The generation which has come to age since 9/11 can be forgiven if it believes Islamic Terrorism is simply an accepted part of daily life, like fender benders, traffic jams, and taxes, that there’s nothing much that can be done about it, that it’s just a matter of bad luck for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Craven political leadership as well as dizzy media celebrities have been advising everyone to ‘get used to it,’ that it’s ‘the new normal.’ Their parents and grandparents know better. They know this was not the America they grew up in.
What happened to radically change the peace, domestic tranquility, and universal safety of American life which had previously been taken for granted?
In 1965, during the Johnson administration, U.S. immigration laws were dramatically altered to disfavor the continuation of limited immigration from Europe and to encourage mass immigration from the Third World. Subsequently, yearly caps on legal immigration were regularly lifted by Congress, so that by the late seventies more than a million immigrants were admitted legally every year.
Concurrent with the increases in legal immigration, illegal immigration began to increase as well, so that by the mid-eighties it became a noticeable problem, precipitating Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, which was intended to end illegal immigration. As we now know, amnesty had the opposite effect — illegal immigration spiraled further out of control.
Prior to the last few decades the population of Muslims in America was minuscule. But that’s changing. The Pew Research Center provides the 2016 figures for the Muslim population in Western Europe and North America. In light of the recent spate of terror attacks in the UK, it’s informative to compare the numbers in the UK vs. the U.S. For the UK it’s 3.5 million (4.4% of total population), more than half born abroad. For the U.S. it’s 3.3 million (1% of total population), most of the growth since 9/11 due to immigration. But that’s 10% of all new immigrants, and that number is going to grow.
The hard numbers, nearly identical, are significant because the American people are constantly reassured by big media and Establishment politicians that the UK is different than the U.S. Of course this is a patent falsehood, when you reflect on the numerous terror attacks perpetrated on American soil from 9/11 on. They’ve been committed by a gaggle of foreign nationals, recent immigrants, and refugees as well as by the home-grown variety, and the common denominator is that they are all Muslims and that they act in the name of Islam.
The other false argument is that the UK is different because their Muslim immigrants are not encouraged to assimilate. But if that were the case, how does one explain the entirely successful assimilation of all other immigrants in the UK: Hindu Indians, Sikhs, West Indians, Sub-Saharan Africans, Chinese, etc.
The question for Americans today is whether or not we permit the religious and sectarian inspired murder and mayhem of the recent decades to become the permanent new normal. It’s not just a question of resources. It’s a question of will. Are the American people already sufficiently cowed, consigned by fate and disarmed by political correctness to simply “manage” the problem; resigned to accept the new normal in perpetuity?
Policing alone cannot solve this? There are simply not enough police available to effectively surveil thousands of suspected Jihadists. Color-coded threat warnings will not solve this. Removing shoes at airports will not solve this.If immigration policy created the conditions for the problem in the first place, only a change to immigration policy can begin to solve it.
Senators Perdue and Cotton offer the beginnings of an answer with their proposed RAISE Act. Their bill embodies President Trump’s campaign promise to overhaul the legal immigration system. The bill would eliminate chain migration, shifting the selection of immigrants to a merit-based system, favoring those who would unquestionably benefit America, not harm it. It also calls for an overall reduction of 40% from the current number of over a million per year.
The two senators believe that current levels of immigration unfairly disadvantage American workers and they are right. But a well-crafted bill might also greatly reduce the threat from civilizational Jihad. There is no constitutional impediment to excluding people from certain countries from immigrating to the United States. No foreign nationals have any constitutional right to enter the U.S. as immigrants or refugees. What Congress could do is work with the president to create alternate provisions for the humane rescue and resettlement of refugees in countries near their own homelands.
Another layer of protection would be provided by implementing stringent visa applications for all foreign nationals who wish to enter the U.S. for any reason: tourist, business, student, etc. The visa systems in China and Russia are useful models. Those countries know exactly who is applying for entry, where they go, and how long they stay. China and Russia are still visited by millions of businessmen, students, and tourists. If they can do it why can’t we?
The New Normal for America should not be resignation and surrender. It should and can be one of courage, self-confidence, decisive action, and resolve for the restoration of a proud, safe, and peaceful society.
Rabelais is a patriot living in the heartland.
