Dear Editor:
In his “Immigration” column (October 25), Andrew Fedynsky expressed his shame for those of us who have found long-awaited relief in Donald Trump’s brave stand on immigration. Perhaps he should examine some facts instead of relying on emotions.
In the July 6, 1948, issue of The Ukrainian Weekly (the year that Mr. Fedynsky arrived in America), the columnist G.H. penned a column called, “Americans First.”
“There is gratitude owed to America by the immigrant and his descendants, gratitude and undivided loyalty, which demand him to be American first,” he wrote.
Compare that with the 60 percent of Muslim Americans under age 30 who said they’re more loyal to Islam than America, according to a poll conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center.
Let’s examine another excerpt from G.H.’s 1948 column.
“We should be primarily interested in the welfare of America if our aim is to aid the national aspirations of Ukrainians in their native land,” he wrote. Compare that to 42 percent of Canadian Muslims who said that Islam is irreconcilable with Western values, according to a poll conducted in 2013-2014 by Leger Marketing of Montreal.
Among those Western values is free speech. In 2012, a poll conducted by Wentzel Strategies revealed that 58 percent of American Muslims believe that criticism of Islam should not be permitted by the First Amendment.
The poll also revealed that 11 percent of respondents, or 575,000 American Muslims, strongly or somewhat agree that criticism of Islam should be punishable by death. So many immigrants are seeking to establish their own legal system of Sharia. Unlike the Muslims who filed a lawsuit (and won $240,000) against their employer who “forced” them to transport alcohol, our parents didn’t file lawsuits for being forced to work on Julian-calendar holidays.
When confronted with discrimination against Catholics or insults against “Polaks,” they turned the other cheek like mature adults. That’s a stark difference from “clock boy” Ahmed, who staged a provocation to expose the alleged “Islamophobia” of Americans (So are we supposed to be on the lookout for bombs or not?), and then filed a lawsuit for $15 million in emotional damages.
Before the 1965 Immigration Act, about a third of immigrants returned from where they came from because they couldn’t make it here. Now almost nobody returns because 58 percent of legal immigrants (and 71 percent of illegals!) receive some form of government assistance, according to commentator and lawyer Ann Coulter.
The “doing jobs Americans don’t want” myth has long been shattered. Since 2000, all of the net gain in the number of working-age people holding a job has gone to immigrants, both legal and illegal, the Center for Immigration Studies confirmed in June 2014.
There were fewer working-age, native-born Americans holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level, the center reported.
I’m ashamed for Mr. Fedynsky for failing to understand such economic devastation felt by average Americans. Or is his understanding limited to those who help him feel morally superior to “sad” people like me?
Kyiv