- For all the banalities visited upon us on the occasion
of the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centers, virtually
no commentator has bothered to mention the most obvious loophole of all
in the vast slice of bureaucratic Swiss cheese that constitutes the federal
government's capacity to protect the safety of its citizens and the security
of the country. We have had war and promises of more war, crackdowns on
domestic terrorists and round ups of thousands of unusual suspects. But
mass immigration, like Ole Man River, just keeps rolling along.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the main watchdog
in Washington that barks about the immigration issue, this week released
a report that awarded the federal leviathan the grade of "D"
for its performance in immigration control. "While some progress
has been made," the report concluded, "much of it has been spotty
and haphazard, and many of the improvements won't be fully implemented
for years." FAIR was mainly talking about essentially administrative
and enforcement procedures intended to keep out dangerous, criminal and
crazy immigrants. For obvious reasons, that has been a bit of a priority
in the last year.
But the main problem of immigration is its sheer massiveness. This year,
for the first time, more than one million immigrants actually became citizens,
and there are millions more where they came from. More than 30 million
immigrants have come to this country since 1970, accounting for about 70
percent of the population increase in those years. Then there are the
illegal immigrants, whose numbers no one can count but whom various authorities
are perennially surprised to find are considerably more than anyone had
previously estimated. At last estimate, the number of illegals stood at
9 to 11 million "or higher," as the Washington Post reported
last year.
The main way to deal with the massiveness of immigration is to reduce the
numbers, which the government has not even tried to do in the last year.
Leaving aside other issues such as whether immigrants assimilate, help
or harm the economy, displace Americans from jobs, etc., the main problem
for national security the immigrants represent lies in their numbers.
With 9 to 11 million or more illegal aliens already here and 30 million
legal aliens entering over the last generation, it's impossible to keep
track of which ones are dangerous or how dangerous they are. That's why
we keep reading about the FBI or other agencies busting terrorist suspects
hither and yon in some cases perfectly legal aliens or even citizens
whose presence and character no one knew about before.
The Center for Immigration Studies in Washington recently released a background
study by its research director, Steven A. Camarota, that found, based on
2000 Census Bureau figures, that Middle Eastern immigrants to this country
during the last 30 years have numbered about 1.5 million, of whom about
10 percent are here illegally. Middle Easterners nowadays considered,
perhaps unfairly, as the most suspect of the immigrant groups have increased
more than twice as fast as immigrants as a whole. In 1970, most Middle
Eastern immigrants (85 percent) were Christians; today, 73 percent are
Muslims.
A good many are also, no doubt, what is currently termed "Islamists"
or Muslim radicals or just plain fanatics. Some are undoubtedly members
or associates of Al Qaeda or similar terrorist groups and networks; others
are probably just sympathetic to such groups and their causes, and not
a few are willing to help them out to some degree, ranging from legal propaganda
work to full scale support for terrorist attacks.
But don't imagine that Muslims are the only immigrants who might endanger
the country. In Northern Virginia, a band of happy warriors known as the
"MS 13 gang" hailing from El Salvador practices the hobby of
killing police officers at random. In August, the Washington Times reported,
the gang sent some 20 members from California to Fairfax County to pick
out a county cop at random and murder him. MS 13 has connections with
the old sod in El Salvador as well as a nationwide organization in this
country. A report from the Orange County (California) district attorney's
office says MS 13 "has been responsible for the execution of three
federal agents and numerous shootings of law enforcement officers across
the country."
There are still terrorists in Afghanistan (as the attempt to assassinate
President Karzai last week shows), as well as American troops to fight
them. There may or may not be any terrorists in Iraq, but American troops
will probably be fighting Iraqis in the near future. None of that accomplishes
anything toward ending the real terrorist threat to this country that exists
today, which comes almost entirely from the mass immigration that our government
has allowed and refuses to reduce or control. Until it does, terrorism
for Americans will remain as real as it was one year ago this week.
Samuel Francis is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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