“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists” — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
How easily and sadly this is forgotten. As soon as it was revealed that the two alleged bombers of the Boston Marathon were originally Russians of Chechen descent, there began talk about immigration issues in the US.
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa stated that the attacks demonstrated that the US needs to “beef up its security” and not allow any more newcomers into the country. It went further. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky advised that the US should rethink visas for foreign students, completely oblivious and ignorant perhaps of the fact that neither of the Tsarnaev brothers ever obtained one.
These lawmakers and those who think like them, those who are only too quick to speak and wrongly judge, should have stopped and reflected. None of these measures would have stopped the bombings given that the Tsarnaev brothers obtained political asylum in the US in 2002 at the ages of 15 and eight along with their sisters and parents, fleeing persecution in Russia.
Granted, there have been no lack of terrorist plots designed by non-Americans but that does not in any way negate that terrorism can be homegrown and by one’s own people. What about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? That was one of the deadliest acts of terrorism on US soil. He was a born US citizen, not naturalised like Djokhar Tsarnaev. But is that what it comes down to eventually? Is that how we start drawing the lines? And while we are on the subject, US born citizens who become murderers such as the Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza and the Aurora killer James Holmes and the thousands and thousands of others like them, are they in a different category of criminals? Did they not, being born and raised in the US from parents who were born and raised in the US, cold-bloodedly take assault weapons (and in the case of James Holmes, at least from what is known), methodically plan to kill fellow Americans?
Predicting Tamerlan’s actions from when he entered the US, questioning his immigration status and penalising future immigrants for them is as ludicrous as expecting psychiatrists to have predicted and diagnosed that McVeigh would become a terrorist when he was a toddler.
In tragedies such as these, people need someone to blame and since the conservatives were the first to jump to conclusions and start the blame game, why not look towards the FBI, for instance, for allowing Tamerlan to freely travel back and forth from Russia even after the Russian authorities warned them of his suspicions activities during his visit home? Why were written warnings to the US government from Saudi Arabia ignored about the threat that he could potentially be?
Then there is the Boston law enforcement that can be questioned. How were the Tsarnaevs allowed to plant their bombs amidst such high security? And how could they allow Djokhar to escape after a shootout? An entire army of law enforcement officers and a total lockdown was needed to catch a 19-year-old teenager who was unarmed?
Above all, one can also blame the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of the press. After all, it is the freedom of the press that allows such magazines such as Inspire, an online terrorist guide, to openly and freely guide would-be terrorists such as Tamerlan on how to manufacture homemade bombs.
In order to fight terrorism, would it not make far more sense to crack down on the Internet rather than the border? For some reason, no one has thought of mentioning this yet but accusations based on race and religion were rampant from the moment the words ‘Chechnya’ and ‘Muslims’ were uttered by the media.
The issue here is simply one that would be perceived by Americans as an infringement of their liberties and would cause an outrage. The US would be viewed as neither safe nor free should it come to people being thrown in jail for exchanging information no matter how dangerous. It would probably lead to the same rhetoric about liberties and amendments such as for the topic of gun control. Immigration, however, is a much easier topic for people who only see the race and religion issue as a focal point of what occurred in Boston.
This is not to say that requiring foreigners to pass rigorous border checks is not legitimate. However, closing the border to economic migrants such as, for example, people from China or India who seek jobs in IT or the apple pickers from Mexico in a useless effort to deter a future Tamerlan will not make the US any safer. Every year, far more Americans are at risk of death from gun shootings than from a terrorist attack. But there is no hope for any gun control. So, let’s pick on the immigrants.
The writer is an English and French professor and columnist residing in the USA and France. She can be reached at [email protected] and on twitter @sabriaballand