Sunday, December 5, 2010

What the Christmas Tree Bomber incident says about our immigration policies

Herewith the comments of a fellow blogger:

How is it that a transplant from Somalia, which is an absolute hellhole of poverty and human misery on the southeastern coast of Africa, could end up in the veritable paradise of Corvallis Oregon, and only be consumed with hatred and murder?

The answer lies, to some degree, in the sort of people who are permitted to immigrate to America, but also in how America is presented to those entering the country.

Throughout most of its existence, America represented a doorway to opportunity and freedom through which the entire world longed to pass. Having once been appreciative of their great homeland and all that it offers, Americans were not willing to let just anyone enter their nation and partake of its blessings

Formerly an inspiring “melting pot,” the efforts of the counterculture and specifically those on the political left, have mutated things to the point that prominent and influential institutions such as the nightly news and the schools have become cauldrons where anti-western fanaticism incubates. This modern social climate evokes nothing but self-loathing on the part of the “enlightened” class. Thus, America’s many great deeds and accomplishments are subordinated to a twisted “politically correct” orthodoxy that only emphasizes the flaws. Newcomers are especially susceptible to this propaganda onslaught, and rapidly absorb it.

Mohamud fit comfortably among these. From the moment of his arrival in the United States, he should have been presented with the highest virtues of its rich history and culture. And while, slavery was indeed once part of that history (Back on Mohamud’s home continent, it is still rampant and accepted), the spiritual and moral underpinnings of the nation that ultimately rendered slavery incompatible with its concept of virtue and decency, are far more enduring and significant.

Instead of being able to objectively contrast the squalor and brutality of Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda against the peace and prosperity of the United States, Mohamud and his kind are marinated in the constant leftist drumbeat of America’s faults, echoed and magnified by such notables as “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright and his very loyal twenty-two year parishioner Barack Obama.

Rather than seeing his new home as a blessing and a chance to make a better life for himself and the family he might one day have, Mohamud could only fester in his hatred for those around him. But should he be expected to do otherwise, when the occupant of the highest office in the land offers profuse apologies for the supposed wrongs committed throughout history by the American people, making a case that it requires “audacity” to hope for anything other than discrimination and injustice from this nation. Thus Mohamud and others who are similarly twisted can maintain the blinders of their religious background while resentment seethes and festers within them.

These comments are reminiscent of some that I made a few years ago in my then-weekly newspaper column, "Attorney at Large," entitled "This Is Not Your Grandpa's America, So Get Over It," to wit:
This may sound a little nasty… but the dumbest reason I’ve heard for legalizing the 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. is “My grandparents got to come here. These people deserve the same chance.” I’ve heard that a lot lately. So let’s follow the logic of this notion and see where it leads us.

My Italian grandparents came here just about a century ago. My grandmother gave birth to 16 kids. Gee, wouldn’t it be great if every illegal-alien family currently in the U.S. had 16 kids? Since the Supreme Court already ruled 20 years ago that the children of illegals are entitled to a K-12 public education, our school districts would experience a spectacular increase in classroom diversity. Since we lack a national “English-only” law, the classroom teachers would no-doubt embrace the challenge of mainstreaming these kids under the “No Child Left Behind” Act. My senior-citizen neighbors --- many of whom already are struggling to pay their school taxes --- will undoubtedly grin and bear the added burden.

Once all these kids are educated and grown, half could stay at home to help their parents on the family farm while the other half could pack up their Conestoga wagons and head west to… whoops, I just remembered: The U.S. Interior Department declared the American frontier officially closed in 1896.

Just four years later in 1900 the U.S. Census counted 76,212,168 inhabitants in the U.S.A. In 2000 the Bureau counted 281,421,906 souls in America. That’s about 3.7 times as many people as a century earlier. This single fact might make a difference in some folks’ thinking.

Professor Marshall McLuhan, the Sixties media guru best remembered for “the media is the message,” also said that we lived (mentally) in “Bonanza-land.” Readers with a touch of gray at their temples will remember the popular weekly Western “Bonanza.” Younger eyes can take a gander at the retro-website http://bonanza1.com. They’re all there: Ben, big daddy and “the soul of Ponderosa,” the family’s mega-ranch; Adam, the wise-beyond-his-years eldest brother; Little Joe, the hot youngest brother, played by teen idol Michael Landon; and, Hoss, the lovable, lumbering family idiot, reminiscent of Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.”

My favorite from among the quotes posted on the “Bonanza” site is this Ben Cartwright profundity: "Well maybe I've never been to Heaven, and maybe I'm never going to get the chance, but Heaven is going to have to go some to beat the thousand square miles of the Ponderosa."

According to McLuhan (a Canadian), we Americans were driving down the road of life, looking into our rearview mirrors, where we saw the four Cartwright men riding side-by-side straight out of our TV screens. If the prophet of pop-culture could come back to 21 st century America, his opinion probably wouldn’t change. Just look at what we’re driving these days: Ford Mustangs, Jeep Cherokees, Dodge Dakotas, Honda Ridgelines (Motor Trend’s 2006 truck of the year, by the way), Hyundai Santa Fe’s and Tucsons.

The trouble is that, when we take our eyes away from that rearview mirror and stare out the front windshield, most of us never see the Ponderosa unrolling in front of us. More likely, we’re looking at the latest housing development, cheek-to-jowl with the newest strip mall, both of which we have plenty of time to ponder, because they’ve entailed the installation of yet another set of traffic lights. Or we may be gazing at yet another inner-city neighborhood, rundown and cluttered with trash.

Warm-hearted souls, who favor an open-door policy, ought to ask which Americans benefit and who loses, when our borders are left wide open and laws against hiring illegals go essentially un-enforced. Businesses wishing to keep their labor cost low are the big winners. Despite all the folklore that illegal aliens take jobs no American citizens want, our poorest citizens --- who, under current welfare rules, must enter the workforce --- suffer from illegal competition.

Bill Fletcher, former education director of the AFL-CIO and currently president of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, in 2004 told the Pacific News Service, “It's like an urban legend, which sees competition taking place everywhere. If African Americans were moving from lower to higher level jobs, there would be no reason for fear. But that's not the case." Black workers are not the only ones trapped in temporary, low-paying, no-benefit jobs, he added.

No, folks, this is not Bonanza-land. This isn’t your grandpa’s America. Get your eyes off that rearview mirror. Get over it.


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