EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD BE OUTRAGED!
Rep. Ilhan Omar Represents Everything Wrong With America’s Immigration System
January 30, 2024
Immigration and border policy should first serve the interests of Americans, to the exclusion of all other peoples and nations.
There’s a clip going around of Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar talking to a group of Somalians about her allegiances and priorities as a U.S. congresswoman. What Omar says is instructive, not just about her general worldview but mostly (and more importantly) about how backward and destructive our immigration system is.
Omar is a woman of the left, but her speech over the weekend was pure blood-and-soil nationalism — for Somalia, not America.
She tells them she’s a Somalian first and a Muslim second. She doesn’t even mention the United States or her citizenship here. She promises to use her power and influence in Congress to protect her nation’s interests. (Again, that nation being Somalia, not America.)
Speaking in Somali, Omar tells the cheering crowd that her “top priority” is to expand Somalia’s territory. “As Somalis, one day we will go after our missing territories,” she says, referencing disputed regions in Kenya and Ethiopia.
She brags that the U.S. government “will only do what Somalians in the U.S. tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders, and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia. We Somalians must have the confidence in ourselves that we call the shots in the U.S.”
In light of Omar’s candidness, it’s fair to ask: Why is she allowed to serve in Congress? Why is she even allowed to remain in the United States? Omar is an immigrant and a U.S. citizen, but clearly she is not an American. She appears to have no allegiance to her adopted country — a country that took her in, sheltered and protected her, provided a safe haven from the chaos and violence of her homeland, and elevated her to a position of power and influence.
Omar herself is of course an antisemite and a radical leftist. Her remarks are only important because they illustrate how her presence in the United States is a searing indictment of our entire immigration system and much of our foreign policy over the last 40 years. We should never have allowed people like her into our country, and by “people like her” I don’t have race in mind. I mean people whose national allegiances lie with other lands and other people, and whose priorities and way of life are incompatible with American republicanism and our national character.
All of this is salient now as the border descends into mayhem, Texas and other states face off with the Biden administration over out-of-control illegal immigration, and Senate GOP leadership pushes a bill that would codify outrageous levels of illegal border crossing into law.
Given all this, we need to take a step back and remind ourselves what immigration is for and whom it should serve. It might be unpopular to say so these days, especially given the widespread fiction that the American way of life is merely propositional, unaffected by culture or religion or character, but the fact remains that immigration policy should serve the interests of ordinary Americans. And the primary way, historically, it has done so is by restricting who can come here and under what circumstances.
America is for Americans. Being American is more than checking a box on a government form. It means learning and speaking our language, appreciating our culture and history, obeying our laws, embodying our work ethic, and preserving the traditions and attitudes that once made this the most prosperous, powerful, and free nation on earth. If you’re not down with that, you’re not an American, and you don’t need to be here.
Now look at America, and understand where this is heading.