Some Notes On Immigration

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  • In preparation for my big Soho Forum debate a week from today, I’ve been doing some research to collect statistics relative to the subject of immigration, particularly as to the potential consequences of unlimited immigration into the U.S. Today I’ll share some of those statistics as a teaser for what you will get when you come to the debate.

  • The resolution for the debate is “The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease.” I have agreed to take the negative side of the resolution.

  • You might say that they have given me a ridiculously easy position to defend.

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Come To The Soho Forum Debate On July 25

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Come To The Soho Forum Debate On July 25

  • This is your chance to see the Manhattan Contrarian in a live debate!

  • On July 25, the Soho Forum will host a debate on the resolution “The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease.”

  • I will be taking the negative side of the debate.

  • We’d love to have a big attendance for this event.

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Federal Court Declares Immigration Statute Unconstitutional

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  • The topic of the moment here at Manhattan Contrarian has been how judges with a religious zeal to perfect the world (according to their own woke vision) can go completely off the rails with sweeping orders to transform the entire country.

  • In Sunday’s post, it was a Federal District Judge in Oregon (Ann Aiken — we believe in naming names here at MC) and another one from Los Angeles sitting by designation on the Ninth Circuit (Josephine Staton) seeking to establish the use of general constitutional provisions (Fifth Amendment Due Process clause and Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection clause) as a basis for a court to require the government to end all use of fossil fuels. Fortunately, a couple of cooler heads on the Ninth Circuit stepped in to put a stop to that one.

  • In Tuesday’s post it was judges in the Netherlands (including the Supreme Court) and Germany (Constitutional Court), not to mention the European Court of Human Rights, similarly using amorphous concepts like the “sustainability principle” and the “precautionary principle” and the “fairness principle” and a constitutional duty (Netherlands) to “keep the country habitable” again to justify sweeping judicial orders restricting fossil fuel use.

  • For today’s adventure in wild judicial activism, we have a Federal District Judge from Nevada essentially declaring all federal immigration law unconstitutional on the ground that it is racist.

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"Settler Colonialism": More Of The Usual Progressive Racism And Hatred Of Freedom

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  • Several years ago, in connection with a family trip to Israel, I looked into the issue of Israeli “settlements” in the areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I then had a post in June 2017 titled “Do You Know The Difference Between ‘Settlers’ And ‘Immigrants’?” .

  • The Israeli settlements, and the “settlers” who inhabit them, have come in for constant attacks from the international left, culminating in condemnation from a UN Security Council resolution in 2016. The resolution was approved by a 14-0 vote in 2016 (on which vote the U.S., during President Obama’s tenure, abstained, rather than exercising its right to veto).

  • Yet viewed in a broader context, the Israeli settlements are a tiny part of annual migrations of millions of people around the world, going from one political jurisdiction to another. All, or nearly all, of these other migrations are applauded by the international left. Indeed, these other migrations are applauded even when they are clearly violative of the law of the destination — illegal immigration into the United States being the most prominent example.

  • So what makes the Israeli settlers so subject to widespread condemnation while other migrants are applauded?

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Is It Fair To Describe Land Acquisition By Jews In East Jerusalem As "Ethnic Cleansing"?

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Several days ago a friend brought to my attention a December 2 article from something called “The National,” with the headline “How Palestinians in Jerusalem are being targeted in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”  If you haven’t heard of it, The National bills itself as “the Middle East’s leading English-language news service,” and is produced in the UAE.

Now, “ethnic cleansing” is a rather charged term.  I first heard that term used in the 1990s in the context of efforts by the Serbian army to remove Muslims and Croats from certain areas of Bosnia.  Here is a description of what that “ethnic cleansing” consisted of from Wikipedia:

The ethnic cleansing campaign that took place throughout areas controlled by the Bosnian Serbs targeted Muslim Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. The ethnic cleansing campaign included unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery, and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals, and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.

The worst single event in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing occurred in and around the town of Srebrenica in 1995.  From the same Wikipedia article:

The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000  Bosniak("Bosnian Muslim") men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina,

I have also seen the term “ethnic cleansing” used in connection with the events in Rwanda, also in the mid-1990s, that included the 1994 killing of an estimated 500,000 to 1 million members of the Tutsi tribe by members of the Hutu tribe.  The term “genocide” is also frequently used to describe these events.Now, is it remotely accurate to describe current events in Israel using this highly charged term “ethnic cleansing”?  The article from the National particularly focuses on developments in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem known to Palestinians as Silwan, located in a steep valley immediately south of the walled Old City of Jerusalem.  In recent decades the area has been inhabited mainly by Palestinians. Jews often refer to the same area, or at least part of it, as the “City of David,” based on a belief that this was the location where King David first established the city and built his palace back around 1000 BC.  Apparently there is substantial archeological evidence to support this belief, but I have not personally evaluated that.  When I visited Israel in 2017, there was a large archeological dig going on in some of this area, which you could look into from the adjacent higher ground; and there are plans to turn the archeological site into a visitors’ center.  Clearly, if there had previously been homes on this spot, they had been removed.

So how have Jews or Jewish organizations obtained control of this area to conduct their archeological dig? . . .

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Do You Know The Difference Between "Settlers" And "Immigrants"?

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In our very inter-connected world, in any given year many people move from one political jurisdiction to another.  Such a move may be motivated by a large number of reasons -- economic (seeking a more prosperous or less expensive life), physical security (seeking to avoid strife and conflict), religious (seeking to be nearer to religious sites or co-religionists), weather, health, etc.  Most people who move to another country go by the name of "immigrants" in their new homes, but some go by the name of "settlers."   Do you know how to tell the difference?

I know that you probably think this is a silly question.  After all, everybody knows that "immigrants" are good, whereas "settlers" are bad.  Back in the 1980s, "settlers" was the term applied to whites who lived in apartheid-era South Africa, inspiring the slogan "one settler, one bullet" from their adversaries.  Today, the word "settler" is the term used to describe those, mostly Jews, who have moved into the territories (mainly known as East Jerusalem and the West Bank) taken by Israel in the 6 day war of 1967.  

On the subject of "immigrants," the United States has approximately 33 million or so of the legal variety, and another estimated 11 million of the "undocumented" (illegal) variety.  The combined total of about 44 million is more than 13% of current U.S. population.  In the United States, immigrants of the legal variety are entitled to essentially all of the rights and privileges of the native-born (exception: an immigrant cannot vote until becoming a citizen).  For purposes of buying or renting property in the United States, even legal residency is not a requirement.  Literally anybody can do it.  From HG.org:

Unlike many countries that only allow land sales to those with citizenship in the country, the United States treats sales of real estate to foreigners almost the same as sales to citizens. The only limitations are usually imposed by homeowners associations, condominium associations, cooperatives, or other forms of community associations.     

And for renters?  In my home town of New York, we have a Human Rights Law that protects aspiring tenants from "discrimination" based on "immigration status" -- definitely including the "status" of "illegal."  According to DNAInfo here on Thursday, the City is even now investigating a landlord in the Corona neighborhood of Queens who allegedly "illegally harass[ed prospective] tenants" by "post[ing] a sign in his apartment building saying he wouldn't re-sign leases unless tenants showed their immigration papers."  Obviously, we mustn't have that.  After all, these people are immigrants.  We need to treat them as equals in every respect, even the ones in the country illegally. 

On the other hand, if we were talking about "settlers" the situation would be very different.  Currently I am spending the week in the country of Israel.  As we all know, the international community has with near-unanimity condemned the Israeli "settlers."  Most famously, back in December the UN Security Council passed a resolution declaring that the Israeli settlements were "a flagrant violation under international law."  That resolution became unanimous when the U.S., in the waning days of Obama and Kerry, failed to veto it, as the U.S. had vetoed comparable resolutions in the past.  

In preparation for our trip to Israel, our friends suggested that we see a new documentary movie "The Settlers," then recently released and playing in a theater in Greenwich Village.  The film was, to say the least, not favorable to the position of the Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.  Many unhappy Palestinians appeared in the film, saying things like (paraphrase) "these have been our lands for many generations."  

But, I kept asking, can't anyone now just buy or rent some land or a house or an apartment and move in?  That's the way it works where I come from, and nobody really says a word about it (beyond the general issue for some that the overall level of immigration is too high).  In the Borough of Queens, where one of my daughters lives, they say that some 800 languages are spoken -- and everybody seems to be getting along just fine.  (Check out this map of Queens showing languages by neighborhood.)   

But the film studiously avoided addressing the question of why people can't just buy or rent property and move in as legitimate immigrants.  While here in Israel I have tried to investigate the answer to that question.  The Israeli view appears to be that almost all of the settlements are on land that either (1) was legitimately purchased from a prior Palestinian owner, or (2) was unoccupied land that had no prior registered owner, and therefore was owned by the state and is OK for anyone to occupy and then seek legitimate status.  There have been a few notable cases where land was acquired illegally (generally from someone who fraudulently claimed to be the owner, but did not have proper title), and in those cases the settlements have been forcibly removed.

So the question is, should the Israeli government forcibly prevent anyone who is not a Palestinian Arab from moving into the disputed territories (East Jerusalem and the West Bank)?  The argument most commonly advanced for the pro side of that question is that doing so would assist the "peace process," by leaving clean boundaries to enable negotiators to divide up territories for a prospective "two state solution."  Maybe.  But to favor that, you would have to believe that the "two state solution" is actually going to happen imminently, and also that, once implemented, a two state situation with clean ethnic and religious separation between the states would be stable and successful.  I don't believe either of those things.    

Why does the same principle that applies to the United States and Europe, and calls for us to accept large numbers of immigrants of all cultures and religions on an ongoing basis, and allow them to live among us wherever they choose, not also apply to the Palestinians and, for that matter, to everyone else?  No reason that I can see.

Meanwhile, the prosperity in modern-day Israel is quite remarkable.  In almost every respect -- appearance, architecture, prosperity, climate -- the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa are remarkably comparable to the big coastal cities of California like Los Angeles and San Diego.  Here is a picture of Tel Aviv from a raised spot along the Mediterranean coast:

Yes, that first (domed) building in the foreground is a mosque.  And here is a picture of Haifa from a high spot (the Bahai garden on Mount Carmel) overlooking the town:

In my naivety I would think that the Palestinians would want to get with the program that seems to be working so well, but that is not their current agenda.