Xenophobia in the Heart of Europe

The United States may be the great melting pot, with our myriad of
ethnicities, but we are hardly the only country to worry about
immigration.  I’d even say that while we have a lot to work on, the US
does comparatively well on the Immigration Scorecard.  C+, B- maybe.

Europe, on the other hand, has a whole range of immigration policies
from a warm welcome to fire and pitchforks (figuratively of course… I
hope).  We should pay attention to Europe’s response to immigration
because their efforts and complaints mirror many of our own.  So today I
present to you two European countries, one that has a disappointing, xenophobic
policy, and one that I give a full two thumbs up; Switerland and Ireland.

For being in the heart of Europe, and clearly marked by a mix of several
cultures including German and French, the rampantly racist political messages
that are floating around the country shocked me at first.  Three white
sheep stand on one side of the border.  The other side of the border
stands a black sheep, clearly prohibited from crossing that line.  The
message is clear and is gaining ground with many Swiss.  "The message
of the party resonates loudly among voters who have seen this country of 7.5
million become a haven for foreigners, including political refugees from places
like Kosovo and Rwanda." Says the New York Times (10/08/2007).

There are many reasons why so many Swiss are in favor of absurd immigration controls,
such as a required 12 years of residency to even be considered for citizenship
and mandatory identification cards, Researching them gave me an eerie
reminder of my life as an ethnic and national minority in Japan. Much like Japan, the “official” reasons for
xenophobia in Switzerland are security. They claim that immigrants, especially from poorer Eastern Europe or
Africa, are more likely to engage in crime.

This argument both countries give to the world is weak however. Statistically speaking crime is higher in
this demographic, but so is poverty. It
is more difficult for immigrants to find the jobs they need to raise their
positions and become stable members of society, when employers look for
citizenship and exhibit racial preferences.

Looking at Ireland, we can observe how a welcoming society, while not free
of issues, can greatly change the people immigrants become for the better. Time Magazine detailed in their September 17^th
issue, the life of Rotimi Adebari, a man straight out of Africa who settled in
Ireland, became a citizen, and recently won the mayoral election in his adopted
town. The full article can be read
here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1659713,00.html

While even Adebari admits that since his immigration, times have changed in
Ireland, we can see two paths in this debate; segregation and exclusion which
leads to immigrant vilification and increased instability, or we can see
cooptation, where countries make immigrants welcome residents in their own
right, and immigrants respond by adopting patriotism and passion for their new
land.

The United States is stuck somewhere in-between these
two policies. Can we have the fortitude
to get beyond petty apprehensions and underlying ethnic tensions to embrace new
citizens, or will we never see an end to the regulations, the walls, the
attempt at isolation that limits us as a nation?

Cheney: Repositioning the Rhetoric of an Attack on Iran

An in-depth look by the New Yorker at the shifting plans for Iran addresses all the possibilities for US involvement and all the consequences. The biggest scare comes from the plan to reposition the rhetoric from attacking Iran to prevent their nuclear advancement to attacking Iran to prevent their role in the killing of Americans in Iraq – a reason to attack that would provide the administration with a much higher level of support from Americans and the rest of the world. What makes this so scary is that intelligence analysts and military officers from the US and Europe believe Iran may not have as great a role in Iraq’s instability as the US administration is spreading around the media to buttress its new plan:

1. While there are an exorbitant number of weapons being found in the hands of ordinary Iraqis, those arms are not necessarily all smuggled in from Iran. We have to remember that many of those arms have likely been there for years – both from what Iran provided the Shi’a of southern Iraq to protect themselves against Hussain’s repression and from what the US provided to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s in which we were allied with and provided support to Iraq. This prevalence of weaponry has allowed for an increase in gangs, mafias, and vigilantism, which has aided the degradation of Iraqi society – not necessarily all the influence of Iran.

2. "’Americans act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons,’" when in fact last year alone, one million Iranians traveled to Iraq on pilgrimage and there was $1 billion in trade between the two countries. An Iran expert stated that "’It would be prudent for the Administration to produce more evidence of direct military training – or produce fighters captured.’"

3. Some of the smuggling that has been traced back to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard looks to have been planned with the hope of being traced to show a response to American aggression – "’to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely,’" noted by a former CIA adviser.

4. According to a former State Department adviser, Iranian diplomats have been complaining that they have been trying to work with Bush on Iraq because they have no interest in an unstable state next to their own – at the very least, they want a role in building an ideal neighbor-state. The Iranians know Iraq better than anyone else, but Bush has been ignoring them – and instead planning an attack against them for creating the exact problem Iran is trying to solve.

Based on this information, this new war-reasoning is likely a proxy, exaggerated in order to rationalize a long-desired war with the American public and the rest of the world. If the US attacks Iran’s military sites with the new reason to prevent attacks on American soldiers, it may be more legitimate, but Iran will respond with violence in every country they have influence in – Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and some even suggesting Latin America and Europe to create worldwide panic. (One risk many in the article played up was Iran’s alliance with Hizballah and that group’s ability to help stir disaster – but this seems to be an irrational allocation of a group’s focus from the only target it has ever attacked or said it had a problem with (Israel) to the rest of the world, which it has always said it had no problem with.) If the US attacks Iran’s nuclear sites instead (pessimistically assuming military action is a foregone conclusion), it will not have as much legitimacy as ending the "preeminent threat" of assisting in the killing of American soldiers – but the Iranian people may choose to dismantle their nuclear system as being worth too little to risk a war, whereas an attack on their military sites (and sense of security) would serve only to rally the people around their government.