Governor Ted Strickland speaks out against the Bush Administration’s immigration madness. “Strickland: No Iraq refugees,” from Associated Press, with thanks to A Girl Scout:
COLUMBUS – Gov. Ted Strickland on Wednesday had a message for President Bush: any plan to relocate thousands of refugees uprooted by the Iraq war to the U.S. shouldn’t include Ohio.
The Bush administration plans to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion at a time of mounting international pressure to help millions who have fled their homes in the nearly four-year-old war.
The United States has allowed only 463 Iraq refugees into the country since the war began in 2003, even though some 3.8 million have been uprooted.
Strickland, a Democrat who opposed the war as a U.S. House member, said Ohioans cannot be expected to have open arms for Iraqis displaced by the war. More than 100 Ohioans have been killed since the war began.
“I think Ohio and Ohioans have contributed a lot to Iraq in terms of blood, sweat and too many tears,” Strickland said. “I am sympathetic to the plight of the innocent Iraqi people who have fled that country. However, I would not want to ask Ohioans to accept a greater burden than they already have borne for the Bush administration’s failed policies.”
The decision to allow about 7,000 Iraqis to come to the United States answers mounting political and diplomatic pressure on the administration to do more to remedy the consequences of a war it largely started. Only 202 Iraqis were allowed in last year.
The administration also said it will immediately contribute $18 million for a worldwide resettlement and relief program….
The U.S. proposal also includes plans to offer special treatment for Iraqis still in their country whose cooperation with the U.S. puts them at risk.
Utter madness, and Strickland doesn’t mention the real reason why: if these Iraqis are admitted to the U.S., it will be with absolutely no screening to determine if they are jihadists or jihad sympathizers. As I noted in my 2003 book Onward Muslim Soldiers, immigration is a national security issue, and should be treated as such. There is an increasingly urgent need to revise the immigration application to allow for the screening out of jihadists, and (as I have tried to convince several legislators) to criminalize advocacy of replacing the U.S. Constitution with Sharia, and of elements of Sharia that are at variance with the U.S. Constitution and mores. These 7,000 Iraqis will almost certainly include some, and probably even a majority, who believe Sharia to be the ideal form of government. Will they work to that end in the U.S.? Are we so paralyzed by political correctness that we cannot even ask this question, although our national survival could be at stake?
Apparently not. A madness has overtaken us. Consider this: In “Jews jeopardized by Muslim immigration,” the insightful Ilana Mercer notes:
Following Sept. 11, immigration from Muslim countries tapered off, but, as the New York Times enthused, it has rebounded with a vengeance: “In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents “¦ than in any year in the previous two decades.” Although Bush is unlikely to allow millions of displaced Iraqis the prerogatives he bestows on illegal Mexicans, the reality is that he is responsible for rendering a Muslim country uninhabitable. This makes it harder for the U.S. to reject Iraqi immigrants and asylum seekers. Starting this year, up to 20,000 Iraqis will be granted asylum in the U.S. They will join close to 100,000 “Muslim from countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia,” who arrived in 2005.
Immigration (and the war in Iraq) ought to be the most crucial question in the 2008 election. It is the issue that will ultimately decide whether American values and institutions endure. Unfortunately, it’s a debate American Jews can put off no longer, although it’s too late for their European, British and Canadian brethren. To speak plainly: A gathering danger threatens the Jews of America — to whom George Washington promised peace and goodwill in a 1790 address to a synagogue congregation in Newport, R.I.
American Jewry has “lived up to the standard asked of them by Washington,” observed philosopher David Conway in his inquiry into the “Place of Nations in Classical Liberalism.” But “The stock of Abraham,” which has flourished in the New World — producing uniquely entrepreneurial, creative and philanthropic citizens — is now threatened by what it perversely promotes: mass immigration. And in particular, immigration from Muslim countries, where anti-Semitism and extremism are imbibed with mother’s milk.
Before 1965, immigration to the U.S. occurred in manageable ebbs and flows, ensuring the new arrivals were thoroughly assimilated and integrated. Multiculturalism was unheard of. In 1965, without voter approval, the U.S. Congress replaced the national-origin immigration criterion, which ensured newcomers reinforced the historical majority, with a multicultural, egalitarian quota system, which divided visas between nations with an emphasis on mass importation of people from the Third World. The new influx was no longer expected to acculturate to liberal democratic Judeo-Christian values. With family reunification superseding economic or cultural requirements, every qualified immigrant would henceforth hold an entry ticket for his entire tribe.
Stephen Steinlight of the Center for Immigration Studies — in “High Noon to Midnight: Does Current Immigration Policy Doom American Jewry?” — courageously (for it runs counter to the views of most of his fellow American Jews) highlights the bizarre situation where entire villages from rural Mexico and the West Bank in Israel have U.S. citizenship. How so? One member qualifies and then imports the entire town. In addition to having huge extended families, Muslims and Mexicans share an anti-Americanism, a tendency to crab about historical grievance and cling to a militant distinctiveness, and a predilection for aggressive identity politics (which the New York Times finds “strikingly positive”). Second only to Latinos, the relatively new (roughly 30-year-old) Muslim community is the most anti-Semitic community in the U.S., its members harboring the greatest propensity to act on their hatred.
Although Jews don’t benefit in the least from open-door immigration, having long since settled in the U.S., Israel, and other First World countries, the liberal Jewish community has continued to generously support this policy.
Indeed. Illustrating Mercer’s point is this update to this story: “Muslim quota comments draw fire,” from AAP (thanks to JE):
THE Jewish Board of Deputies has distanced itself from comments by an Israeli academic who says Australia should limit its number of Muslim immigrants.
Professor Raphael Israeli is quoted in the Australian Jewish News as saying that without such a migration cap Australia risks being swamped by Indonesians.
But Prof Israeli told Fairfax newspapers his comments had been misunderstood.
“When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems,” he told Fairfax.
“That is the general rule – so if it applies everywhere, it applies in Australia.”
But NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff today distanced his organisation from the comments.
“The Jewish community dissociates itself from the comments by Israeli academic Raphael Israeli that Australia should limit the number of Muslim immigrants,” he said in a statement.
Mr Alhadeff said the Jewish community did not believe racial or ethnic quotas were helpful.
“We do not believe in racial or ethnic quotas or stereotyping,” he said.
“These comments do not reflect the position of the Jewish community and are unhelpful in the extreme. The Jewish community has a strong and proud record in fighting racism, and condemns all expressions of bigotry.”
Racism and bigotry. Sheesh. Does Vic Alhadeff really think this is a racial question or a matter of bigotry? Has he not noticed all the furor over statements by Al-Hilali and other Muslim leaders in Australia? Does he think, Dinesh-D’Souza-like, that if he reaches out to “traditional Muslims” that the jihad ideology will somehow evanesce? Has he not noticed that the Jews are targeted for jihad and subjugation in the Qur’an (9:29) regardless of whether or not they oppose “racism and bigotry”? Does he really think that none of the Muslims streaming into Australia now will take that seriously?
And it gets worse. Australian Jews are shooting the messenger: “AIJAC ‘dumps’ scholar over Muslim remarks” (thanks to Looney Tunes for the link).
UPDATE: This has happened before.