Why they come to America
Hugo Gurdon
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Atrocities perpetrated in Israel by the Islamist thugs of Hamas, and the Left’s revolting celebration in this country and around the world of those vile deeds, are stoking concern about mass migration to the civilized West.
This is not just because the millions of migrants include more terrorists, although that is part of the problem. Customs and Border Protection has stopped more than 170 people on its terrorist watch list trying to enter the United States in the past 12 months, mostly from Mexico. In 2022, there were 98. In 2021, there were 16. You notice a trend.
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Elsewhere, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to terrorist alarms after the Hamas outrages by saying, “We have to deport more people, more often, and faster.” His government has approved legislation to make it easier to oust rejected asylum-seekers. In France, President Emmanuel Macron wants a national referendum on immigration and has ordered a review of all resident aliens with terror ties for rapid expulsion.
An Arab recently murdered a French teacher while shouting, “God is great.” But the situation across what used to be called Christendom is not so great. There is a deeper, less-easily expressed anxiety that, notwithstanding the multicultural pieties we endure from our betters, mass migration from what is politely called “the global south” is not really a good thing. If it is, how? Because diversity is strength? Does anyone believe that anymore? The realization is growing that the West must come to its senses at last and acknowledge that migrants do not all have the same impact on the culture of the host country. Some do good, and others do harm.
Those from the Middle East or other regions with no history of stable institutions or democracy, and with contempt for tolerance and freedom, will rarely be champions of liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights. There will be exceptions, but most surely shrug at or ignore our ideals, not being required any longer to subscribe to them. It is clear that people who barge into the country breaking our laws and ignoring our due processes to do so do not instinctively side with our values.
Why do they come? Is it mostly because they would be proud and free if they were Americans? That might have been the case 50 years ago when we saw things that way ourselves and our schools did not teach self-doubt or self-loathing instead of patriotism. But now, surely, people come here less to be free than simply to be wealthier.
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This can be no surprise to anyone who has watched and seen the damage the Left has done steadily to American culture and education. It is no wonder that people who come increasingly fracture and Balkanize the country; that’s what our own thought leaders encourage them to do.
People tend to take others at their word. For three generations or so, America has been less assertive and more apologetic about who and what it is. Yet it is still the richest nation on Earth. Thus we have made ourselves seem less a country to be respected abroad and more one to be exploited.