Analysts say scrutinize Muslim immigration

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- The United States government must place greater scrutiny on Muslim immigration from the Middle East as well as on the healthy integration of Islamic culture into American society to help protect against radical terrorism, policy analysts said at a recent Washington think tank forum.

"I think the prevention of militant Islam -- preventing militant Islam from reaching the United States -- is a very great priority in immigration policy," Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, said at an Aug. 14 forum on Muslim immigration. The forum was sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Pipes said he believes that not only the standard historic filters of heath, wealth and criminal record that have been used to screen immigration applicants should be applied to potential Muslim immigrants, but also politics and ideology checks made through stronger background investigations.

"This is our enemy," he said. "It is imperative that we not let in people who hate this country and who would do it harm. I'm not in the position to tell you exactly how this can be done at this time but I think the principle must be established that those who in any sense ascribed to militant Islam are not welcome here."

But other analysts critical of a religion-based approach to immigration selection believe that focusing on Muslim immigrants would not be an effective response to the security issues raised in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Demetrios Papademetriou, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute, told United Press International that focusing on Muslim immigrants represents a "fundamentally short-sighted approach to homeland security and national defense."

"What we should be really working very hard on is developing profiles of people who wish us ill, not profiling and stigmatizing entire populations," Papademetriou said.

A heightened interest in Muslim immigration to the United States developed following last fall's terrorist attacks and a debate has erupted over how best to deal not only with the continuing influx of immigrants from the Middle East and other regions around the world, but also the existing population of Muslim immigrants in the United States

A new CIS report, "Immigrants from the Middle East: A Profile of the Foreign-born Population from Pakistan to Morocco," has been billed as the first study to examine the size, growth, and characteristics of the mostly Muslim immigrants from this region, based on the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research at CIS, authored the piece and found that immigration from the Middle East has tripled in the last 30 years.

Immigrants from the region numbered fewer than 200,000 in 1970 but reached nearly 1.5 million in 2000, Camarota said. In addition, he estimated that 73 percent -- 1.1 million -- of Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States are Muslim, a proportion that is on the increase.

He also noted that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Census Bureau have estimated that only around 150,000, or about 10 percent, of immigrants from the region are illegal immigrants.

With no change in current U.S. immigration policy and continued strong interest in coming to the United States by individuals in the region, he said he believes that 1.1 million new immigrants from the Middle East will settle in the United States by 2010.

Camarota said this trend will have a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy toward the region as politicians are forced to respond to this group's "growing electoral importance" and dissatisfaction -- as demonstrated in opinion polls -- with U.S. policy.

According to Pipes, the strong presence of Muslim immigrants in the United States holds ramifications not only for U.S. foreign policy but also for the country's domestic agenda due to dangers posed by militant factions.

"Militant Islam is a threat, is a challenge to the United States," said Pipes.

"Its ambitions are very great," he said. "They're not limited to foreign policy but seek also to change the very nature of the United States. To put it simply, where there are differences between Islam and American ways, the militants want to change America and make it Islamic. This is going to be, I believe, a significant issue in the years ahead."

Peter Skerry, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said he believes the broadest unanswered question about Muslim immigration is whether there is a fundamental clash of cultures that prevents the immigrants from assimilating into American society.

At the CIS forum, Skerry said that Islam is a religion built more upon practices than beliefs, and is very public in its displays in comparison with religions that dominate U.S. culture -- Christianity and Judaism.

He said he believes that some of the problems of assimilation come from the clear cultural or "value-oriented" gaps between mainstream American culture and Muslim ideology that do not exist with, for example, the primarily Christian immigrants from Latin America.

"It is a way of life, and hence there are some concerns here about how Muslims will adapt to our values and culture," he said.

Despite legitimate and "troubling" concerns, Skerry said the Muslim immigration population can safely and effectively exist within the American landscape.

He noted that in his review of ethnographic research on the American Muslim immigrant population, he found, "many signs of assimilation and change," including adaptation of religious customs to fit the new culture.

"People are hypocrites, people do not always do what they say, or what they should do or want to do, and one sees all sorts of signs of this among Muslim immigrants," he said.

He also said he believes that mosques in the United States are systemic "venues of change and assimilation," noting that women --- traditionally at best marginalized members of Muslim society -- are now playing active support and auxiliary roles at many mosques. This is not a phenomenon found in the Middle East or even within European mosques, he said.

But according to Pipe, although that overall Muslim community in America is a varied one with immigrants coming from more than 100 countries, most with distinct belief structures, the radical element has to be closely watched.

"The striking fact is that if one looks at the Muslim institutions as a whole -- mosques, Islamic community centers, weekly newspapers, Web sites, national institutions, publishing houses, commercial ventures -- the great majority of them, one Muslim leader has estimated 80 percent of them, are in the hands of militant Islamic elements," said Pipes. "This gives the cast of official American Islam a radical flavor, which I don't think reflects the population as a whole but does very much affect the way in which the organized Muslim community interacts with the society and the government."

Skerry said that despite the signs of cultural assimilation, the continued fragmentation between Muslim sects is heightened through the influence of American pluralism. He said he believes this continued separation has resulted in a dangerous vacuum in leadership for Muslim Americans.

He said the real threat to American security is this vacuum in the political arena.

"And it's in that political context -- the need to overcome their fragmentation and diversity-- (that) I think that we have to be concerned about how that void, how that vacuum gets filled," he said.

Ultimately, Pipes said he believes that fashioning a distinct American Islamic identity through the greater assimilation of Islam into American culture is a challenge that also could be a great achievement.

"It is something that has particularly important implications for the Muslim world, he said. "I think there's a possibility that Muslim Americans will develop a synthesis, will modernize the religion in a way that has escaped Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan and elsewhere."

In terms of the immigration policy debate, Camarota said that given the dangers posed by overworked consulates in the Middle East attempting to process large numbers of entry visa for immigrants, the potential for those who would do harm getting through the system is real.

In addition, he noted that the large Middle Eastern population makes it easier for Islamic militants to operate and hide out in the United States.

Despite these problems, Camarota said the risk should not be used to single out Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants, but that safeguards must be applied across the board to immigrants from all regions.

Although Papademetriou attacked Camarota's paper as a guise to promote his group's overall agenda of limiting immigration on the whole, he also said that focusing solely on the Muslim populations in response to the terror attacks is the wrong approach.

Nevertheless, he said, that is exactly what Camarota has done with his paper.

"Not only is it bad public policy, it is also bad intelligence policy and bad homeland security policy," he said. "That is why thoughtful people should quickly go beyond the prospect that some or many of these people (terrorists) are Muslims."

He argued that if the United States invests too many resources on religious criteria, limited resources may be wasted and those in control of national security may miss other threats.

"Unless we can target behaviors, methodology and attitudes of people who wish us ill will and wish to attack us, we will not be able to stop them by targeting and marginalizing ethnic or religious communities," he said. "Sept. 11 was a massive intelligence failure and unless we move well beyond the Muslim countries and Muslim immigration to the United States, we will not be able to prevent another 9/11."