Why Islamic attacks in Europe and not the U.S?

A new McClatchy news report points out that there have been numerous terrorists attacks in Great Britain, and very few in the United States. You have to ask why. Turns out that the answer isn't that hard to find.

Karl-Heinz Kamp, the security policy coordinator at Germany's prestigious Konrad Adenauer research center, said it was easy to understand why.

"The U.S. has a historical advantage; America is still the land of opportunity to the whole world. The people moving there believe the American dream of social mobility," he said. "In Europe, we've historically treated our immigrants as hired help, and waited for them to finish the work they arrived for and go home."

Bob Ayers, a security and terrorism expert with London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy research center, thinks that immigrants to the U.S. actually become Americans, giving the United States a huge advantage in avoiding homegrown al Qaida terrorists. Europeans encourage immigrants to retain their native cultures, causing them to be ostracized more readily.

"The Islamic population in the United States is better assimilated into the general population, whereas here, in Germany, in France, they're very much on the outside looking in," he said. "When people get disaffected, sadly, there's not much loyalty to country in that sort of situation."

In short, the policy built into the U.S. Constitution that any child born in the U.S. is a full U.S. citizen prevents pockets of disaffection from developing in the U.S.

Anyone familiar with the German policy of allowing Turkish Guest Workers into Germany to work, then expecting them to leave and take their families with them doesn't work. That was obvious in the 1960's and has not changed.

That's not the only reason for so few attacks in the U.S. but it is a lot of it, and it sure makes the "guest worker" ideas in the proposed "Immigration Reform" legislation real non-starters.

The Republican dilemma

The fastest growing minority group of voters is that amorphous group called Hispanic. Karl Rove recognizes that, and so does George W. Bush. If the Hispanic voters tend to vote Republican, then the Republicans can covert from a regional Southern Party to a national one. But they cannot become a national majority party without Hispanic voters, who are expected to go from their 5.5% in 2000 to 6% in 2004 to 10% or more in 2008.

But the core block of Republicans is (the polite term) Nativist. They have recently been depending on that to get out Republican voters.

... in the run-up to last year's midterm elections, Republicans chose to make immigration their lead issue. The GOP leadership in Congress encouraged talk radio and cable news shows to inflate the illegal alien problem, and Republican candidates took a hard-line anti-immigration stance in hopes of turning out GOP voters. It didn't work. Not only did the strategy fail to help Republicans hang on to their majorities in Congress, but support from Hispanic voters fell to 29%, the lowest level this decade. [Wall Street Journal via Kos]

Kos points out that the immigration issue, which several short years ago seemed to be a winning issue for the Republicans, now appears to be splitting the Republicans and alienating the Hispanic vote culturally from Republicans as a reaction to the nasty anti-immigrant attitudes Republican politicians and opinion leaders (like Limbaugh) have displayed.

Unlike African-American voters, Hispanic voters can be wooed by the Republican Party, but Hispanics are also very proud of there heritage. The Hispanic voters have been a growing swing block willing to entertain the Republican message, but as the Republicans began running against immigrants and minorities, the previous increases in Hispanic votes has reversed. In essence, it appears that the Republican anti-immigrant message is pushing the Hispanic voters to the Democratic Party.

If you remember Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California a decade or more ago and his strong anti-immigrant message, the result was a heavily Democratic California electorate. Since the Republicans with national with the message, it is highly possible that the result will also be similar for the Democrats nationally.

Studies: Immigrants work productively, not steal

The LA Times reports the results of studies of the effects of immigrants on American society.

Two new studies by California researchers counter negative perceptions that immigrants increase crime and job competition, showing that they are incarcerated at far lower rates than native-born citizens and actually help boost their wages.

A study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants who arrived in the state between 1990 and 2004 increased wages for native workers by an average 4%.

UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted the study, said the benefits were shared by all native-born workers, from high school dropouts to college graduates, because immigrants generally perform complementary rather than competitive work.

As immigrants filled lower-skilled jobs, they pushed natives up the economic ladder into employment that required more English or know-how of the U.S. system, he said.

"The big message is that there is no big loss from immigration," Peri said. "There are gains, and these are enjoyed by a much bigger share of the population than is commonly believed."

This conclusion rather surprised me, but then I realized it shouldn't. The results simply document the long-made claim that the immigrants are taking jobs Americans won't take. But it also shows that having those jobs filled allows non-immigrants to take higher pay and more productive jobs.

Another study released Monday by the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center showed that immigrant men ages 18 to 39 had an incarceration rate five times lower than native-born citizens in every ethnic group examined. Among men of Mexican descent, for instance, 0.7% of those foreign-born were incarcerated compared to 5.9% of native-born, according to the study, co-written by UC Irvine sociologist Ruben G. Rumbaut.

This one is not quite so intuitive to me. But I would guess that the dynamic is that any worker who is willing to do what it takes to get to the U.S. to work, legally or illegally, is coming here because he or she wants to work. They could have stayed home and stolen, but they didn't. They really just want a more fair return for their effort and skills.

The next quote tells you where the statistics came from.

Both studies are based on U.S. census data, which includes both legal and illegal immigrants. They were released just days before the U.S. Congress is to restart debate on major immigration reform legislation and as numerous states, including Texas, consider harsh measures against illegal migrants.

The authors say their work shows that immigrants clearly benefit U.S. residents and are being unfairly scapegoated for problems they do not cause.

That conclusion which I highlighted above is the key. Immigrants benefit U.S. residents.

The article goes on to get some opposing responses from right-wingers, but the responses are really quite weak.

[H/T to Kevin Drum who, since he lives in Orange County, CA gets to read the LA Times.]