Dakota Beacon

North Dakota, like Minnesota and much of the Midwest, is known for its openness and hospitality toward newly arrived immigrants. There is a natural desire to make them feel welcome and valued here. This is all good and speaks well of the generosity of spirit of the people of our region. Perhaps it is because most of us have immigrant ancestors and some in our area knew our own first-generation American ancestors. I did. We relate to this. But this can be fatal.

The immigration we are seeing today is not the immigration we had at the turn of the 20^th Century, when our great grandparents arrived on America’s shores. Nor are the conditions they met when they landed the same. Our immigrants then were in the great majority Christian and Jewish. There is no inclination among Jews to export or spread their religion to others, and although Christians are charged with the duty to offer their religious beliefs to others and “spread the word”, there is no tenet of that faith that commands them to subjugate non-Christians nor to kill them. The people who came here over 100 years ago had rejected the political systems they left behind, they did not wish to import them nor impose them upon their adopted home. The conditions which made immigrants successful here were a vast, unpopulated Western frontier which was opened for homesteading and a Midwestern and Eastern industrial growth which demanded a workforce. We had little or no “welfare” other than private and religious-supported charities to help them. Many immigrant groups instituted their own support groups (some more beneficial to society than others) which guided the new arrivals to gainful employment, housing and help in learning the English language and American law and customs. All of this was really powered by the drive in these individuals to make this change in their lives. They saved up for their families’ passage over through work at home or by borrowing from those who had come before them. No one was in Europe arranging this for them.

Today we have a different kind of immigration. Today’s immigrants in America are largely from the Third World – the Middle East and Central and South America and Mexico. This has come about through changes in our immigration policy dating back to 1965, when we began deliberately encouraging Third World immigration. More recently immigrants are coming en masse from the Middle Eastern and African nations – places most of which are governed by Islam and openly hostile to Christians and Jews, as well as non-believers, pagans and those whose lifestyles are condemned by Islam, like gays or women who do not cover themselves. This is not organic immigration like we saw in the early Twentieth Century. These are not people who “yearned to be free”, who sacrificed to bring their families to a better place and see them prosper here.

The people who come here under the auspices of NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations) such as Lutheran Social Services, for example, have their passage fully funded and arranged for them. They do not save up through their own hard work to come. They do not come because they want – or even understand – freedom. Statistics show that many do not want freedom but they wish to continue to observe customs which dictate the oppression of women and perpetuate abuse of children through child marriage, fgm and other practices. In a study from 2015, by the Polling Company (CSP),33% of American Muslims said that Sharia should be supreme over the U.S. Constitution and American law. Although 43% disagreed, 51% of American Muslims said they should have the choice to live under Sharia or American law. That “choice” is the same thing as instituting a parallel system of law and jurisprudence. This means, ipso facto, that we must abandon equality under the law. At some point one must wonder, when would American law disappear?

More to the point, however, is the fact which is revealed by studies in other nations where the migration numbers/percentage of population has been much, much greater than it has thus far in the United States. In a study based in Berlin, a survey of Muslims found that 65% believed that Sharia is more important than the law of the country in which they live and a Pew poll found that 45% of Muslims worldwide believe that Sharia should apply to everyone, not only to Muslims. This was a study based in Austria; however, in Egypt, a predominantly Muslim nation, 74% agreed with the view that Sharia should apply to non-Muslims as well.

There is a pattern here – the larger the percentage of Muslims, the greater the demand that Sharia become the law, and the wider the application of Sharia. This is one of the important differences between the immigration we see today and that of the early half of the Twentieth Century. Another difference is the sheer numbers involved. This is not mere immigration – it is a mass migration such as we have not seen before. It is a massive hijrah and when you combine the numbers of people moving from homelands (which do not discriminate against or persecute them) with their campaign to seek converts and to impose their way of life upon the populations which have hosted them, it can only be viewed as a kind of hostile invasion. If you doubt this look at the experience of Sweden, Germany, France and much of the rest of Europe and the effect this migration has had on the way of life of the native inhabitants of those nations. Where once the native population felt free to walk the streets, shop in the marketplace, attend synagogue or church or dress in Western style clothing or go to the beach, today they are fearful to walk to the corner of their own block, concerts are bombed, freedom of speech has been forfeit. Islamic law does not tolerate much of what is native to Europe – wine, music, dancing, fashion, liberal thinking and alternative lifestyles in general. They would be the first to say this (just read the polling data). We should proceed with the utmost caution in admitting this population into our own states or nation. They are under religious constraint not to assimilate or even befriend non-Muslims (Qu’ran 5:52).  There is no reason to suppose that America will be immune from what the rest of the developed world is experiencing.

As to the question of refugees, America has long opened its arms to the downtrodden, the at-risk peoples from all corners of the world . . . until recently, that is. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult for Christians or Jews who are persecuted in Muslim-dominated regions to come to America. We should work to change this. While Muslims immigrate here effortlessly – even to the point of being recruited by Lutheran Social Services, to come here at no charge, Christians from places like Pakistan often try all their lives to get permission to come here without success. I personally know at least one such family. I agree with my friend John Strand about refugees. (I would point out, however, with reference to John’s editorial, that many of the immigrants who do work are subsidized by the federal government.) We should reach out to help those who are persecuted and threatened in their homelands. There are many, but we are not helping them.

With regard to those involved in internal conflict but who are Muslim, we should assist them in other ways, providing emergency food and shelter in nearby regions so that they can eventually be repatriated and then, perhaps, they can help to stabilize and bring justice to their own countries. We should not, however, become the recipient of warring factions from within a foreign nation.

America has been fatally lax with respect to our immigration and visa policies, permitting (indeed, paying) NGO’s to import massive numbers of migrants and then leaving communities to deal with the costs involved, both financial and societal. It has been a crashing failure with some devastating results – the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino – most recently the Pensacola shooting incident. Here we have an invitee, a military person of a foreign nation which we should be regarding not as an ally but as an adversary – Saudi Arabia – which has been implicated in many of the worst incidences of terrorism, and funds Wahabist schools in our country, who met here with others of his countrymen and plotted an attack on our own people who were training them. America’s crime? Not obeying the dictates of Sharia and the Qu’ran. It’s an old story, really. It happens again and again. Today three more Americans are dead, servicemen, fathers, sons, brothers, husbands. Needlessly. Because we allowed this Saudi and some of his countrymen to come here to “study”. We are just very, very fortunate that he confined his jihad to the classroom. He might have taken out hundreds of people from the cockpit of an airplane. The possibilities are truly horrific. This is the kind of thing we will have if we continue an open-door policy.

Just last week, Britain had another close encounter with jihad. You probably already know this story. Usman Kahn, a British-born Pakistani Muslim, convicted in 2012 of plotting to: 1) blow up the Houses of Parliament; 2) blow up the London Stock Exchange; 3) blow up St. Paul’s Cathedral; 4) blow up the U.S. Embassy; 5) murder 2 rabbis; 6) murder then-Lord Mayor of London Boris Johnson and 7) fund and set up a camp for terrorists in Kashmir, was let out of prison after serving only six years of a 20-year sentence. He applied to participate in a writing program which paired college students with convicted felons so they could “learn from each other”. He was put with a young man, Jack Merritt, and a young woman, Saskia Jones, both advocates for this program, both pro-immigrant. He promptly murdered them, knifing them to death on London Bridge, leaving them to bleed out as he went after his next victim. These two young lives were sacrificed to the morally empty idea that all cultures are “equal”, that what belongs to one people should belong to all, regardless. That Muslims are somehow “victims” despite the fact that they rule over large portions of the earth and are persecuted only in China as far as we know.

In all cases, after a horrendous attack by a Muslim, we flock around to impress everyone that we don’t hold anyone responsible for such attack. After the incredible carnage of 9-11, this was President George Bush’s primary concern – that we not blame Muslims or Saudis for this, bending over backwards to assure Muslims that we were sorry. For something. For whatever. And to prove it, he ordered that we import more Muslims following that organized attack. Undoubtedly, some of those he ordered we admit have been involved in terrorist attacks. We see the same thing now, after the Pensacola shooting. Everyone rushing to assure Muslims that they’re ok with us, Muslims acting all fearful of the “terrible backlash” that never, ever, happens. I will be honest.  I don’t want more Muslim immigrants here, but I also don’t want innocent Muslims held responsible for the actions of criminals and terrorists. Unless they defend them, of course.

So let us be very cautious – beyond cautious – in accepting immigrants. If we are going to call these people “refugees” let us be specific about that – refugees from exactly what? From a threat to their lives from a government because of their religion or their race? The sheer numbers mean that these people are not “refugees” - they are a majority in their homelands! Let’s make sure these refugees are refugees and not just opportunists. If what they want is a “better life” - good! We need people like that. Let’s invite them to the back of the line and let them apply after we offer asylum and a better life to actual refugees, whose lives are threatened because of their religious beliefs or their race or ethnicity.