Buddhists from Bangladesh resettle in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims cry foul

Minority Rohingya Muslims who have long alleged persecution by the Buddhists in Myanmar, say Buddhist families from Bangladesh are now being resettled on their land.

Buddhist families from Bangladesh are quietly crossing the border into Myanmar, where local Rakhine Buddhist groups and government agencies are helping them resettle. The move has created pressure on the minority Rohingya Muslims, who have long alleged persecution by the Buddhists to leave.

Muslim Rohingyas, who are not recognized by the state, allege that the Buddhists and the Myanmar government are attempting to throw them out of their villages and take away their land.

“The Buddhists from Bangladesh are being resettled around Rakhine’s Rohingya villages to create more pressure on the local minority community,” says Bangladesh-based Rohingya rights activist Khin Maung Lay. “Their men joined local Buddhists in some of recent attacks in which Rohingya villages were set ablaze. More Buddhists there means an increased threat of communal tension and violence against the Rohingyas because the Buddhists are now openly saying that they don’t want to see any Muslim around them.”

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Minority Buddhists from Bangladesh began migrating to Myanmar shortly after Muslim rioters – who were reportedly enraged when a young local Bengali Buddhist posted a photo to Facebook deemed offensive to Islam – torched and vandalized at least 19 Buddhist temples and scores of houses along southeastern Bangladesh last September.

Win Myaing, a government spokesman of Rakhine state in Myanmar, says that after September’s anti-Buddhist attack, several ethnic Burmese Buddhist tribes living in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tract and other areas far from where the clashes originated sent “distress signals” through friends and relatives, seeking help from government agencies and monasteries in Myanmar.

“They all said that their lives were under threat in Bangladesh and they wanted to move to safety. We assured them in a return message that we would accommodate them as much as possible. In the past six months a few hundred Buddhist families have crossed over to Myanmar,” Mr. Myaing said to local media. “We are guessing that more Buddhists will leave Bangladesh in the coming months, and we will try our best to resettle them here and provide aid.”

Though Buddhist leaders and other analysts in Bangladesh confirmed that Buddhist families in southern Bangladesh were crossing into Myanmar and planning to settle there, they question the reason for their exodus.

The Bangladesh government halted the anti-Buddhist violence within days after it erupted last year, and provided sufficient aid and protection to the victim Buddhists, according to Buddist monks and other eyewitnesses.

“The Muslim mobs were planning more attacks. But the government immediately deployed police and paramilitary forces around vulnerable Buddhist villages and halted further attacks,” says Karunashri Thera, a Buddist monk from the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, the port town where the clashes started. “Buddhists were happy with government action after the Muslim attack on Buddhist villages. The government also provided aid to rebuild the Buddhist houses and temples.”

Nilutpal Barua, a Bangladeshi Buddhist community leader in Cox’s Bazar points out that when the Muslim mobs launched the attacks, they mostly targeted the local native Bangla (Bengali)-speaking Bangladeshi Buddhists, but those who are leaving Bangladesh for Myanmar now are mostly the Burmese ethnic tribes. Burmese ethnic groups generally live separately from the Bangladeshi Buddhist community and are much more poor.

“Not a single Bangladeshi Buddhist family has left Bangladesh for Myanmar, so far, following the attack in September. We got very good support from our government after the Muslim mobs vandalized our villages. We don’t feel unsafe now,” says Mr. Barua, who is a government college teacher. “I don’t think that the departure of the Burmese tribes from Bangladesh was triggered by last year’s anti-Buddhist violence.”

EXILED RETURNEES

After the military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement began in Myanmar in 1988, many leaders and activists from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and other pro-democracy political parties took refuge across the border in Bangladesh.

“The general elections in 2010 in Myanmar signaled that the country was on a path to democratization, so the exiled Burmese leaders began returning home from Bangladesh,” says local journalist Mohammad Nurul Islam who is known as an expert on the Bangladesh-Myanmar issues. “They were soon followed by some of their Burmese ethnic tribal and ethnic Burman supporters who had been living in Bangladesh as refugees.”

Now, says Mr. Islam, these refugees who lived in poor conditions for decades hope to build a better life in the Rohingya villages in Myanmar, with the help of local government authorities and monasteries.

Mr. Islam says it’s significant that people from local Buddhist tribes had begun migrating to Myanmar after the deadly Muslim-Buddhist conflict broke out in Buddhist-majority country last May.

Last May the Rohingya villages came under attack in the Rakhine state just across the border from Bangladesh causing many to flee their villages. The anti-Rohingya pogrom continued throughout last year, and into the beginning of this year. When the violence died down, however, local Buddhists announced that the Rohingyas would not be allowed to return to their villages or their land. In many cases, groups began distributing the land that formerly belonged to the Rohingyas to poorer Buddhists.

After the September anti-Buddhist attack in Bangladesh, local government authorities in Myanmarmade an announcement in newspapers (in Rakhine state) that Buddhists were facing attacks in Bangladesh and that local Buddhists should provide as much help to resettle fellow Buddhists if they crossed into the Rakhine state.

“Buddhist monasteries and political leaders from Rakhine send messages to the poorer members of the Burmese ethnic Buddhist tribes in CHT [in Bangladesh] inviting them to come down and settle here,” says Kyaw Thein, a Rohingya community leader in the Rakhine capital of Sittwe. “The offers of houses and farm-land are quite attractive to those mostly landless poor Buddhists and so they are responding enthusiastically.”

Rakhine State, one of seven states in Myanmar, is situated on Myanmar’s western coast. Like many parts of Myanmar it has a diverse ethnic population, but Rahkine make up the majority of the 3.1 million population. The stateless, Muslim-minority Rohingyas occupy the northernmost region of the state that borders Bangladesh.

Although Rohingyas have lived in Myanmar’s Arakan state for many centuries, the Buddhist-dominated society there identifies the ethnic minority as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh, and the Burmese military government stripped the Rohingyas of their citizenship in 1982. Stateless Rohingyas have migrated to Bangladesh, Malaysia, and other countries. In Bangladesh there are 400,000 Rohingyas, who are mostly living as illegal refugees.

MODEL VILLAGES

In 2010 the Myanmar government built 40 model villages of about 100 houses each as part of an effort to invite Buddhist settlers from other parts of the country and “adjust the balance” of the population where Muslims outweighed Buddhists, according to Burmese officials.

Sources inside Myanmar say that those who are coming from Bangladesh – the Burmese and the Bangladeshi Buddhists – are being allocated houses in the model village, alongside Buddhist settlers from other parts of the country.

Local pro-government newspapers are regularly reporting on the arrival of the Buddhists from Bangladesh and their resettlement in Rakhine. An unnamed government official helping with the resettlement process told local media that each Buddhist family arriving from Bangladesh was being given 2 acres of farmland, along with a home in Maungdaw or Sittwe.

“They are from our fellow ethnic groups. We have to help them. The just-arrived families are being kept at Baho Buddhist monastery (in Maungdaw) for few days before they are allocated homes and farm-lands in the model villages,” the official said. “We have already resettled 3,000 to 4,000 Buddhists in Maungdaw in the past few months.”

FLEEING TO INDIA

As many as 20,000 Mulsim Rohingyas have fled Myanmar since communal tension broke out in May last year, and of those, as many as 1,500 have made their way to India, according to activists.

Mohammad Zubair, a Muslim who fled his home in Maungdaw, a town in Rakhine State, earlier this year for India, recently arrived with 18 other Rohingyas. He says the Buddhists from Bangladesh were being resettled in his town as part of a government-sponsored plan to “balance the population between Buddhists and Muslims” making it increasingly difficult to survive as a Muslim there.

Mr. Zubair says that since the unrest last year, local Buddhists kept him from accessing his land, let alone cultivating it. Many Rohingya families were nearly starving, he says. “We decided to flee Myanmar to save my family from starvation and death.”

“Government officers openly say, ‘alongside 600,000 Muslims there are only 20,000 Buddhists ... we must resettle some tens of thousands of Buddhists in this area so that the Buddhists don’t face any threat from Muslims here.’ They are taking the Rohingya’s farmlands and giving them to those Buddhists who are coming from Bangladesh,” says Zubair who, along with his wife and three children, landed in Hyderabad last month.

“We the Rohingya Muslims have lived in Myanmar for centuries. Yet they say that we are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. But they are welcoming those Bangladeshi illegal immigrants to Myanmar just because they are their fellow Buddhists,” says Mr. Kyaw Thein adding that he was afraid of what might come next. ”They are inviting more of those Bangladeshi Buddhists just to outnumber us in this region, use them as extra manpower during attack on us and crush us further."

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Attack casts spotlight on radical preachers

FILE - Members of Somalia's al- Shabab militant group patrol on foot on the outskirts of Mogadishu in this Monday, March, 5, 2012 file photo. The slaying of a British soldier in east London cast a spotlight on radical preachers that influenced Michael Adebolajo, the attacker seen in videos with bloody hands wielding a butcher knife. It also raised questions about the reach of the terrorist group al-Shabab, after a British government official said one of the two men tried to go to Somalia to train or fight with the group. (AP Photo, File)

LONDON (AP) — The slaying of a British soldier in southeastLondon cast a spotlight on radical preachers that influencedMichael Adebolajo, the attacker seen in videos with bloody hands holding a butcher knife. It also raised questions about the reach of the terrorist group al-Shabab, after a British government officialsaid one of the two men tried to go to Somalia to train or fight with the group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the police investigation.

Here's a look at the preachers and al-Shabab.

OMAR BAKRI MUHAMMED

Spiritual leader and founder of the group al-Muhajiroun. The group catapulted to notoriety after the Sept. 11 attacks by organizing an event to celebrate the airplane hijackers. Bakri, who now lives in Lebanon, had been one of the most aggressive voices of radical Islam in Britain. Members of the cell behind the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings also had links to the group.

The government banned al-Muhajiroun after the July 7 attacks in which four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters, but it has re-formed under new names — such as the Saved Sect or al-Gurabaa, which have also been banned. He is barred from returning to Britain. Bakri says the man depicted in the startling video that emerged after the death of British serviceman Lee Rigby was named Michael Adebolajo, a Christian who converted to Islam. Bakri recalled Adebolajo was a shy person eager to learn about Islam.

ANJEM CHOUDARY

The former head of the radical group al-Muhajiroun, an Islamist group notorious for glorifying al-Qaida and tied to terror plots at home and abroad. Choudary has in the past described the 9/11 hijackers on the United States as the "Magnificent 19." He also featured prominently in fiery protests against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He is the manager of the Sharia Court in Britain. Sharia is Muslim law as derived from the Quran. Choudary says Adebolajo took part in several demonstrations by the group in London.

AL-SHABAB

Al-Qaida linked terrorist group in Somalia. Al-Shabab boasts several hundred foreign fighters, including those from the Middle East with experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It has also recruited fighters from Somali communities in the United States and Europe. Al-Shabab once controlled almost all of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, but African Union and Somali forces pushed the militants out of the city in 2011.

British officials have not said which of the two suspects attempted to link up with the group.

Exiled cleric who taught UK knifeman praises 'courage'

Islamist preacher Omar Bakri takes a look at a religious book during an interview with Reuters at his home in Tripoli, northern Lebanon May 24, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

By Dominic Evans

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - A Syrian-born Islamist cleric who taught one of the men accused of hacking to death an off-duty British soldier on a London street praised the attack for its "courage" and said Muslims would see it as a strike on a military target.

In an interview in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, where he has lived since being banished from Britain in 2005, Omar Bakri, founder of banned British Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, said he knew suspectMichael Adebolajo from his lectures a decade ago.

"When I saw the footage I recognized the face immediately," Bakri told Reuters. "I used to know him. A quiet man, very shy, asking lots of questions about Islam."

"What surprised me (is) the quiet man, the man who is very shy, decided to carry out an attack against a British soldier in the middle of the day in the middle of a street in the UK. In east London. It's incredible.

"When I saw that, honestly I was very surprised - standing firm, courageous, brave. Not running away. Rather, he said why he carried (it out) and he wanted the whole world to hear it."

The attack has been vociferously condemned by Muslim organizations across Britain.

Adebolajo, 28, a British-born convert from a Christian Nigerian immigrant family, went by the nickname Mujahid - warrior - after taking up Islam as a teenager in a suburb on the northeast outskirts of London.

He was filmed with his hands still covered with the blood of Afghan war veteran Lee Rigby, 25, after the attack. Clutching a butcher's knife and meat cleaver, he said the killing was revenge for British participation in wars in foreign countries.

He and a second knife-wielding attacker, Nigerian-born naturalized British citizen Michael Adebowale, 22, are in hospital after being shot by police during their arrest. They have yet to be charged. Police have also arrested another man and a woman under suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

"WE DON'T SLEEP ON OUR GRIEVANCES"

The interview with Bakri in his flat in the Abu Samra district of Tripoli was twice interrupted by his infant son Osama, who broke into the room playing with a plastic toy. The boy was named after slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"He is supposed to go fight (U.S. President Barack) Obama in the future, and maybe to deal with the Obama of his times. We called him after... Sheikh Osama," Bakri said, smiling often as he spoke but lacing light-hearted comments with hints of menace.

After a photographer took his picture, the bearded Bakri, wearing a black cloak over white trousers and white leather shoes, mockingly adopted a threatening pose.

"We know the media, they just want evil pictures," he said. "But we are going to be in power soon... Don't think that we sleep on our grievances. That Michael, after 10 years, he killed (the soldier) in front of everyone ... Was he a man or not?"

"The prophet (Mohammad) said an infidel and his killer will not meet in Hell. That's a beautiful saying," he said. "May God reward (Adebolajo) for his actions."

Bakri said British authorities were inviting retaliation by targeting Muslims with anti-terrorist legislation and police raids.

"If you breach the covenant of security with Muslims you are digging your grave," he said. "I cannot condemn what Michael did. I don't see it as a crime as far as Islam is concerned".

He said radical Islam was winning the bulk of converts in Britain and scoffed at the "moderate chocolate" Muslims who he said are "always melting the way the West wants them to be - they never stand for what they believe".

"They are just a waste of space".

Bakri said his organization Al Muhajiroun had nothing to do with the attack because members had not seen Adebolajo since 2005. However, Anjem Choudary, who took over the leadership of Al Muhajiroun when Bakri was exiled from Britain, has told Reuters Adebolajo attended the group's events until about two years ago.

"Maybe Michael, in the eyes of many people in Britain, Muslim and non-Muslim, they don't condone what he did. They condemn it. But in the eyes of Muslims around the world they don't see him the same way. The Muslims in this country, they are so happy, proud of him. They see him as a freedom fighter attacking a military target."

Bakri said he had been living in Lebanon since 2005, under an agreement by which Lebanon prevents him from leaving the country for 30 years. But he said he was in daily contact with students in Britain.

(Editing by Peter Graff)

Boy Scouts approve plan to accept openly gay boys

Former Cub Scouts den leader Jennifer Tyrrell, who was ousted from Scouting because she is openly gay, wears a button on her uniform shirt that reads "We Support All Boy Scouts" as she responds to a reporters question Thursday, May 23, 2013, in Grapevine, Texas. Local leaders of the Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to ease a divisive ban and allow openly gay boys to be accepted into the nation's leading youth organization — one of the most dramatic moves the organization has made in a century. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Former Cub Scouts den leader Jennifer Tyrrell, who was ousted from Scouting because she is openly gay, becomes emotional as she responds to a reporters question Thursday, May 23, 2013, in Grapevine, Texas. Local leaders of the Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to ease a divisive ban and allow openly gay boys to be accepted into the nation's leading youth organization — one of the most dramatic moves the organization has made in a century. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — After lengthy and wrenching debate, local leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have voted to open their ranks to openly gay boys for the first time, but heated reactions from the left and right made clear that the BSA's controversies are far from over.

The Scouts' longstanding ban on gay adults remains in force, and many liberal Scout leaders — as well as gay-rights groups — plan to continue pressing for an end to that exclusion even though the BSA's top officials aren't ready for that step.

Meanwhile, many conservatives within the Scouts are distraught at the outcome of the vote and some are threatening to defect. A meeting is planned for next month to discuss the formation of a new organization for boys.

The vote was conducted by secret ballot Thursday during the National Council's annual meeting at conference center not far from Boy Scout headquarters in suburban Dallas. Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

"This has been a challenging chapter in our history," the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. "While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they're in Scouting."

However, the outcome will not end the membership policy debate, as was evident in the reactions of leaders of some of the conservative religious denominations that sponsor Scout units.

"We are deeply saddened," said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee. "Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law."

The Assemblies of God said the policy change "will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program." It also warned that the change would make the BSA vulnerable to lawsuits seeking to end the ban on gay adults.

John Stembeger, a conservative activist and former Scout from Florida, founded a group called OnMyHonor.net to oppose the policy change. He assailed the BSA executive committee for its role in gaining a "Yes" vote.

"What kind of a message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don't even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when the bullies in Washington D.C., Hollywood or even some of their own renegade councils start pressuring and harassing them?" he asked.

He said OnMyHonor.Net and other like-minded organizations and individuals would meet in Louisville, Ky., next month to discuss the creation of "a new character development organization for boys."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also expressed dismay.

"While I will always cherish my time as a Scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision," he said.

The result was welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls for ending the ban on gay adults.

"I'm so proud of how far we've come, but until there's a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue," said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a national protest movement.

Tyrrell recalled having to tell her son she had been forced out as den mother.

"He doesn't deserve to be told that we're not good enough," she said. "We're not going to stop until this is over."

Pascal Tessier, an openly gay 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland, had mixed emotions after the vote.

"I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout," he said. "Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing."

Tessier is on track to receive his Eagle Scout award — he only needs to complete his final project — but said he is troubled that on his 18th birthday he could transform from someone holding Scouting's highest rank to someone unfit to be a part of the organization.

"That one couple hours (between 17 and 18) will make me not a good person," he said.

James Dale, 42, who was the first person to challenge the Boy Scouts gay ban in court, agreed, calling the decision "a bit of a step backward" for gay youth.

"It sends a very convoluted, mixed message to gay kids. It says that being gay is a youthful indiscretion, and that there's no future for you," Dale, of New Jersey, told The Star-Ledger.

Dale sued the Boy Scouts in 1990 after he was removed as an assistant scoutmaster because of his sexual orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the organization was within its rights to ban gays.

Tessier has indeed been an exception — an openly gay Scout whose presence was quietly accepted by local Scout leaders. In general, the Scouts' policy has been to avoid any questioning of would-be Scouts as to their sexual orientation, but to dismiss boys who did speak openly about being gay.

For example, Scout officials refused to grant the Eagle Scout rank to Ryan Andresen, an 18-year-old Californian, after he came out as gay last year.

The vote followed what the BSA described as "the most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting's history" to gauge opinions, including a survey sent out starting in February to members of the Scouting community.

Of the more than 200,000 leaders, parents and youth members who responded, 61 percent supported the current policy of excluding gays, while 34 percent opposed it. Most parents of young Scouts, as well as youth members themselves, opposed the ban.

The proposal approved Thursday was seen as a compromise, and the Scouts stressed that they would not condone sexual conduct by any Scout — gay or straight.

"The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive and unresolved societal issue," the BSA said in a statement.

Among those voting for the proposal to accept openly gay youth was Thomas Roberts, of Dawsonville, Ga., who serves on the board of a Scout council in northeast Georgia.

"It was a very hard decision for this organization," he said. "I think ultimately it will be viewed as the right thing."

The BSA's overall "traditional youth membership" — Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Venturers — is now about 2.6 million, compared with more than 4 million in peak years of the past. It also has about 1 million adult leaders and volunteers.

Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions.

Those include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, but some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have previously supported the broad ban — notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.

While the Southern Baptists were clearly upset by the vote to accept openly gay youth, the Utah-based Mormon church — which has more Scouting troops than any other religious denomination — reacted positively.

"We trust that BSA will implement and administer the approved policy in an appropriate and effective manner," an LDS statement said.

Utah's largest Boy Scout councils supported the change.

"This is a win for youth and a win for the community," said John Gailey, spokesman for the Utah National Parks Council, which covers central and southern Utah. "It gives all youth the opportunity to take advantage of the values instilled by Scouting."

The National Catholic Committee on Scouting responded cautiously, saying it would assess the possible impact of the change on Catholic-sponsored Scout units

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Crary reported from New York. Associated Press writer Brady McCombs also contributed to this report from Salt Lake City.

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Online:

BSA Membership Standards Resolution: http://bit.ly/185yyXk

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Will the West Wake Up?

Pat Buchanan's column is released twice a week.

After a British soldier wearing a Help for Heroes charity T-shirt was run over, stabbed and slashed with machetes and a meat cleaver, and beheaded, the Tory government advised its soldiers that it is probably best not to appear in uniform on the streets of their capital.

Both murderers were wounded by police. One was photographed and recorded. His message:

"There are many, many (verses) throughout the Quran that says we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe."

According to ITV, one murderer, hands dripping blood, ranted, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you."

Both killers are Muslim converts of African descent, and both are British born.

Wednesday also, Stockholm and its suburbs ended a fourth night of riots, vandalism and arson by immigrant mobs protesting the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69-year-old.

"We have institutional racism," says Rami Al-khamisi, founder of a group for "social change."

Sweden, racist?

Among advanced nations, Sweden ranks fourth in the number of asylum seekers it has admitted and second relative to its population.

Are the Swedes really the problem in Sweden?

The same day these stories ran, The Washington Post carried a front-page photo of Ibrahim Todashev, martial arts professional and friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who, with brother Dzhokhar, set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon massacre.

Todashev, another Chechen, had been shot to death by FBI agents, reportedly after he confessed to his and Tamerlan's role in a triple murder in Waltham, Mass.

Though Tamerlan had been radicalized and Moscow had made inquiries about him, he had escaped the notice of U.S. authorities. Even after he returned to the Caucasus for six months, sought to contact extremists, then returned to the U.S.A., Tamerlan still was not on Homeland Security's radar.

His father, granted political asylum, went back to the same region he had fled in fear. His mother had been arrested for shoplifting. Yet none of this caused U.S. officials to pick up Tamerlan, a welfare freeloader, and throw the lot of them out of the country.

One wonders if the West is going to wake up to the new world we have entered, or adhere to immigration policies dating to a liberal era long since dead.

It was in 1965, halcyon hour of the Great Society, that Ted Kennedy led Congress into abolishing a policy that had restricted immigration for 40 years, while we absorbed and Americanized the millions who had come over between 1890 and 1920.

The "national origins" feature of that 1924 law mandated that ships arriving at U.S. ports carry immigrants from countries that had provided our immigrants in the past. We liked who we were.

Immigration policy was written to reinforce the Western orientation and roots of America, 90 percent of whose population could by 1960 trace its ancestry to the Old Continent.

But since 1965, immigration policy has been run by people who detest that America and wanted a new nation that looked less like Europe and more like a continental replica of the U.N. General Assembly.

They wanted to end America's history as the largest and greatest of Western nations and make her a nation of nations, a new society and a new people, more racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse than any nation on the face of the earth.

Behind this vision lies an ideology, an idee fixe, that America is not a normal nation of blood and soil, history and heroes, but a nation erected upon an idea, the idea that anyone and everyone who comes here, raises his hand, and swears allegiance to the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights becomes, de facto, not just a legal citizen but an American.

But that is no more true than to say that someone who arrives in Paris from Africa or the Middle East and raises his hand to declare allegiance to the Rights of Man thereby becomes a Frenchman.

What is the peril into which America and the West are drifting?

Ties of race, religion, ethnicity and culture are the prevailing winds among mankind and are tearing apart countries and continents. And as we bring in people from all over the world, they are not leaving all of their old allegiances and animosities behind.

Many carry them, if at times dormant, within their hearts.

And if we bring into America — afflicted by her polarized politics, hateful rhetoric and culture wars — peoples on all sides of every conflict roiling mankind, how do we think this experiment is going to end?

The immigration bill moving through the Senate, with an amnesty for 11 to 12 million illegals already here, and millions of their relatives back home, may write an end to more than just the Republican Party.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.