HE’S RIGHT OF COURSE: Joel Kotkin: The West cannot accept Gazan refugees. Unconstrained mass migration from dangerous regions would be disastrous for America.
The stunning victory of anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders suggests that the nation of a proposed “Muslim ban”, temping down on immigration from Islamic countries, is no longer outside the realm of political discussion. This movement can only gain steam given the sometimes openly anti-Semitic protests by Muslims in support of the Hamas pogrom.
President Donald Trump’s crude tactic of using immigration policy to stop the migration of anti-American terrorists and their supporters into the United States has already established a precedent of sorts. Trump’s initial executive order included seven predominately Muslim nations – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – and later was expanded in 2020 to include Venezuela and others.
Trump’s ban was quickly dismissed by President Biden, but the drive against increasingly uncontrolled immigration is clearly gaining popular support, particularly in Europe. Left-of-center politicians like Biden are clueless about the political evolution taking place throughout the West. Rather than looking for ways to impose greater scrutiny over immigrations. Biden’s only discussion of a ban has been aimed at sometimes violent nationalist Israeli settlers: looking at what is happening on campuses and the streets, [that’s] hardly the biggest threat.
There are economic ramifications, of course, such as the cost of housing and caring for poor refugees forcing some cities, like New York, as well the UK to look for ways to send them elsewhere. But culture also plays a role. This has been made painfully clear during recent mass pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, and on the streets of London, New York, and Paris. These protests were driven largely by Middle Eastern immigrants and students from the Middle East whose hatred of Israel and Jews in general has been incubated by universities.
Universities may need more tuition to pay their exploding bureaucracies but sovereign nations still have a choice on who to allow to reside or emigrate. We would be loath, rightfully, to allow white racists from South Africa, neo-Nazis, or operatives of North Korea into our countries.
Ireland witnessed its worst civil disorder in decades after rioters marauded through Dublin city center looting shops and setting buses and police cars on fire in a spate of violence that appeared to be triggered by a stabbing attack that injured three children.
Irish police said Friday that 13 shops were damaged and 34 people arrested following the riots, which followed the attack by an unidentified man outside a school on Thursday afternoon. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said on Friday that he had not seen such levels of violence “for decades.” He added that it had been caused by a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology.”
The police are still investigating the stabbing outside a school that left a five-year-old girl in critical condition. Two other children and two adults were also harmed. A man in his 50s was taken into custody, the Irish police said, declining to comment on his nationality or his motive.
Fiery but mostly peaceful anti-immigrant protests. Expect more.