RUTHFULLY YOURS

No matter what the Islamists’ current status or situation, they would lash out at the US, the West and Americans. Meanwhile, American taxpayers were providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to them in scholarships, free accommodation, and often even a monthly stipend. By comparison, many American students struggle to pay their own tuition and housing; many graduate with debt.

Some believed that the US was simply supposed to do these favors for them for free of charge. Others argued that this was an opportunity to take advantage of America, and should be done for the sake of furthering Islamic political and religious views.

The US has been funding the lives of these extremists as they endanger our country and the lives of all Americans, and spread hatred towards America, Christianity, Judaism and the West. Is this how American taxpayers want their hard-earned contributions to be used?

When I first arrived in America, I would ask every extremist and fundamentalist Muslim I met: “How has your life been since you came to the United States?”

It was clear that their living standards were much better than back home. I knew well the lands they had come from, their economic standards and restrictions, their lifestyle, the social, and the religious, economic and political landscapes of the region.

They were surely about to say how much their lives had improved, and how grateful they were to be in a new, less restricted environment. Instead, they expressed anger and even hatred of their new country and its culture. What they could not put into words, was clearly written across their faces: revulsion and disgust.

It seemed they were comfortable disclosing their true feelings in Farsi or Arabic about the US, Americans, the West, Christians, and Jews. As we had all come from, grown up in, and worked in the same region, many of them mistakenly assumed that we both shared the same hate-filled views. Once they discovered that was not the situation, some even tried to reshape my views: as I was new to the country, I probably did not yet understand.

Everything in this country, they patiently explained, was kufr: blasphemy, filthy, infidel. They went on harshly to criticize American culture and the Western lifestyle. Their list of complaints was unending: how men and women dress, how people interact, how people work and celebrate life, go to parties, date, marry, dance, drink — there did not seem one aspect of American life that did not enrage them.

On December 21, 2017 the Department of Justice issued a press release, “Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Release Data on Incarcerated Aliens—94 Percent of All Confirmed Aliens in DOJ Custody Are Unlawfully Present.”

The initial statistic cited in the title of that DOJ press release shows that there is a truly significant distinction to be drawn between aliens who are lawfully present in the United States and aliens who are illegally present in the United States, either because they have entered the United States illegally or they have violated the terms of admission after entering the United States via the inspections procedure at ports of entry.

The press release begins with the following statement:

President Trump’s Executive Order on Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect relevant data and provide quarterly reports on data collection efforts. On Dec. 18, 2017, DOJ and DHS released the FY 2017 4th Quarter Alien Incarceration Report, complying with this order. The report found that more than one-in-five of all persons in Bureau of Prisons custody were foreign born, and that 94 percent of confirmed aliens in custody were unlawfully present.

Although immigration anarchists have consistently manipulated language, engaged in tactics of bullying and intimidation and, when all else failed, flat-out lied about every aspect of immigration, the Trump administration is providing the truth.

The DOJ press release, upon which my commentary today is based, lays out the cold, hard and unequivocal facts. It is significant to note that the title of the press release included the phrase, “confirmed aliens in DOJ custody” because all too frequently aliens who face deportation make false claims to United States citizenship to avoid being deported. Therefore there may even be more deportable aliens in federal custody, while the actual number of such aliens in local and state custody are unknown and unknowable particularly in Sanctuary Cities and Sanctuary States.

Refugees and immigrants bring their own cultures, their own assumptions, beliefs, values, fears and hopes from their homelands. One cannot just assume that they wish to integrate or assimilate into the Western culture. Willingness to assimilate might well vary from individual to individual, and from culture to culture.

A society can only function smoothly if there is a large degree of agreement and commonality regarding to what language people shall speak, what rules they should follow in dealing with one another, and how government is to be established. Where is it written that all cultures are necessarily compatible with one another?

The success of immigrants in North America is a result of immigrants assimilating to Western culture and society, not due to immigrants clinging to the laws and practices of the lands they have left behind. We welcome them to become Americans and Canadians; we welcome to them to the West.

In our desire to insure an inclusive, humane, and tolerant society, we seem to have constructed a simplistic and inadequate picture of refugees and illegal immigrants.

Perhaps the majority of Americans and Canadians do not approach the question of refugees and immigrants with an open mind, but with a set of “progressive” assumptions:

The idea that all cultures are equally good and equally valuable, sometimes known as “cultural relativism.” When faced with an uninvited influx of outsiders, we do not worry about what culture the incomers are bringing, because, whatever it is, it supposedly must be fine.

That multiculturalism, the coexistence of a variety of cultures, is desirable. The more cultures in a multicultural society, the more cultural diversity, the better.

That in our society, and in the world generally, each person falls into the category of either oppressor or oppressed. our simple classification of oppressor and oppressed can generally class refugee claimants and illegal migrants as oppressed, because they are leaving a place of conflict or poverty or despotism, are people of colour, are Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or from a smaller, non-Christian group, or are homosexual. We therefore define refugee claimants and illegal refugees as oppressed, as victims, desperate, and in need. We view them through a humanitarian lens, with generosity and sympathy.

If we open our hearts to the oppressed, we must view the oppressors with disdain. Who are the oppressors? We are quite certain that women are oppressed by men, that homosexuals are oppressed by heterosexuals, that people of colour are oppressed by whites, that the poor are oppressed by the well off, and that Muslims are oppressed by Christians and Jews.

On December 18, 2017 two important documents were published that illustrate that President Trump is determined to keep his campaign promises and protect America and Americans.

First of all, on that day the official White House website posted a document that laid out President Trump’s national security strategy to “advance America’s interests.” His national security strategy includes border security and meaningful enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. Here is the excerpt from that document:

PROTECT THE HOMELAND: President Trump’s fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life.

We will strengthen control of our borders and reform our immigration system to protect the homeland and restore our sovereignty.

The greatest transnational threats to the homeland are:

Jihadist terrorists, using barbaric cruelty to commit murder, repression, and slavery, and virtual networks to exploit vulnerable populations and inspire and direct plots.

Transnational criminal organizations, tearing apart our communities with drugs and violence and weakening our allies and partners by corrupting democratic institutions.

America will target threats at their source: we will confront threats before they ever reach our borders or cause harm to our people.

The second document to consider is the Government Executive Magazine report, “Trump Administration Seeks Outside Help to Hire 26,000 New Immigration Enforcement Personnel.”

According to the article, the administration is seeking to hire 10,000 more ICE personnel and 5,000 additional employees for the Border Patrol and continue to hire even more personnel over time. Clearly the administration is determined to not just talk about the need to secure our nation’s borders and enforce our immigration laws but to actually achieve these critical goals.

However, it is imperative that if the administration is able to overcome Congressional resistance to hiring enforcement personnel that ICE not distract them from the immigration law enforcement mission. Indeed there are many ways that this workforce can and must be deployed to achieve maximum results.

Obviously more agents could and should seek to locate and apprehend aliens who either entered the United States without inspection or subsequent to having been admitted into the United States, violated their terms of admission. However, there are many more missions that must be effectively addressed by ICE.