By rational standards U.S. immigration policy is in shambles. An uncontrolled southern border allows unfettered access to the country. Illegal immigrants from Latin America join others who are already established in society, who have been here for years, who have been working hard, creating families, rearing children, contributing to their communities, and obeying the law. They would make good citizens, and it is not in the country’s interest to deport them.
We are speaking here of the illegals whose country of origin lies south of the U.S. border. A distinction has to be made between immigrants from Latin America and immigrants from the Islamic Middle East. The latter are distinguished by their refusal to assimilate and by their demand for concessions, including the right to live under their own law of Sharia. Most are Muslims whose ways are clearly at odds with what is regarded as the typical American way of life.
Does it matter? According to a United Nations refugee agency, by late September 2016, more than 300,000 migrants in this year alone crossed the Mediterranean seeking residence in Europe. It is estimated that more than 3,000 perished while attempting the crossing. We read daily of the hardships endured by those who are checked at Calais as they attempt to reach the United Kingdom, where a liberal immigration policy will give them EU status.
The BBC has reported that about 3,000 are stranded in “The Jungle,” but due to the insistence of Mayor Natacha Bouchart, the national government has promised to relocate them to other centers for processing.
Muslims have created almost insuperable problems in Europe wherever they have settled in great numbers, notably in France and Belgium. France is particularly confronted by the result of its own liberal policies of times past. It is estimated that close to 8 million Muslims reside in France, where they constitute 11 percent of the population. Some put the number even higher.
The issue the country is forced to confront is this: How should the government relate to those Muslims who are fellow citizens, accommodating their demands, while at the same time dealing with an influx of Muslims who retain citizenship in an Islamic country?
Pierre Manent has raised another question: “Can European political regimes take in the Muslim way of life without finally giving that way of life the force of law?”
French secularism (laicité) makes it possible to recognize different ways of life, and gives every citizen the right to follow the religion or moral code of his choice. As others have acknowledged, French secularity has not neutralized French society with respect to religion. “French society,” in the words of Manent, “has retained its Christian mark, stamped mainly by Catholic Christianity but containing significant Protestant and Jewish elements.”
Experience tells us that Muslims tend to form visible and tangible groups wherever they reside in numbers. They are inherently tribal by nature. Their members find their good not in the larger common good, but within their own society. Obviously this militates against social intercourse and the development of a common intellectual and cultural life with those whose territory they have chosen to reside.
Absent a homogeneous population of unity and belief, action at all levels is frustrated. At least 22 Muslim enclaves can be identified within the United States. The country is big enough to absorb those communities without much difficulty. The problem is that Islam is not just a religion in the Western sense. It is also a political program with world domination as its ultimate goal.
If the United States were to adopt a policy of open immigration, the results are not difficult to imagine. Those fleeing the Middle East would not immigrate to other Muslim countries. In great numbers they would likely accept the American invitation.
The United States would then be confronted with France’s present problem.
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