In an essay entitled “An Islamic Alienation“ (echoing Peter Brimelow’s book title) in the New York Times Magazine, Susan Sontag’s son echoes many of my themes.

Even if they produced no other positive result, the attacks on the London Underground have compelled Europeans of all faiths to think with new urgency about the Continent’s Muslim minority. Such a reckoning was long overdue. Some left-wing politicians, like London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, have chosen to emphasize the proximate causes of Muslim anger, focusing on the outrage widely felt in Islamic immigrant communities over the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the harsh reality is that the crisis in relations between the European mainstream and the Islamic diaspora has far deeper roots, consoling as it might be to pretend otherwise.

Indeed, the news could scarcely be worse. What Europeans are waking up to is a difficult truth: the immigrants who perform the Continent’s menial jobs, and, as is often forgotten, began coming to Europe in the 1950’s because European governments and businesses encouraged their mass migration, are profoundly alienated from European society for reasons that have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with Europe. This alienation is cultural, historical and above all religious, as much if not more than it is political. Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent’s economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success.

In January 2004, I wrote in “Four Failed Immigration Approaches,”

But look at Europe. Its experience proves that the different immigrant-treatment approaches of the host countries matters less than what the immigrants bring with them.

Likewise, Rieff explains that none of the European’s states’ latest responses are likely to prove terribly effective. There’s no magic bullet.

Strikingly, Rieff also observes:

In a sense, Europe’s bad fortune is that Islam is in crisis. Imagine that Mexican Catholicism was in a similar state, and that a powerful, well-financed minority of anti-modern purists was doing its most successful proselytizing among Mexican immigrants in places like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Chicago, above all among the discontented, underemployed youth of the barrios. The predictable, perhaps even the inevitable, result would be the same sort of estrangement between Hispanics and the American mainstream.

Yet, it’s crucial to keep in mind that when this vast social experiment of importing millions of poor Muslims “to do the jobs Europeans just won’t do” began, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Early in the 20th Century, the Catholic wise men G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc forecasted that an Islamic revival would one day threaten Europe again, but their warnings were forgotten. After WWII, Islam looked like a beaten and broken faith, and Muslims appeared to be dutiful and submissive laborers. Today, American elites view Latin American immigrants similarly: as perpetually cheerful and obedient replacements for those uppity blacks whom you just can’t trust as servants anymore.

The future remains unwritten. Still, history suggests prudence, something that has been in short supply among the ruling classes of both Europe and American in recent decades.

Of course, I’ve also been pointing out in VDARE.com essays like “The Wind from the South” that much of Latin America south of Mexico is increasingly in crisis itself, due to the growth of anti-white populism in reaction to the still-unresolved racial problems growing out of the Conquest of 500 years ago. This movement is likely to become vocal in Mexico during the Presidential election of 2006.

Will indigenous anti-white populism become a major problem in the U.S. as the Hispanic population becomes increasingly less white as the poorer, more brown and black sources of immigrants are progressively tapped? I don’t know, I’d guess the chance of Latinos in the U.S. someday becoming a massive problem on the order of Muslims in Europe is less than 50% but more than 10%.

But why do we continue to exacerbate the odds? When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.

Joe Guzzardi, as always, makes an excellent point in his column about banks, profits, illegal aliens and the law.

“Illegal aliens are working, illegally, on construction crews that are building houses to be sold, illegally, to aliens who have

obtained their mortgages illegally.”

Any reasonable person must agree that making mortgage loans to illegal aliens is knowingly encouraging those illegal aliens to remain in the United States - for a profit.

Doing so is a clear violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

See USC 8, 1324.

“(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law;”

It is also money laundering.

The illegal alien, having violated our immigration laws by being here, goes to work for a criminal employer, putting both in further violation of our immigration and employment laws. Presenting and accepting either a false or stolen social security number violates another annoying federal law.

Very often the wages are simply paid out in cash - no pesky deductions to bother with…a violation of our federal income tax laws.

With all the talk of a War on Terror, broken systems, willing workers, the search for a better life and a nation of laws, it must not be forgotten that illegal workers and illegal employers are being allowed to filter their illegally obtained profits through our banking system.

The money goes in dirty - illegal alien/employer - presto…comes out -willing worker /willing employer - as a clean bank account withdrawal.

Last year, 16 billion American mostly ill-gotten dollars was sent “home” to Mexico before a dime of it went anywhere near our economy.

All this, as Joe notes, with the tacit approval and active assistance of the President of the United States…our Chief Executive.

Organized crime anyone?

Treason Inc. anyone?

Let’s keep in mind that any amnesty being pushed from the White House is intended for the treasonous profiteers as much as it is for the illegal aliens themselves.

Just as there can be no amnesty for the illegal aliens and the criminal employers…neither can there be amnesty for President Bush.

David Brooks’ latest NYT column, Two Steps Toward a Sensible Immigration Policy, confirms his reputation as a good sociological journalist of the Tom Wolfe Lite school and a terrible policy pundit. He starts off pretty well by describing one aspect of the immigration problem:

What do you say to the working-class guy from the south side of San Antonio? He feels [sic -- he knows -- it's called the Law of Supply and Demand] his wages are stagnating because he has to compete against illegal immigrants. He watches thousands [sic -- millions] of people streaming across the border, bankrupting his schools and health care system, while he plays by the rules.

He’s no racist. Many of his favorite neighbors are kind, neat and hard-working Latinos. But his neighborhood now has homes with five cars rotting in the front yard and 12 single men living in one house. Now there are loud parties until 2 a.m. and gang graffiti on the walls. He read in the local paper last week that Anglos are now a minority in Texas and wonders if anybody is in charge of this social experiment.

What do you tell him about the immigration system?

Uh, that we have to get serious about cracking down on immigration? That he and his children’s futures are being sold down the river by the President of the United States?

No. Of course not. [More]