In 1995, discussing the stereotypical immigrant enthusiast anecdotes about the immigrant valedictorian/ hardworking entrepreneur/ caring doctor etc. etc. Peter Brimelow  wrote:

[W]e might, equally reasonably, expect to see balancing anecdotal coverage like this:

…In February 1993, a gang of Middle Easterners, (mostly illegally overstaying after entering on non-immigrant visas—one banned as a terrorist but admitted on a tourist visa in error) blow up New York's World Trade center, killing six and injuring more than 1,000!! In December 1993, a Jamaican immigrant (admitted as a student, but stayed, illegal status automatically regularized after marriage to a U.S. citizen) opens fire on commuters on New York's Long Island Rail Road, killing six and wounding 19!!! WHAT'S GOING ON??!!?" 

Alien Nation, page 6

This is the second attack on the World Trade Center. We will eventually learn who the perpetrators and their assistants are.

Last time they were mostly illegal immigrants. Their status:

Nidal Ayyad, naturalized U.S. Citizen

Mohammad Salameh, a Palestinian, entering the U.S. on a Jordanian passport.

Mahmud Abouhalima, Egyptian citizen with a phony green card.

Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (spelling varies), Egyptian wanted in Egypt for his connection to the death of Sadat, fled to US "taking advantage of a mistake made by US immigration officers who were supposed to be checking a 'terrorist watch' list" and thus legally resident. Egypt says he's still a citizen and some of them would welcome him back.

Ahmed Ajaj, a Palestinian with fake Swedish passport.

This time, the FBI has released a list of the 19 suspects (deceased) in the 9/11 attacks. But apparently, it is declining to release details of their immigration status – perhaps for fear of provoking a "backlash." It has provided informtion on only two:

Khalid Al-Midhar - Possible residence(s): San Diego, California and New York, New York; Visa Status: B-1 Visa, but B-2 Visa had expired.

Marwan Al-Shehhi - Date of birth used: May 9, 1978; Possible residence: Hollywood, Florida; Visa Status: B-2 Visa; Believed to be a pilot.

But all were resident in the U.S. How?

A recent unconfirmed report suggests that some were actually Arab-Americans, who had achieved US citizenship, but not loyalty.

Some things are just too big to see. Immigration is one of them. Islam is another. There are now 6 million Muslims in the United States. (Only 1 to 3 million Arabs, but they don't have to be Arabs. The Times of India reports that two suspects in the WTC bombing are illegal immigrants from India.) An estimated 10 to 15 percent of these are of the fanatical stripe that Daniel Pipes calls "Islamists." That's an army of about 750,000 already present in the US.

Guess what? It may be illegal to notice that fact.

Ask the head of the FBI:

[FBI Director Robert Mueller] said federal law enforcement is not singling out Arabs. ''We do not, have not, will not target people solely based on their ethnicity,'' he said.

This is true. They could have done that when five Arabs boarded the doomed plane at Boston's Logan Airport. But America's lawyers had been hard at work, suing airlines for racial profiling. So they didn't. Even criticism of Islam has been muted by the thought police.

A survey by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri in Los Angeles found that: "a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have close ties or loyalty to the United States."

"Indeed," said Daniel Pipes, who reviewed it, "his questionnaire shows that 12 out of 15 immigrants and even 5 out of 15 converts feel more allegiance to a foreign country than to the United States. 

This huge demographic change happened after, and as a result of, the 1965 immigration act. There were a few Muslims in America before that, Syrian peddlers, et cetera, but the numbers were very low.

People can come here and assimilate, changing habits and loyalties, and being good Americans. But how do we know when it hasn't happened?

In Migrations and Cultures : A World View, Thomas Sowell writes that there was a major difference between the Japanese who immigrated to the US during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), and those who emigrated to Brazil during the Taisho era (1912-1926).

This difference was dramatically demonstrated during World War II, when Japanese Americans loyally supported the United States, despite receiving harsh treatment as enemy aliens, while the Japanese in Brazil, (treated much better) remained so fanatically pro-Japan that many of them refused to believe that Japan had been defeated even after its unconditional surrender in 1945. Thousands of Japanese in Brazil waited in port for the arrival of "victorious" Japanese military forces in the Western Hemisphere. In both the United States and Brazil, the responses of the Japanese reflected the inner patterns of a people, rather than the effect of the surrounding society. Japan itself was quite different at the different times when they emigrated—very pro-Western in general and pro-American in particular during the earlier era and fanatically nationalist and racist during the latter area. 

Migrations and Cultures : A World View, p.107

How are Americans supposed to tell the difference between Meiji and Taisho? How many of you have heard those words before? And that's exactly the same nation, just a different generation. Does that mean that the internment of the Japanese wasn't so stupid after all?

Hilaire Belloc, a man no one would accuse of being in Israel's "amen corner" (trust me on this), wrote in 1936 that:

Millions of modern people of the white civilization, that is, the civilization of Europe and America, have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past.

But he had no idea that they'd be a menace inside our countries.

Of course, there is a simple answer to these problems: a National Origins system. Discriminate in favor of immigrants from civilized, culturally compatible countries. Alternatively, don't have any immigrants at all.

Immigration is still going on as I write. And most Americans still don't have a clue.

According to the Miami Herald at a ceremony swearing-in new citizens – who no doubt have been properly vetted - the president of the University of Miami (Arab-American radical Democrat Donna Shalala) said:

This country's strength is based on tolerance and the ability of people from many nations to live side by side, Shalala said. ''Neither religion nor skin color nor race matter here,'' she said. [Send her mail at dshalala@miami.edu]

Get it? She said this after the September 11 attacks. Which showed that diversity is actually weakness and that religion matters if it exalts holy war...didn't they?

Rudy Giuliani's cluelessness on the subject of immigration is a legend. When Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican immigrant mentioned in Alien Nation, shot up the Long Island Railroad, or Ali Hassan Abu Kamal opened fire on the top deck of the Empire State Building, Giuliani called for restrictions on the freedom of …Americans.

At City Hall, Giuliani attempted to shift the focus toward gun control. He was accompanied by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., whose husband was killed and son wounded in the 1993 shootings on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train that killed six people and wounded 17.

In both that incident and Sunday's shooting, the gunmen circumvented New York's strict gun control laws by traveling out of state to buy the murder weapons, officials said.

"New York State, New York City have great gun control laws," McCarthy said. "But as the mayor said, we cannot control all the guns that are coming in from other parts of the country and that's what has to be stopped."

He's still clueless. In a recent interview with Barbara Walters, Giuliani said

I don't think we realize how good we are. I think the people who want to come here realize how good we are. This is the only country millions of people want to come to in the whole world. That's got to tell us something about ourselves. Tell us something about what a wonderful country this is, what a great form of government we have, what good people we are. And maybe I feel that more than most because I'm the mayor of New York City also. This is the place that immigrants keep coming to all the time, like my grandparents came here. And they want to come here from all over the world.

(The story of Giulani's immigrant family is particularly inspiring. They were a gang of crooks. Like Robert F. Kennedy - shot to death by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan - he's a member of the first generation of his family to go straight.)

For years the attitude of the national press on the subject of immigration has also been clueless, like the man who "couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of eager clues if he smeared his body with clue pheromones and did the mating dance of clues."

But signs of a clue are showing up in the Washington Post,(Ashcroft: 75 Immigrants Now Detained), and the NY Post (Trio Who Cheered Attack Face Boot As Illegal Aliens)

And the Miami Herald story, above, printed something you don't normally see in a daily paper: a raw immigration fact.

In the past decade, 7.4 million people applied for citizenship, one million more than the total for the previous 40 years. [Emphasis added].

For fiscal year 2001-2002, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service expects to grant citizenship to about 800,000 immigrants.

Maybe the Arabs, who invented coffee, have finally managed to wake people up.

September 19, 2001