Refugees In Ann Coulter's Essay

America, a land that prides itself on being “the great melting pot”, and “the land of opportunity”, oftentimes exemplifies everything but that. Over the years, a vast majority of immigrants have migrated to America and assimilated themselves to American culture. In Moustafa Bayoumi’s novel, “Rasha”, he describes the turmoil some families face when trying to immigrate into America. In the novel, Rasha was arrested, thrown in jail and detained for three months just because she was a Muslim. While immigration is portrayed as a way to a “better life”, the truth is that families just like Rasha’s still encounter discrimination that challenges American ideals such as freedom of religion and equality.

Schwartz and Troianovski (2015), reporters for The Wall Street Journal, claim that many residents of the U.S. fear that the terrorist group ISIS will exploit this expansion and use it to smuggle terrorists into the U.S. Fears have especially heightened after the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. Although this has not been confirmed to be the workings of a foreign terrorist group (Karimi, Shoichet, & Ford, 2015), American citizens are becoming increasingly in favor of restricting immigration. In a December 2015 survey conducted by the Associated Press, 53% of respondents opposed the Obama administration’s plan to admit Syrian refugees into the U.S. and 54% believed that the U.S. takes too many immigrants from the Middle East (Swanson, 2015). While pro-restriction attitudes may cause the number of people immigrating to the U.S. each year outside of the refugee system to decrease, the increasing number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S. in 2016 and 2017 will offset this. The number of immigrants voting in future elections will increase as a result of the refugee crisis, so in the future, presidential candidates should increase the amount of appeals and advertisements used in order to encourage Syrian refugees and other immigrants to

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, immigration control and national homeland security have been issues of concern for both the national government and private citizens. In the wake of the attacks, a lot of articles were written about what the appropriate response should be to prevent another attack. In 2004, Mark Krikorian wrote an article for the Providence Journal entitled “Safety through Immigration Control” in which he contends that the only means to keep America safe from a follow-up attack is to strengthen and enforce immigration law to prevent terrorists from being able to enter the country. Edwidge Danticat, writing for The Nation in 2005, provides a juxtaposition to Krikorian’s stance in her essay “Not Your Homeland”, in which she describes her witnessing of the inhumane conditions many immigrants are forced to endure in the name of increased security to protect the country. She questions whether the added protections are worth the human cost we are paying by treating immigrants and refugees as guilty until proven innocent. At the crossroads of these two perspectives lies the question: what is the proper balance between national security and the humane treatment of immigrants?

After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks 83,000 immigrants registered with the U.S. Government from a required program that targeted specified countries. Of those 83,000, twenty-eight would go on to be charged with a crime (“Immigration Law and Terrorism”). Yet in America, immigrants, children of immigrants, and those of Islamic faith are targeted as a threat to the United States of America. In return, immigrants and those of Islamic have become the victims of profiling, hate crimes, and in some cases their constitutional rights have been violated because of actions based on fear of their place of origin and or their religion. The key to antiterrorism is not singling out Muslims and immigrants as a threat based solely on their beliefs

Savannah Cox, writer and editor of New Republic, wrote “Trump’s Refugee Ban Isn’t as Un-American as You Think”. Cox claimed the refugee ban isn’t the only un-American thing in America, considering the fact that similar major events happened. She gave examples like the Immigration Restriction Act in 1917 which Congress overrode Wilson’s rejection, and she said “This marked the first time the U.S. used federal law to discriminate against immigrants”; these quotes and examples strengthened the idea that acts and bans because it became a “popular” topic which starting hundreds of years ago, making it part of America and everyone in America. In the article, Cox targeted the American people because the overall subject of the article was about America

These platforms dehumanize immigrants, abandoning their needs and contributing to the “ghetto-ization” of their communities. This means that they are continuously left with the “worst housing in the worst neighborhoods” as local policymakers fail to facilitate their economic and political integration (Sandercock 18). Somalis original came to Lewiston because they benefited from what the community had to offer, but an increasingly hostile environment has left them feeling unwelcome. Maine is coping with a rapidly dwindling population, meaning that the state will be unable to sustain it’s workforce as young people leave the state for opportunities elsewhere (Gibney). But here is where refugees could be saviors, as statistics show that Somali’s are eager to get jobs and enter the workforce in Maine. Evidently, the Somali community has a higher graduation rate then native students, with the majority attending Maine’s colleges to get degrees to become teachers, doctors, engineers (Galofaro). But as Maine’s politicians continuously fail to address racial tensions, our state faces the “worst of both worlds: expending resources to house and educate refugee newcomers, only to see the next generation leave in search of a more welcoming environment”

Although immigrant women play a big role in America’s society and economy, they have been constantly mistreated and looked down upon throughout history. Not only do they face the burden of the stratifications that their gender entails but they also struggle to adopt the American culture and norms. America was viewed as the land of opportunities and economic prosperity, a perspective that draws in many immigrant women who were willing to leave their families and possessions to come to this foreign country in hopes of a better life. In America, they faced many challenges as they not only had to work long hours but also took care of their families and do housework as well. They struggled to make a standard living out of low wage jobs and assimilating into America’s society. Today, the treatment of immigrant women has improved greatly as they have stood together and fought for their rights. Immigrant women have built communities and held strikes for better pay and treatment. Although America has made great strides in improving treatment of immigrant women, there is still social injustice. Immigrant women have come a long way from the first time they entered America until now, but their stories are often left untold and omitted from American history.

Reducing the issue of xenophobia, the fear of foreigners or strangers, is not a simple task. Two ways today’s society is attempting to reduce xenophobia is through satirical representations, such as the animated show Futurama, and through non-satirical ways like serious articles in magazines like The New York Times. Both representations attempt to bring awareness to serious issues faced by Americans today, but both use completely different methods to get their point across. Dowell Myers’ article in the New York Times, “The Next Immigration Challenge,” observes the assimilation of Mexican immigrants into the U.S. and the problems faced by these immigrants in the way of skeptical Americans and uncooperative government policies. He examines the different ways that immigrants have and continue to contribute to society, and how current government policies hinder more successful strides in the future.

Although events such as San Bernardino in 2015 provide anecdotal evidence of immigrants committing acts of extreme violence, these events are extremely rare. Nonetheless, tragedies such as these inevitably grab headlines and capture the attention of millions of Americans across the country. Tragedies such as the attack in San Bernardino hold strong emotional appeal to proponents for restrictive immigration policy. However, these rare and uncontrollable events should not provide the base of logic for America’s national immigration policy as they are not a proxy for immigrant behavior as a whole. Various statistics regarding crime among immigrants may reveal an underlying reason for lower crime rates, which is that the majority of immigrants understand the implications of committing a crime and know that it would not be in their best interest as a new member of the country they wish to call home. Natives, moreover, have crime rates five times that of immigrants. This demonstrates the potential positive externalities that immigrants contribute to the social sphere by lowering the crime rate and acting as models within urban America.

For the podcast, I interviewed Lina Abdulnoor, with the intention of exploring the intricacies of refugeehood by analyzing Lina’s refugee experience. Lina lived in Iraq with her family until they began receiving death threats due to their religious beliefs. Convinced that they needed to flee the country to survive, they left Iraq as refugees. After leaving Iraq, they settled in Jordan, where they waited two years until the U.N. to approve their request to move to the U.S. in 2012. Lina and her family initially settled in Virginia, where she experienced culture shock as she adapted to American culture and the English language. However, Lina did not feel accepted in Virginia; her experiences in the state led her to think that Americans treated her according to negative stereotypes of Iraqis. After living in Virginia for several months, Lina and her family chose to resettle in San Diego, California, which harbored a larger Iraqi population than Virginia did. Supported by San Diego’s Iraqi community and various refugee organizations, Lina flourished, and she currently studies at UCSD while holding a stable job.

In Danielle Allen and Richard Ashby Wilson’s Washington Post article “Mass deportation isn’t just impractical. It’s very, very dangerous” (2016) the authors speak on the guaranteed dangers of going through with Donald Trump’s mass deportation promises. Allen and Wilson assert that Trump’s proposal to deport up to 11 million undocumented immigrants within a matter of months is not only preposterous, but incredibly dangerous. Their joint credibility backs the article, as it is stated that, “Allen is a political theorist at Harvard and a contributing columnist for The Post. Richard Ashby Wilson is the Gladstein Chair of Human Rights at the University of Connecticut School of Law.” They call to mind the mass deportation that led to ethnic cleansing of Bosnians in Yugoslavia as a way to hold a mirror to the similar situations today regarding deportation of Mexicans and of refugees.

Ann Coulter’s book Adios, America! The Lefts Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third Word Hellhole is based on the ever-changing culture that is surrounding the United States. Coulter implies that if immigration is not dealt with head on, the United States will lose their country (Coulter, 2016). In this critical reflection paper, I will discuss and analyze three key issues or themes that were portrayed in Adios, America! and expand on how these concepts merge with those of Governing Immigration through Crime by Dowling and Inda.

If the current presidential election has at all done anything productive for our nation, it has, at the very least, identified the most salient problems in society that the American people need to address. Morality, honesty, racism, and just plain old human decency are a few examples of now accepted norms in this society and election. In Nicholas Kristof’s essay Would You Hide a Jew from the Nazis?, Kristof addresses these declining values by comparing the United States’ reaction of the immigration situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany to that of the Syrian refugee crisis today.

The United States of America has always been a refuge where poor and oppressed people from the far corners of the world can come to begin a new life. Much of the nation’s allure to prospective immigrants is in its promise of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, or color. But the pressures of rising unemployment rates, congested cities, a crippled healthcare system, and national debt skyrocketing out of control have caused America to defend her borders against the influx of immigrants that threaten her already ailing economy. Still, despite all the heightened security measures incorporated in recent decades, a steady stream of immigrants continue to enter the country illegally. The Washington Times reports that there are

Many immigrants come to the United States in search of the opportunity to have a better life. They have the willingness to work, seek out educational opportunities and to be productive members and contributors to society. Rarely do you find those instances where immigrants come here to take, destroy all that our nation has built and established. When you hear the current administration in the media use fear, as part of cultural destructiveness to destroy how our society view other cultures and diminish the worth of individuals within their own Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, Thomas, (pg. 64, 2012). By doing that the narrative around immigrants’ changes, people start to believe that immigrants are here committing crimes and a higher rate in comparison to Americans that are born here; For instance, during one of Donald’s Trump 2016 campaign speeches he said “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re