04/21/2013
You can take any ideological position you wish on immigration reform. After all, it’s still a free country, although for how long is a good question.
However, the mad push by the Gang of Eight reminds me of the madness of another Gang — the Gang of Four in China, so hipped on the ideology of its late Chairman that it bulldozed all in its path until brought down by the sheer weight of its perfidies, even in that repressive society.
The Boston Marathon terrorist tragedy offers several, what should be non-ideological, lessons. For example, it’s now obvious that anyone in this country, citizen or immigrant, can be found and quickly. Positive, rapid ID can be done. So we are talking only of the will to do the ID job — doing the right thing so we know who is in the US and why, legally or illegally. Doesn’t it seem obvious that in our society, which values the rule of law, our rightful identity should be made as transparent, simple and as secure as possible?
But the key lesson:
There appeared on my breakfast table today an article in the Wall Street Journal which told us volumes about these two young terrorists. [Life in America Unraveled for Brothers, By Alan Cullison, Paul Sonne, and Jennifer Levitz, April 20, 2013]
It brilliantly documents the alienation that can grow even after years and some success in a new country:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 years old, became a successful Golden Gloves boxer. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was a nursing student and became an American citizen just last year, on Sept. 11.”
How symbolic is that September 11th stamping of citizenship?
But the WSJ continues to weave the story of why “a close examination of the Tsarnaev family’s life in the U.S. shows a hopeful immigrant trajectory veering off course”:
Their father, a mechanic, often unemployed, had fled back home with health problems, leaving the two with a mother who was convicted of shoplifting. The WSJ reports that the attitude of the older son, TamerlanTsarnaev, the one killed after opening fire on police,
seemed to sour. "I like the USA," he told the Lowell Sun newspaper in 2004 while competing in a boxing tournament shortly after arriving in the U.S. "America has a lot of jobs." But a caption accompanying an online photo of him a few years later reads: "Originally from Chechnya, but living in the U.S. since five years…I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them."
The boys had uncles, who had integrated into US life, but
Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the two brothers, told reporters outside his Maryland home Friday that his nephews were "losers" who were unable to settle into American life "and thereby just hating everyone who did." He said he didn’t think there was an ideological motive. "This has nothing to do with Chechnya," he said. He also indicated there was a rift between him and his brothers. "It’s personal," he said, "I didn’t like them.
Every family and every tribe has losers. But in a culture where there are many of similar ethnic background, the chance for being picked up by a non-family mentor is hugely enlarged. In this case, everything failed.
Despite the help of an aunt and even a Russian speaking-mentor, these boys were floating into a place where uncertainty, poverty, and friendlessness apparently pushed them into a need for a verity.
As famed biologist, E.O. Wilson, has told us, we all belong to tribes. It is a crucial factor in human identity.
In the April 12, 2012 Daily Beast article, based on his new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, Wilson wrote:
Have you ever wondered why, in the ongoing presidential campaign, we so strongly hear the pipes calling us to arms? Why the religious among us bristle at any challenge to the creation story they believe? Or even why team sports evoke such intense loyalty, joy, and despair?
The answer is that everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags.
And so it has ever been. In ancient history and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and a way to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups. It gave people a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It made the environment less disorienting and dangerous. Human nature has not changed.
Modern groups are psychologically equivalent to the tribes of ancient history. As such, these groups are directly descended from the bands of primitive humans and pre-humans. [Biologist E.O. Wilson on Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe, April 12, 2012] [VDARE.com Note: See also E. O. Wilson — Nationalist? by F. Roger Devlin.]
The piling on of continuous layers of new immigrants, even in communities of similar ethnicity, results in crowding, poverty, and the sense of hopelessness that apparently emerged in the mind of at least the elder boy.
Surely we must urgently think much harder about how many aliens should be allowed to come here. Numbers do matter. Adding millions more of any ethnic origin into an already crowded, contentious and economically troubled environment must hit all but the wealthy very hard.
The Gang of Eight is trying to ram another major Amnesty/ Immigration Surge down the throats of a citizenry already immiserated by major unemployment and underemployment.
If you like the growing likelihood of more aberrant behavior by the growing numbers of new arrivals piled on top of our dangerously overrun country, then you will agree with the Gang of Eight and their self-interested backers in the cheap labor crowd and the ethnic and religious lobbies. But most Americans have long said they wanted fewer immigrants.
Special congratulations are in order for the authors of that WSJ piece. But implicit in the text is an important moral about the madness of decades of unnecessary immigrant importation.
About the Author: Collins, a freelance writer living in Washington, DC., is CoChair of the National Advisory Board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). However, his views are his own.
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