Our New Ungracious Immigrants

Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others. The Greek American Elia Kazan's 1963 film "

America," "

America" is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director's uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia. The film summed up Americans' traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts. An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, "

American Trojan," by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere. He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education.

What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California – arguably the most successful one in recent memory. I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants.

Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation. My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America. Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II.

One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America. Gratitude and Ingratitude But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration – an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.

During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion – even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans. While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil? On campuses today, thousands of Middle Eastern international students, mostly arriving from autocratic, tribal, and failed nations, have staged often violent demonstrations in the years following the October 7, 2023, massacre. They are not shy about cheering on the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians.

These pro-Hamas students have not just damned Israel but also often harassed Jewish Americans. They revile their host America and expect Americans to smile and shrug. It is hard to determine whether such zealots hate the U.S. more than they love living in America and preserving their student visas and work permits.

Hating or Loving the "

Great Satan"? Take Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani. She is the daughter of Ali Larijani, one of the late Supreme Leader Khamenei's murderous henchmen.

He sent his daughter Fatemeh to the top schools in the satanic United States. She was eventually even hired as a professor at Emory University – at least until popular outrage at the Larijani family's hypocrisy prompted her dismissal. To our enemies in Iran, we may be the "

Great Satan." But Iranian theocrats apparently prefer their children and other relatives to study and get rich in Luciferian America. So, many send their kids to universities in the U.S. Another surreal example is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who arrived on a student visa at Columbia University and soon led the "

Gaza Solidarity Encampment." When the State Department sought to revoke his temporary visa, the Left made Khalil a veritable martyr. Apparently, his university supporters reasoned that the U.S. had an obligation to invite to its shores those who are active supporters of terrorists like Hamas.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized citizen from Uganda whose parents became public figures and multimillionaires in America, in the past has had little good to say about his adopted country. His quite public wife, Rama, whose parents were naturalized Syrian citizens, illustrated a book that was rife with antisemitism. It's no accident that after October 7, she posted "likes" of social media praise of the terrorist Hamas killers, who are sworn enemies of her own country.

Many Somali immigrants of Minneapolis repaid the kindness of Americans in welcoming them from war-torn Somalia by committing the greatest welfare fraud in U.S. history, which may reach $9 billion in theft. Their iconic representative, Ilhan Omar, has voiced antisemitic vitriol, downplayed 9/11, claimed the U.S. has a dictatorship worse than the one she fled, and said the U.S. was turning into one of the worst countries in the world. That is the thanks she returns for entering a hospitable America under controversial circumstances and dubious legality.

Hating – or Hating to Leave – America? Stranger still is the attitude of visitors and illegal aliens when they finally face deportation. Former President Joe Biden allowed 10-12 million foreign nationals to illegally enter the U.S. during his tenure, among them some 500,000 known criminals.

In the years since his inauguration, not a day goes by without news that illegal aliens of that era have murdered, assaulted, been arrested for felonious acts, or caused horrific auto accidents. One of them was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador, who long ago was ordered to be deported for his unlawful entry and residence. Instead, he too became an icon to the Left when he was recently and belatedly facing permanent deportation.

He had clearly ignored his earlier deportation orders, and was an alleged gang member, an often violent spousal abuser, and a human trafficker. Abrego Garcia apparently felt he had a right to enter the U.S. illegally. He successfully made a mockery of our immigration laws.

But he presciently expected that soon hundreds of thousands of dollars of free legal help would come his way, ensuring he could stay in the country for which he showed utter contempt. And in the U.S., one of the most bizarre aspects of recent protests against ICE efforts involved episodes of Mexican nationals waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wished to return, even as they burned the flag of the nation in which they insisted they had an innate right to stay. Our New Americans Killing Americans Yet the immigration disaster transcends student visas and illegal aliens, since it extends to many naturalized citizens as well.

Consider the terrorist acts that have transpired in just the last eight days. On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Senegal, shot up a beer garden in Austin, Texas.