Middle East immigration numbers that should concern everyone

Imagine if a bill had come before Congress after the 9/11 attacks debating the future of immigration from the Middle East. How many members of Congress would have voted to double migration from that volatile region and make it the fastest growing subset of our immigrants? 15 years after that tragic day, that is exactly what has happened, and with no input from the American people.

Last year, I counted the number of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries and found that since 2001, the average annual intake has been roughly 100,000 per year, twice the rate in the ‘90s. But that trajectory has been increasing in recent years. During the five years from FY 2009 through FY 2013 alone, we’ve brought in 680,000 from those same countries. Now, there is evidence that this trajectory is growing sharper.

A few days ago, I posted a new immigration analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies detailing the sharp increase in overall immigration during the most recent two-year period: 2014-2015. Using the same Census data, a glance at the predominantly Muslim countries indicates that 308,000 new individuals emigrated here during those two years.[1] The data is based on the Current Population Survey, which asks immigrants when they came to America. This is the first two-year period where the total number from Middle Eastern and predominantly Muslim countries has exceeded 300k. Which means that the annual rate of Muslim immigration has likely exceeded 150,000. Remember, these are individuals coming straight from the Middle East during the most volatile period of Islamic upheaval fomented by ISIS and other strains strictly adherent to Sharia Law.

According to Pew Research, Arabic is now the fastest growing language in the U.S. and the Census Department will offer Arabic translations of the decennial questionnaire for the first time in 2020. The number of people speaking Arabic has grown by 29 percent from 2010-2014, whereas the number of Spanish speakers has only grown by six percent over the same period. The most up-to-date monthly data from the Current Population Survey clearly indicates that this trend has grown in 2015 and for the first quarter of 2016.

As I lamented last Friday, we have sent our soldiers, particularly the special operators, to all sorts of hell holes over the past 15 years, often helping one side of the Islamic civil war over the other. We’ve dispatched them to endless wars with no good outcome. Yet, at the same time we are expending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives refereeing civil wars and playing interference for Iran and a corrupt Afghani government, we’ve imported the problem to our very shores free of charge.

According to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland, there are over 1,000 active homegrown terror cases being investigated by the FBI in all 50 states. This is not the result of ISIS or the Taliban coming here with an Air Force or Navy and invading America; this is the result of suicidal immigration policies.

There has been much discussion over a blanket ban on Muslim immigration, which was extremely popular in the GOP primaries, according to exit polls from every state. But why can’t we start with a more relevant policy of not making immigration from the Middle East the fastest growing category? Unfortunately, instead of using the annual defense bill to right the ship on our backwards immigration and defense policies, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John McCain (R-AZ) are looking to add 4,000 more visas to the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, granting green cards to those who work for the U.S. military as translators in Afghanistan. This is on top of the 3,000-visa expansions slipped into last year’s bill. As I noted last year, generally speaking, it is a good idea to provide this status to those natives who help the U.S. in foreign wars because they often need protection as a result of their work with the U.S. military. But as American citizens have witnessed over the past decade, the rampant spread of radical jihad throughout the Middle East has made it arduous to distinguish friend from foe.

While a number of Afghani translators have served faithfully, there have been numerous tragedies of our brave soldiers killed in Afghanistan at the prime of their lives because they were double crossed by an Afghani contractor or interpreter. One such “green-on-blue” attack killed U.S. Major General Harold Green in 2014, the highest-ranking casualty in a theater of war since Vietnam. Attacks from supposedly friendly Afghanis accounted for 15 percent of coalition soldier deaths in 2012.

Moreover, this is not a one-time deal; it has become our modus operandi to get involved in Islamic civil wars and then bring entire families in the tens of thousands from both sides to our shores. This is on top of the record high immigration from Pakistan and other Islamic countries and the almost 150,000 refugees we have taken from Iraq since 2007. If we are going to bring in more Afghanis under the guise of rewarding those who serve the U.S. military, can we at least reduce other categories of immigration from the Middle East? And if the only thing we can show for 15 years of involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is hundreds of thousands of new Sharia-adherent immigrants, there is something wrong with our entire approach to war-fighting and homeland security.

Today, we mark the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion. In 1944, we were a nation united under a morally and intellectually clear mission. We uncompromisingly defended our homeland and sent our soldiers across the world to fight with a defined mission, definitive outcome and no restrictive rules of engagement. Now, we send our troops into Islamic meat-grinders with appalling rules of engagement — often helping our enemies — and then we bring the problems straight to our shores. The best way to honor the sacrifice of the Greatest Generation at Omaha Beach is to follow in their example of how to fight a war: by putting the security of Americans first.

[1] Predominantly Muslim Countries include the following: Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Somalia. This total does not include Nigeria, which is half Muslim and has sent a lot of immigrants here in recent years. Nor does it include India, which is one of the biggest immigrant-sending countries in the world and is roughly 15% Muslim.