Op-Ed

An International War of Words

Published

10 years ago

January 19, 2015

By Raynard Jackson
NNPA Columnist

With the recent terrorists attacks in Paris over a largely unknown satirical newspaper that poked fun at Islam and Mohammed, there has been a global debate over whether the world is at war with “radical” Islam. The debate has centered on whether one actually uses the word “act of terror” when describing what happened in Paris.

I find the very notion of this being debated too ridiculous to dignify. So let’s move on to the real issue of what happened in Paris.

Liberals, whether in Europe or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, have a worldview on immigration that makes absolutely no sense. And that was before today’s terrorism. These liberals believe that the world has a “constitutional right” to be in their countries, whether they came legally or not. Remember, in liberalism, “intent” always supersedes action.

The thinking goes like this: “They only came to our country to make a better life for themselves and their children. Therefore, their being in violation of the immigration laws of a given country should not apply because their intent was pure.”

This media obsession over who uses what words to describe what happened in Paris misses the point. A sovereign country has the sole discretion and the right to determine who enters and stays in their country. Countries need not apologize for the criteria they use to determine their immigration policies. If you don’t like their rules, then stay out of their country. It’s that simple.

But what was on display in Paris, and coming soon to America, are foreigners who want to dictate the conditions under which they will “allow” a country to let them in And once in legally, they want to force their host country to assimilate to their culture and values.

The two brothers that committed the murders in Paris were first generation Frenchmen with Algerian parents (Algeria was a former French colony). Though Frenchmen by birth, they never accepted their French citizenship as their own. That is the issue with a liberal approach to immigration policy.

Liberals feel it is “racist” to expect an invited guest in one’s country to conform to the values of the host country. Citizenship is more than just a legal status. Citizenship is just as much cultural as it is legal. Though the two brothers in Paris were Frenchmen by birth, they had nothing in common with France. They were more at home speaking Arabic, not French, their native language. They recognized Sharia law, not French law.

Let’s be very clear: immigration is always about cheap labor. We can dress the issue up in many ways, but the bottom line is cheap labor. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are putting our country’s national security at risk in hopes of making a profit by reducing the cost of labor.

I have been roundly criticized in the media over my support for racial profiling when it comes to our immigration policy. Why in the world would anyone allow people from Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. to immigrate or even visit our country? Homegrown terrorists aside, we know where terrorists are coming from, so by denying them entry into the U.S., we pressure their countries to clamp down on the radicalization taking place within their countries.

If foreigners want the privilege of immigrating to or visiting the U.S., they and their countries must comport themselves in a certain manner consistent with our values. This is no different than the State Department recently putting sanctions on North Korea because of the Sony hack or Obama trying to force homosexuality down the throats of African countries as a condition for receiving our foreign aid.

Sanctions are part of our foreign policy tools that are used to change behavior. So, if other countries want their citizens to have access to America, then they must contain and control the radicalization going on in their countries.

Coming to America is a privilege, not a right, and our immigration policy must begin to reflect that.

We must shut our borders to low and unskilled laborers, the uneducated, the non-English speaking. Our immigration policy should be cast in terms of a business model approach. We should only allow those into who can bring something of value to our country. Cheap labor is not a value when you have millions of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed.

America is the only major power that will subjugate the interests of its own people under the false illusion of “free trade.” There is no such thing as “free trade.” There is fair trade, but not free trade.

As opposed to focusing on the war on terror, it seems to me that too much time is being spent on the war of words.

Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a Washington, D.C.-based public relations/government affairs firm. He can be reached through his Web site, www.raynardjackson.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @raynard1223.

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