Opponents to immigration reform are reported to be using the events in Boston as an argument in their favour. The reasoning seems to be that the U.S. should think twice before accepting immigrants from areas where violence is endemic. They have violence in their DNA.
The New York Times wrote in an editorial on April 21: “Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in two vicious wars between Russian troops and Chechen separatists in the 1990s and early 2000s. The wars led to widespread destruction in Chechnya and spawned a violent Islamist insurgency that created even more misery.”
If endemic violence of this kind disqualifies immigrants from those areas, only Canada remains an acceptable source of immigrants for the United States. And even in Canada there are dark spots. In October 1970, Quebec separatists killed a provincial cabinet minister and stuffed him in the trunk of a car. If that is taken into account, no country qualifies.
However, as the Times points out, “the Boston events have nothing to do with immigration reform. Even if we stop accepting refugees and asylum seekers, stop giving out green cards and devise a terror-profiling system that can bore into the hearts of 9-year-olds, which seems to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s age when he entered the United States, we will still face risks. And we will not have fixed immigration.
“There is a better way to be safer: pass an immigration bill. If terrorists, drug traffickers and gangbangers are sharp needles in the immigrant haystack, then shrink the haystack. Get 11 million people on the books. Find out who they are.”
An overly simplistic solution! If that idea had been applied earlier, Boston would not have a St. Patrick’s Day parade.
In recent years, at least through 2011, the U.S. was the fastest growing source country of residence for immigrants to Canada. The increase since 9/11 has been striking. So too is the success of the Microsoft Campus in Vancouver, attracting highly qualified people from around the world unable or unwilling to contend with U.S. immigration. Canada benefits especially from the widely different approaches to spousal employment.
So how might they assess, in Massachusetts, say, the desirability of accepting an immigrant from Texas?
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