By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Deportation has become a near-taboo word. Yet the recent
Boston bombings inevitably rekindle old questions about the way the U.S.
admits, or at times deports, foreign nationals.
Despite the Obama administration's politically driven and
cyclical claims of deporting either a lot more or a lot fewer non-citizens, no
one knows how many are really being sent home -- for a variety of reasons.
There are not any accurate statistics on how many people
are living in the United States illegally. And how does one define deportation?
If someone from Latin American is detained by authorities an hour after
illegally crossing the border, does he count as "apprehended" or
"deported"?
"Deportation" is now politically incorrect,
sort of like the T-word -- "terrorism" -- that the administration
also seeks to avoid. The current government emphasis is on increasing legal
immigration and granting amnesties, but by no means is Washington as interested
in clarifying deportation.
Why was the Tsarnaev family granted asylum into the
United States -- and why were some of them not later deported? Officially, the
Tsarnaevs came here as refugees. As ethnic Chechens and former residents of
Kyrgyzstan, they sought "asylum" here from anti-Muslim persecution --
given that Russia had waged a brutal war in Chechnya against Islamic militants.
Yes, the environment of Islamic Russia was and can be
deadly. But if the Tsarnaevs were supposedly in danger in their native country,
why did the father, Anzor, after a few years choose to return to Dagestan,
Russia, where he now apparently lives in relative safety? Why did one of the
alleged Boston bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, return to his native land for six
months last year -- given that escape from such an unsafe place was the very
reason that the United States granted his family asylum in the first place?
That is not an irrelevant question. Recently, some
supposedly persecuted Somalis were generously granted asylum to immigrate to
Minnesota communities, only to later fly back to Somalia to wage jihad. Were
they true refugees fleeing persecution against Muslims, or extremists looking
for a breather in the United States?
What, exactly, justifies deportation of immigrants of any
status? Failure to find work and to become self-supporting? Apparently not. The
Tsarnaev family reportedly had been on public assistance. This is not an
isolated or unusual concern. President Obama's own aunt, Zeituni Onyango, not
only broke immigration law by overstaying her tourist visa but also compounded
that violation by illegally receiving state assistance as a resident of public
housing. Only after Obama was elected president was his aunt finally granted
political asylum on the grounds that she would be unsafe in her native Kenya.
Should those residing here illegally at least avoid
arrest and follow the rules of their adopted country? Apparently not -- given
that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a skilled boxer, was charged in 2009 with domestic
violence against his girlfriend. His mother, Zubeidat, also back in Russia now,
was reportedly arrested last year on charges of shoplifting some $1,600 in
goods from a Boston store.
Again, these are not irrelevant questions. President
Obama's own uncle, Onyango Obama, is at present illegally residing in the
United States. In 2011, he was cited for drunk driving after nearly slamming
into a police car.
Would embracing radical ideological movements that have
waged war on the United States be a cause for deportation? Apparently not.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2010, based on information from
a foreign intelligence agency that he might pose a threat as a radical
Islamist. The FBI knew from Tsarnaev's Web postings about his not-so-private
sympathies with radical Islam.
Americans are a generous people who take in more
immigrants than any other nation in the world. So the sticking point in the
current debate over "immigration reform" is not necessarily the
granting of residency per se -- given that most Americans are willing to
consider a pathway to citizenship for even those who initially broke
immigration law but have since not been arrested, have avoided public
assistance, and have tried to learn the language and customs of their newly
adopted country.
The problem is what to do with those who have not done
all that.
Unless the government can assure the public that it is
now enforcing immigration laws already on the books, that foreign nationals
must at least avoid arrest and public assistance, and that it is disinclined to
grant asylum to "refugees" from war-torn Islamic regions and then
allow them periodically to go back and forth from their supposedly hostile
homelands, there will be little support for the current immigration bill.
In short, the Tsarnaev brothers have offered us a
proverbial teachable moment about what have become near-suicidal immigration
policies.
No comments:
Post a Comment