Thursday, May 10, 2007

Immigration and Fort Dix   [Stanley Kurtz]

It’s too early to say for certain, but the Fort Dix plot begins to look as though it could have significant implications for immigration policy. VDH has commented on the link to illegal immigration, yet that’s only part of the story. Although we don’t yet have enough information, today’s NYT story makes it seem pretty likely that the Duka family at the heart of the plot (and what the Times calls the entire "extended Duka dynasty") arrived though a process of chain migration based on the principle of "family unification." Most new legal permanent residents in the United States now enter via family unification.

Chain migration through extended family unification is a potentially huge barrier to assimilation. My recent two-part study of cousin marriage and failed Muslim assimilation in Britain is essentially the story of how the loophole of family reunification was turned by in-marrying extended Muslim clans into an immigration disaster. (See "Assimilation Studies," and "Assimilation Studies, Part II."

Today’s NYT story seems to tell an at least somewhat similar story. The same pattern of immigration based on extended clan ties, and the maintenance of links with clan-dominated villages in the originating country, seems to apply. This pattern is a recipe for failed assimilation.

It’s far from clear that the Duka family consolidated it’s kinship and immigration links via cousin marriage. The Macedonian village of Debar, where the Duka’s come from, sits by the border with Albania. My best understanding is that this is the region where Muslim cousin marriage begins to peter out. Certain Muslim enclaves in Albania practice it, while others do not. Nor do I have detailed knowledge of kinship structure in and around Debar. But it sounds like we’re probably dealing with an extended clan with perhaps some consolidation through intermarriage, whether or not that includes first cousin marriage. (Alternatively, we may be looking at the practice of village endogamy.) One of the non-Duka plotters is related by marriage, and it’s common for clans to extend fictive ties (a kind of honorary membership) to such alliances, and to seek to tighten the links with further intermarriage.

I am not saying that anyone in the Duka family, outside the plotters themselves, was involved here. The point is, when you bring over a vast extended clan through chain migration, and when that extended family group maintains constant ties with an originating village, it becomes vastly more difficult to assimilate. For one thing, chain migration means a constant supply of new family members who don’t know English and are unfamiliar with Western ways. For another thing, you are least likely to give up traditional practices, notions of honor, etc., when you are surrounded by people who know you from your home village. In England, it’s gotten to the point where marriage-based chain migration has resulted in entire Pakistani villages almost literally being picked up and transferred whole to Britain. Today’s Times article paints an all to similar picture, whether cousin marriage per se was involved or not.

The problem here is not that extended-family-based immigrants entirely fail to assimilate. It’s more complicated than that. These young Muslim men may at first discard or downplay Islam and seem to fit into American culture. Yet the tension between their larger and relatively unassimilated extended family, on the one hand, and American society, on the other, eventually radicalizes a small group of them.

We need much more information to draw clear conclusions from this particular case. But in principle, "family unification" is liable to be transformed by extended kinship systems into an engine of failed assimilation. Regardless of what we eventually find out about the Duka family and Debar, it would be a very good idea to drastically limit our current family unification provisions and move toward a policy of legal immigration based on individual skills and national needs.

Yuval Levin has a very smart and important article on immigration policy in the May issue of Commentary (not currently available online). Not everyone will agree with Yuval’s precise immigration solution, but his discussion of the deeper problems with our legal immigration policy (like family unification) is very helpful indeed.

Based on the European case, I am even more concerned about family unification immigration than Yuval. The problem might (or might not) be less pronounced with Hispanics, but now we may have our first important indication that the European pattern of extended family chain migration among Muslims is beginning to cause serious problems in America. To me, that means we’ve got to cut back as far as we reasonably can on family unification-based immigration. It’s also critical that we begin to gain awareness of the problem. There’s a lot more at stake here than illegal immigration. Our legal immigration rules are also flawed and dangerous. Check out my Assimilation Studies series, along with Levin’s piece, if you want to learn more.

05/10 02:59 PMShare