life, can be comprehended in economic or utilitarian terms. Solely on the basis of measurable, quantifiable, pragmatic facts it is impossible to preserve any society or institution, even so basic an institution as the nuclear family.

Suppose there were two families, the Smiths and the Joneses, living next door to each other. The two families get along, the children play together, the parents occasionally socialize with each other. Then one day the Joneses announce that they want to move in permanently with the Smiths. When the Smiths seem less than enthusiastic about this proposal, the Joneses say: "What's your problem? You have enough room, your house is bigger than ours, and we get along together. Besides, the nuclear family is only a modern invention. A dual family will enrich all of us." To back up these claims, the Joneses bring in an economist who says that two‑family households have larger aggregate wealth than one‑family households. They bring in a sociologist who cites studies showing that the children raised in two‑family households have superior abilities in adjusting to different types of people in a diverse society. Faced with this aggressive challenge to their existence as a family, what can the Smiths say? Their family, as a unique, autonomous association, is an intrinsic, irreplaceable value to its members. It cannot be defended on the basis of quantifiable facts. In the same way, the nation is a family whose distinct character and values cannot be defended on a purely rationalistic basis. To insist that it do so is to deny its right to exist.

Now that we've considered some of the underlying problems with economism, let us look at some claims that have been made about the economic benefits of immigration and its "vitalizing" impact on society.

"Academy's Report Says Immigration Benefits the U.S."

This was the way the New York Times, in a front page headline, characterized a 1997 report on immigration by the National Academy of Sciences. But as Dan Stein pointed out in a letter to the Times, all that this "benefit" amounted to was a $10 billion annual increase in gross national product in a $7 trillion economy—an increase of one‑seventh of one percent. When balanced against the substantial costs of immigration, such as downward pressure on wages, disastrous population growth in southern California and elsewhere, and increasing welfare and tax burdens on state and local governments, this "benefit" disappeared.

"We need smart Asians to fill high‑skill jobs in engineering and the sciences because Americans are not going into those fields."

Although the argument sounds hard‑nosed and realistic, relying on a constant supply of high‑skilled immigrants has the somewhat the same effect on a society that welfare dependency has on an individual: it destroys the need and incentive to become independent. It is an escape from reality, shielding us from the painful fact that we are failing to prepare our own citizens to carry on our civilization. If we stopped concealing that failure from ourselves, we would be forced to respond to it in a serious way, doing whatever was necessary to remain a self‑sustaining society.

We must also point out that the supposed shortage of American scientists and engineers has been overblown. Because of immigrant competition, many American science graduates have been unable to find work in their fields and have been forced to defer their careers or go into other fields, as reported in the New York Times.(6) Far from "saving" us, low‑wage immigrant engineers and scientists are depriving many Americans of rewarding careers.

"If we didn't have immigrants doing all kinds of jobs in America today, there would be nobody to do them."

As Roy Beck demonstrated in his powerful account of American workers displaced by immigration, this widely believed idea is empirically false. It is also based on a false assumption.(7) The assumption is that the American economy could only have developed in one way, with lots of immigrants coming here and taking lots of jobs. Therefore, the thinking goes, without the immigrants there would have been no one else to do those jobs and the economy would have been crippled. In fact, most of those jobs only exist because of immigrants. We can illustrate this by means of a thought experiment. Imagine that back in the late nineteenth century there had been no Chinese Exclusion Act, and that large numbers of Chinese had continued to settle in California after 1882. Over the following decades, the Chinese would have filled all kinds of existing jobs in the California economy, and would also have created new types of businesses and employment niches that hadn't existed before. Let us imagine further that in 1920 Californians began to call for immigration restrictions against the Chinese. The pro‑immigration lobby in our fictional 1920 (using the same arguments that the pro‑immigration lobby uses today) would have replied: "Without Chinese immigrants here, who would have done all these jobs?" The truth, of course, is that the Chinese in our imaginary 1920 are doing all those jobs only because they had come to America in the first place. Had there been no Chinese immigrants between 1882 and 1920, which was the actual case in the actual 1882‑1920 period, California would have done just fine, as it in fact did.

From this we derive a maxim: Large‑scale immigration creates the illusion of its own indispensability.

"Even if immigrants are not needed in all fields, we need immigrants for low‑status, low‑paying jobs that Americans are no longer willing to do, such as work in fast‑food restaurants and hotels."

Once again, immigration creates the illusion of its own indispensability. The predominance of immigrant employees in the hotel industry in some major cities creates the impression that without immigrants there would be no one to do those jobs. But if true, how is it that in low‑immigrant regions of the country, such as the Midwest, hotels are staffed quite adequately by Americans?

Immigration restrictionist and California radio host Terry Anderson, a black who once worked as a self‑employed mechanic, has made a similar observation:

Pro‑immigrant groups say the jobs immigrants are taking are jobs that black Americans don't want. Why is it then, that when you go outside Southern California or Texas—to Phoenix, say, or Washington—you see black people holding the same jobs they used to hold here in Los Angeles? Black people want to work. But the jobs they used to have, paying $5 to $7 an hour for unskilled labor, now go to immigrants for $3 an hour.(8)

As for fast‑food restaurants, a major factor in the growth of that industry has been the increasing number of low‑skilled people, many of them immigrants, who have made industries based on a low‑skilled work force a more viable investment. Entrepreneurs choose businesses based partly on the skills of the available labor market. If we had had a more highly educated labor force, entrepreneurs would have developed more of the kinds of businesses that use highly‑skilled workers instead of low‑skilled workers. Instead of the multiplication of fast‑food restaurants across the land, which has not exactly raised the quality of American life, we might have had a greater number of real restaurants with real cooks and waiters serving real food.

"Tighter restrictions on immigration will not be the answer. On the contrary, high levels of immigration to the United States will be necessary into the next century, if for no other reason than to provide enough working men and women to support our aging population."

The flaw in this argument—which was made by Michael Lind and Mark Lagon in the neoconservative journal Policy Review—is that the same immigrants whose taxes are expected to support aging whites will also grow old (obviously) and require old‑age assistance themselves. Indeed, the average age of immigrants is only a little lower than that of the native population. By bringing in so many immigrants, we are simply augmenting the dependent elderly population of the future, which will make it necessary to bring in even more immigrants to support them.

Michael Lind himself eventually conceded that his position was wrong. Financing retirees through immigration, he declared in a letter to National Review, is an "unworkable Ponzi scheme," since "the immigrants brought in to pay for Social Security would require even more immigrants when they retire, and so on ad infinitum." Adding that mass immigration intensifies competition for jobs and lowers wages, Lind concluded: "Mark Lagon and I were wrong. . . . Tighter restrictions on immigration are the answer."(9)

There are other problems with the notion that young immigrants will supply the government revenues to support older Americans. First, under our family‑oriented immigration laws, many immigrants are already old, and begin collecting public assistance as soon as they enter the country. Second, the average educational level of younger immigrants has been steadily dropping; it is unlikely that immigrants with a fifth grade education will contribute much to government revenues. Third, an "aging" population is not a crisis but is simply the natural result of population stabilization. As a Canadian writer pointed out, "European countries already have the high percentage of older people that Canada (and the U.S.) will have in the next century and they are doing fine. Even with ordinary increases in productivity the whole question of supporting an aging population just disappears."(10)

"Immigrants are revitalizing our cities."

In fact, upwardly mobile immigrants are bypassing the cities and heading straight to the suburbs. According to U.S. News & World Report, immigrants

have turned once‑depressed urban neighborhoods into thriving ethnic enclaves. But healthy cities need a middle class, and ... today's immigrants, upon reaching middle‑class status, tend to move to the suburbs. Many of those who remain are political refugees with fairly high rates of welfare dependency. The revitalization claim also ignores another problem: gang crime. Today police in Chicago are fighting not just black and Hispanic gangs but Greek, Filipino, Assyrian, Chinese, Cambodian and Vietnamese gangs.(11)

So it is not necessarily true that immigrants are "re‑energizing" the cities, whatever that means. Indeed, such "revitalization" was only needed because middle‑class whites had left the cities to get away from an increasingly alien populace made up of immigrants and the urban underclass. Immigration is not so much replenishing depopulated cities as it is forcing many Americans to leave cities where they would have otherwise preferred to stay. When immigrants move on to the suburbs, whites move to more distant parts of the country. Many blacks have also been leaving immigration‑affected areas and moving back to the South. As far as white (and black) America is concerned, there is no revitalization in this process, there is only displacement.

Besides, what do people really mean when they say that a city is being "energized?" "Energy"—which is always presented as an unquestioned good—is one of those reductive concepts, like economic growth, that ignore intangible values such as the quality of life, the level of a culture, the cohesiveness of a society. Surely the cities of China—with their fearsome pollution and their streets jammed with humanity day and night—have fantastic amounts of "energy." Does that mean that Americans would be better off if their cities become "energetic" like China's? Stretching for three miles through Manhattan's Harlem Heights and Washington Heights, upper Broadway with its largely Dominican population has abundant "energy"—block after block of tacky stores, cheap wares being sold from bins on the sidewalk, people sitting in chairs on the sidewalk and otherwise milling about, and the incessant sound of boom boxes from passing cars. Such "energy" may be normal and healthy in the context of Caribbean cultures, but is it desirable from the point of view of Western civilization? Accompanying the famous Latino exuberance are low levels of standards, infrastructure and social order that are incompatible with North American society.

There is yet another kind of "energy" that is applauded by the immigrationists—the "energy" produced by ethnic diversity. True, the psychic stress and the unresolvable cultural conflicts generated by the squeezing together of totally unrelated peoples in a city such as New York or Los Angeles do provide a sort of "energy"—but it is an "energy" that most people flee if they can, which explains the middle‑class exodus from areas with high concentrations of immigrants.

Thus, when people speak of America's being "energized," what they mean in many cases is that America is being Third‑Worldized. If we had never acquired all that Third‑World energy, American cities would have remained more attractive to Americans, and would not have required the continual influx of foreigners to maintain their population base.

"Without immigration, the U.S. population will decline because of low native birthrates."

Immigration does not "replenish" a country's population, it replaces it. American history is instructive on this point. Between 1790 and 1830, a period in which the total number of immigrants was about 385,000, or under 10,000 per year, the U.S. population increased by an astonishing nine million (from 3.9 million in 1790 to 12.9 million in 1830). This tripling was due mainly to the natural increase of the 1790 population, not to immigration. As population expert Francis A. Walker noted in a famous essay published in 1891, this very high native birthrate dropped subsequent to the upward turn of immigration after 1830 and the even sharper increase of immigration after 1840. The reason for this, Walker argued, was that immigrants lowered living standards, wage levels, and working conditions, which resulted in reduced prospects for the native population, which made having large families less attractive. Immigration thus caused a drop in the native birthrate, replacing those lost native births with immigrants.(12) The same effect of mass immigration on wages and working conditions is clearly in operation today, along with the same effect on the native birthrate.

Another factor related to America's changing ethnic composition which is pushing down the native birth rate has been the deterioration of the public schools. In earlier decades, when New York was still a white majority city, middle‑class parents sent their children to New York's excellent public schools. But today's public schools, dominated by blacks and Hispanics along with a continuing influx of Third‑World immigrants, have sunk to an academic and behavioral level that is unacceptable to most whites. Some years ago a professional Manhattan couple of my acquaintance sent their two sons to private school, at an annual cost of $12,000 each. They had wanted to have more children, but the cost of schooling made a larger family economically prohibitive for them. The swelling nonwhite population has a direct negative impact on the ability of middle‑class whites to raise families. Immigration is not strengthening the American people—it is weakening and replacing them.

Immigration also has psychological effects that tend to lower the native birthrate. As Virginia Abernethy has argued in Population Politics, fertility rises when people feel hopeful about the future, and declines when they are pessimistic about the future. It is a remarkable fact that women emigrating from Third‑World countries to the United States, where they perceive that their prospects are much improved, have more children than their countrywomen who stay at home. Conversely, whites in an increasingly Third‑World America, where they foresee a less promising future for themselves and their children, are having fewer children than they would otherwise have done.

The surest way to raise the native birth rate back up to replacement level is to reduce immigration drastically. We do not need an ever‑expanding population in this country, as the growth ideologues believe. Our long‑term prospects for environmental sustainability, cultural cohesion, political freedom, and a high quality of life will be much improved if our population were stabilized at the current 280 million (or at a lower number), instead of doubling to half a billion over the coming century and doubling again in the century after that, which is what will happen if immigration continues at current rates.

"Immigration makes society dynamic."

Mass immigration, especially culturally diverse mass immigration, creates turmoil and disruption, but that's not necessarily the same thing as dynamism. Was America not dynamic from the early 1920s to the mid 1960s, when immigration was low and largely restricted to Northern Europeans? Is not Japan—with no immigration at all—one of the most dynamic and confident societies on earth? Some economists predict that Japan with its cohesive and high-morale society is poised to surpass an increasingly troubled and divided United States in coming years.

Sustained vitality—as distinct from the overheated frenzy of a society that expands like a balloon until it explodes—requires demographic and cultural stability, strong and self‑supporting families, abiding moral traditions, and the values that lead to productive enterprise. A culturally fragmented, ethnically conflicted, demoralized, low‑skilled, Third‑World America won't be dynamic. As political scientist James Kurth has pointed out, the most dynamic nations in this new century will be those that maintain their internal cultural cohesion, and thus their ability to be effective actors on the world stage. The societies that become multicultural, ceasing to be nations, will find themselves unable to act in a coherent fashion, and will join the ranks of the "acted‑upon."(13)

This, by the way, is why a furor was sparked in Europe this past summer when Islam scholar Bernard Lewis told a German newspaper that Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century. Asked whether the European Union could serve as a global counterweight to the United States, Lewis replied, “No,” adding that he saw only three countries as potential “global” players: China, India, and Russia. “Europe,” he noted matter-of-factly, “will be part of the Arabic west, of the Maghreb.” Significantly, Lewis was not warning about any loss of European culture stemming from the increasing numbers and influence of Muslim immigrants. If he had been talking about such things, the EU elites would probably have ignored him, for the simple reason that they do not care about their historic civilization and the manifest threat Islam poses to it. The EU types are not concerned about the Islamic threat to European culture, because to destroy that culture is the agenda of the EU itself. What they do care about is the expansion of the EU's bureaucratic and transnational power and its ability to play a leading role on the world stage, and that was what Lewis said is doomed by Islamization.

However, given the fact that Third-World immigration is also weakening and dividing America, though less slowly than Western Europe, the EU doesn't need to worry too much about serving as a counterweight to the American "hyperpower"; all it needs to do is wait for America to follow Europe into the "acted-upon" status.

In light of this analysis, it is an amazing irony that the people who are most desirous of maintaining and expanding America's role as a global hegemon—namely the neoconservatives—support immigration policies that are turning America into a self‑conflicted, multicultural hodgepodge.

"Immigrants strengthen America."

Military conquest is not the only way that countries lose their freedom. Throughout history, nations have inadvertently lost their independence by asking other nations to help them meet some challenge that they couldn't handle themselves. Depending on the kindness of strangers may yield short‑term benefits, but it further weakens the host nation. Sensing that weakness, the guests soon drop all pretense of being guests and take over.

Sometimes the help sought from foreigners has been military. The ancient Greeks asked the Romans, the Romans asked the Visigoths, the Celtic Britons asked the Anglo‑Saxons, to help them ward off their respective enemies, and in each case the helpful ally soon became the ruler. Sometimes the help is economic. The Romans after they gained their empire imported a vast population of foreigners into Italy as artisans, merchants, servants, slaves, and soldiers, and as a result the old Romans and their culture were gradually marginalized. In the twentieth century Indians were brought to the island nation of Fiji to work as merchants and civil servants, and within a few decades the Indians had taken majority control of the island away from the Fijians. The American South imported African slaves, and today the descendants of those slaves are busy dismantling whatever remains of the symbols and traditions of their former masters. In each case the host people initially congratulates itself for its cleverness in getting foreigners to fight its enemies, perform its hard labor, care for its children, or provide it with exotic cuisine or inexpensive produce. And in each case the host people ends up losing control over its own country, and disappearing from the pages of history.

This is not to deny that immigrants who bring particular skills, or "cultural capital," may be of great help in building up a society, as Thomas Sowell has demonstrated in his several books on the subject of ethnicity and economics. But as Sowell himself acknowledges, the large‑scale immigration of people who are culturally distinct from the host population is a very different matter. Such immigration, he writes, "can profoundly affect the fabric of a society and even dissolve the ties that hold a nation together."(14)

To recognize the dangers of immigration is not to propose sealing America off from the world. Nevertheless, if America, or any nation, is to survive in the long run, it must maintain a basic degree of self‑sufficiency, foregoing the short‑lived luxuries both of global hegemony and of mass immigration.

This article is adapted from the first part of Lawrence Auster's pamphlet, Huddled Clichés: Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments that Have Opened America's Borders to the World, available from the AIC Foundation. Mr. Auster offers his traditionalist conservative perspective at View from the Right.

References

1. Joel Kotkin, "Europe Won't Work," The Washington Post, 9/15/91.

2. Dan Stein, letter, Washington Post, 9/30/91.

3. George Gilder, "Genuiuses from Abroad," The Wall Street Journal, 12/18/95.

4. Yuki Aida, "America's Ethnic Achilles' Heel," San Francisco Examiner, 4/9/91.

5. Halford H. Fairchild and Denise G. Fairchild, "World-Class Tensions: Ethnic Rivalry Heats up Southern California," Los Angeles Times, 5/5/91.

6. "Top Graduates in Science also Put Dreams on Hold," New York Times, 6/6/93.

7. See Roy Beck, The Case against Immigration (New York: W.W. Norton), 1996.

8. Terry Anderson, "The Culture Clash in South Central L.A.," Social Contract, Fall 1996, p. 50.

9. Michael Lind, "Immigration Epiphany," letter, National Review, 3/7/94.

10. Daniel Stoffman, "Pounding at the Gates: Why Canada Must Reassess its Wide-Open Immigration Policy," Toronto Star, 9/20/92.

11. Paul Glastrus, "Thinking Straight about Immigration," U.S. News & World Report, 5/20/91.

12. Francis A. Walker, "Immigration and Degradation," in Oscar Handlin, Immigration as a Factor in American History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1959), p. 71.

13. James Kurth, "The Post-Modern State," National Interest, Summer 1992.
14. Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 387.

When Immigrants Strengthen America - If they come

1. to work and pay their taxes - not to sit on the sidelines collecting welfare; some do, many others don't.
2. to become included in American society - most do, others decide to remain apart for generations and don't intergrate and then complain when the rest of society looks at them with suspicion.
3. and give up allegiance to other nations, powers, cultures, authorities that are hostile to the United States. Most do and some don't and complain that they are discriminated against because they don't . Well, duh!
4. and can be good neighbors. Most are, some insist that their neighbors change their culture and social mores because they are not the same as they had in their country of origin. Well, duh! If you want the same as your country of origin - go back.

We are a nation of immigrants ... and welcome them, but expect that those that come here contribute in a POSITIVE way. If you make life difficult for your neighbors and insist on special privileges and that Americans change their social fabric to suit you, you don't belong in America. Please join us, but don't expect us to change to suit you!!!