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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (14785)	5/21/2002 1:27:56 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 23908

Bill Murchison May 21, 2002 Toward sound immigration policy That the West soon will rethink its immigration policies -- or non-policies, as the case may be -- is the clearest political and social datum on display right now. By actions large and small, the West, post-Sept. 11, is declaring its dismay with open, porous borders. A few recent tidbits: -- Europe's rightward political drift, expedited by the assassination of the immigration critic Pim Fortuyn and French voters' growing admiration for his counterpart -- in certain but not all respects -- Jean Le-Pen. -- Nausea over suicide bombings that draw demented adulation in the Middle East instead of fierce condemnation. -- A prediction by the FBI director of suicide bombings in the United States: bombings unlikely to be carried out by Appalachian mountaineers or Westchester soccer moms. -- Dismay over revelations this week about the falsification of Social Security identities by foreigners using fake documents. -- A recent New York Times story on the broad approval that Australians accord their prime minister, John Howard, for using the navy to round up and return Iraqi and Afghan refugees. To which many would add anecdotal proofs: the unhappy comments often heard about language proliferation in a country -- this one -- where at least minimal command of English is supposed to be a prerequisite for citizenship. We know what it all adds up to: The outside world is making trouble at home. The right to enjoyment of hearth and home is the human right most deeply felt in all ages, all places. Ignore it, trample on it, and resentments arise. Resentments, deeply enough embedded, commonly seek and find political answers. Friends of immigrants and immigration -- I count myself strongly among them -- must work to make sure the answers, when they come, are sensible and fair. Where one might start is with some attempt to appreciate the viewpoint of the home folks. Commonly, among the national elite, overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly dismissive of people who read People instead of The New Yorker -- expressions of alienation receive a haughty hand-wave. Nativism! Racism! Yet in Rotterdam, the New York Times notes that "Rene Berkhof sometimes fears that his sons, 6 and 10, will speak Dutch with a Turkish accent. Mr. Berkhof, 38, sipping beer in a bar in the tough Delfshaven neighborhood, describes how the section, where he was born and raised, saw its Dutch population gradually displaced by Turks, Moroccans, Algerians, Surinamese, and others too exotic to name." We're not to care? Why? The discomfort and the safety of the majority are not factors that genuine opinion leaders should brush off -- as indeed they do less frequently since Sept. 11. No Westerner wants to be accused of racism. The civil rights movement and the fall of colonialism took care of that. But, then, race has never ceased to be a factor in human calculations. That reality requires recognition. What, then, do we in the West do to bring immigration policy to the sensible center, where it belongs -- room for more, of whatever race, but plainly not for everybody? We stress qualifications surely, matching up applicants with opportunities and needed skills. We proudly take refugees, as we always have, but without creating refugee-camp nations. Maybe most of all we work hard for full incorporation of immigrant populations into our respective nations: the ethnic ghetto as the merest way station to the larger community. An American, for instance, is entitled to insist that English remain the tongue to which newcomers accommodate themselves as rapidly and fluently as possible. The enemies of good immigration policy aren't immigrants. Those enemies are the "multiculturalist" thinkers of the past 30 years who didn't much like the West to start with and wouldn't be displeased to see its ways and norms disappear in a flood of Urdu or Mayan. They hate to tell anybody he must become, in certain specific ways, something other than he was born. That leaves a lot of telling to be accomplished by the rest of us. Contact Bill Murchison \| Read his biography ©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc. townhall.com

To: calgal who wrote (14785)	5/22/2002 1:13:19 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

India, Pakistan Tensions Mount By NEELESH MISRA Associated Press Writer AP/Richard Vogel [29K] KUPWARA, India (AP) — India's prime minister told soldiers on the tense Kashmir frontier Wednesday to prepare for a ``decisive battle'' against Pakistan-supported Islamic insurgents, sending a stern warning to Pakistan as Indian warships moved closer to its neighbor's waters. Pakistan's top military leaders and Cabinet, after a joint meeting Wednesday, called for negotiations to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals, but said their nation was ready ``to meet any contingency resolutely and with full force.'' Cross-border shelling in the last week has killed dozens and reignited fears of a war over Kashmir, a divided Himalayan region the nations have fought two wars over. Kashmir in depth On Wednesday, Indian naval officials said they had moved five warships from the Bay of Bengal to its western coast in an effort to reinforce its maritime defense. ``The warships have been moved in view of the prevailing situation and in keeping with India's maritime interests,'' said Cmdr. Rahul Gupta, an Indian navy spokesman. The ships include a guided missile destroyer, a multipurpose frigate, and three corvettes. The warships set sail two days ago and are about 500 nautical miles from the Pakistani port of Karachi near Bombay, officials said. India carried out similar shifting of warships during a 1999 conflict and in the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Wednesday addressed more than 600 soldiers at an army base near the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Vajpayee told the soldiers ``to be ready for sacrifice. Your goal should be victory. It's time to fight a decisive battle.'' Vajpayee said that mainly Hindu India has been forced to fight a proxy war with Pakistan, which New Delhi accuses of training and arming the Islamic militants who have waged a battle for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan for 12 years. Islamabad denies it backs the militants materially, saying it provides them only with moral support. Vajpayee said his morale booster for the troops should indicate to Pakistan that India is prepared for war. ``Whether our neighbor gets that signal or not, whether the world keeps record of that or not, we will write a new chapter of victory,'' he said. ``Our neighbor has found a new way of fighting, through a proxy war.'' Vajpayee said the attack last week on an army camp on the outskirts of Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, by suspected Islamic militants posed a new challenge. The assault killed 34 people — mostly soldiers' wives and children. wire.ap.org