Immigration Failed Britain. It Doesn’t Have to Fail Us.

The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of birthright citizenship. The decision has ignited an age-old debate at the center of the immigration issue: how much can a nation reasonably allow without becoming unstable? Where do we draw the line?

Unchecked immigration has risen to the top of the public consciousness in Great Britain and much of Western Europe, as years of mass migration from the Islamic world has taken a visible toll on British society.

Earlier this month, a report was released documenting the widespread sexual assault and rape of underage girls throughout the United Kingdom by Islamist Pakistani gangs.

I wish I was surprised by the lax media coverage that this report has received. Unfortunately, the reason for its poor coverage is much the same as why this was allowed to happen in the first place.

The report details how “fear of being labelled ‘racist’ paralysed the Metropolitan Police and City Hall.” Simply put, fear of espousing an anti-immigrant sentiment drove people to silence on a tragedy of the highest order. Not long before the report surfaced, U.K. independent journalist Derek Heggie was jailed for “grossly offensive” comments stating that “young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs that worship the Prophet Muhammad.”

The British police and children’s centers consistently looked the other way and allowed the abuse to fester. 62% of convicted offenders in Rotherham were Pakistani Muslims, a demographic which makes up just 4% of the local population.

Victims overwhelmingly reported that they were regularly told by their abusers that they “deserved punishment” because they were white girls. They were consistently lambasted with racial and religious slurs during their abuse. A victim testified that “being white was repeatedly used as a justification for the abuse or to minimise or dismiss the harm being inflicted.”

To suggest that this atrocity was not the result of a barbaric culture is dreadfully ignorant at best and criminally disingenuous at worst. The U.K. allowed the mass immigration of a violent, supremacist, and animalistic populace of Islamic extremists under the grounds of diversity and multiculturalism. When this inevitably brought tragedy, authorities stood by and did nothing.

From the punishments that the abusers must face to the responsibility of the authorities to the borderline authoritarian government that allowed Heggie to be jailed not only for speech, but for true speech, it is hard to know where to begin in directing criticism. For now, the focus should be on what lessons we Americans can take from the U.K. so that we can prevent its like from ever occurring here in the United States.

Amidst the recent election of extremist candidates in cities with heavy immigrant populations, Trump administration staffer Stephen Miller posted on social media, “Change the voters, change the country.” The New Republic immediately reported this as a “dog whistle” and slammed Miller for racism.

If we step back for a minute, though, it would be patently absurd to label his statement untrue. In a democracy (one would hope), the will of the people is the driving force behind the nature of the country. If you bring in masses of people with different will, the country will change — for better or for worse. To suggest otherwise is foolish.

The consequences of this mistake are not easily undone. Once you have imported a massive voting population that is hostile toward your culture, it is impossible to exorcise them from your society.

Too often, we are taught to laud the institution of democracy for its own sake. Democracy without a culture of liberalism and freedom is worthless. Just ask the Gazans and their democratically elected government.

While Europe’s problem is highly analogous to our country’s illegal immigration problem, what Miller gets wrong is that the troubles facing us are simply not the same as those facing Europe. For one, there is no serious evidence to support the claim that legally residing immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native born Americans.

A 2019 study from the Cato Institute found that 75% of first-generation immigrants were “very proud” to be Americans — over and above the 69% of native-born Americans. Immigrants have also historically reported higher levels of respect for American law enforcement.

How many immigrants did you see participating in the 2020 BLM riots? Some, I’m sure, but their numbers paled in comparison to overprivileged white liberal teenagers. Zoe, the blue-haired leftist with 12 piercings and a face tattoo, is a far greater threat to our liberal order than Eduardo, the Cuban immigrant looking to build a business and start a family.

The opposite is true of Western Europe. Islamic immigrants pour into Britain and France, bringing with them radical ideologies and an unwillingness to assimilate.

We are a country of immigrants. There has been a recent push from protectionist factions on the right to argue otherwise. This is fundamentally untrue.

Forty percent of all Americans trace their ancestry directly through Ellis Island. One in four Americans is either a first or second-generation immigrant. This is nothing new. In the year 1900, that figure was greater than 1 in 3. Even in the country’s earliest days, 14.3% of Declaration signers and 18% of Constitution signers were born overseas.

By all conceivable metrics, immigration has been, and remains, a foundational element of American identity.

With that said, it is in no way racist to screen for ideology in the immigration process. In fact, it is the epitome of common sense. Holding radical Islamist beliefs makes you incompatible with Western society. President Trump’s effort to implement ideological screening in 2023 was met with a visceral reaction from the Left. He was particularly berated for his statement, “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country.”

We can stop pretending like this is anything other than a normal thing to say. News flash: nonradical minorities don’t want to share fences with extremists either. This was evidenced by Trump’s strong showing with Hispanic voters despite his constant rhetoric against illegal and anti-American immigration. The same is true for Muslims who abhor violence and terrorism. It is a sweeping (perhaps racist) generalization to become offended on their behalf when the president calls out their vitriolic counterparts.

Immigrants who bring hatred and anti-Americanism with them are a dangerous plague.

There is something rather telling about the popular leftist argument that anti-Western immigrants have suffered at the hands of “Western imperialism” and are therefore “owed” entry into the United States. The very fact that left-wingers view these immigrants as our just desserts for past misgivings betrays an understanding that this type of immigration is a curse rather than a blessing upon Western society.

Our immigration problem is orders of magnitude smaller than Britain’s, but it is real. We must take their failures as earnest warnings not to let a great strength devolve into a crippling weakness.