An American Expat in Southeast Asia

One Last Drink of Hemlock

Starting this month, the first wave of over 7,000 Iraqi refugees will be arriving in the United States with approximately half of these refugees being resettled in Michigan, another 2,000,000 Iraqi refugees remain in the pipeline waiting to resettled. So far there is no telling where the remainder of these 2 million Iraqi war refugees in the pipeline will be resettled, but if history repeats itself (and it always does) there is a high probability that the United States will be accepting many more of these refugees in the months and years ahead.

The first question on anyone's mind rightly should be, why are we accepting any refugees from Iraq in the first place. Now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power and Iraq has been liberated wouldn't the prudent decision be to facilitate their resettlement back into Iraq?

The debate over immigration to the United States is not a new issue. Since the inception of our nation, there have been deep divisions between those who would seek to limit immigration, and those who believe it to be a cornerstone of our country's greatness. Traditionally America has always been "a melting pot" for immigrants, a metaphor for the way in which our nation has developed, a process that encourages cultural assimilation and integration. But now times have changed.

The wartime refugees from Korea and Vietnam would find an American "melting pot" which would encourage them to assimilate and integrate and despite the difficulties, it encouraged them to adopt coping strategies to deal with the cultural differences they would face. Starting in the 1990's however, the apparatchiks of multiculturalism and political correctness in the United Nations and Europe would begin to promote an "salad bowl" approach to immigration a destructive ideology that emphasized and promoted the belief that each ethnic and national group has the right to maintain and preserve their own cultural distinction and integrity, and that one doesn't need to assimilate or abandon their heritage in order to blend in with Western society. Forsaking our own values, beliefs and sovereignty, the balkanization of the America would begin in earnest.

The Iraqi refugees differ in many ways from the refugees of the past, not only do they bring with them a plethora of cultural differences that are reprehensible and unacceptable in our civilized society, but they they also bring with them a quasi-fascist ideology that is deceptively enshrined in their own religious beliefs. Sadly the curse of Cassandra seems to fall on those among us who have experienced this dualistic world view firsthand and who have had the courage to sound the siren's call.

It has now been just over three years since the first wave of Somali Bantu immigrants have arrived in the United States and despite the glowing heartfelt media reports of their integration, the reality is that things aren't going so well. In fact they are getting worse.

The one thing the Somalis have been quick to learn however is that they have choices to make and that the tenets of multiculturalism don't require them to assimilate or integrate. Inevitably this leads to reactive responses the beginning of which we have seen.

Why assimilate and integrate when the Americans are all too eager to accommodate? Under the guise of political correctness Americans have been foolishly led to believe that their obeisance towards the cultural and religious beliefs of their new neighbors is merely an act of tolerance. In what Gilbert Keith Chesterton would once describe as being the "virtue of a man without convictions", we have become a nation without convictions enfeebled not only by a collective conflict of conscience by by our own inconstancies.

The refusal of cab drivers to carry passengers with seeing eye dogs or alcohol and the seemingly innocuous demands for "foot basins" in the nation's airports and universities is just the tip of the iceberg, the "jihad du jour" so to speak. The Somalis like the Iraqis soon to arrive have found our nation's Achilles' heel. Aided by groups like CAIR the reactive responses will build and gather momentum and the more we give in, the more they will demand.

Eventually our tolerance will contribute to the alienation, isolation and future radicalization of many these new immigrants. We need only to look towards Europe to see what lies ahead in our immediate future and hopefully we might come to the realization that our nation's continuing love affair with diversity and multiculturalism is only banking the blood of homegrown ethnic enmities and massacres ahead.

Sadly it will most likely be the next generation of Americans who will come to see the wisdom and veracity in the words of Theodore Roosevelt. How will we possibly explain ourselves to them?

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." ~ Theodore Roosevelt 1907

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