After a rollercoaster week of bombings, firefights and an explosive midnight car chase that could have come straight from a movie, one suspect of the Boston Marathon bombings is dead, and the other, currently at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, has pleaded guilty to charges of creating and using a weapon of mass destruction. This latest act of terrorism will prove even more significant, however, because it coincides with a high profile Congressional debate on immigration. Immigration reform has been central to President Barack Obama’s agenda since he took office. Now, the already heated debates will only take a turn for the worse, since the perpetrators of the Boston bombings were revealed to be Muslim asylum-seekers who emigrated from Russia in the 2000s. Despite the apparent connection between the bomber’s immigrant status and their actions, the Boston bombings should have no relevance to immigration policy. If anything, the case of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an appeal to the moral necessity of an open immigration policy. We, as Americans, cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of large scale discrimination based solely upon a few incidents. “[The current] immigration policy is based upon a xenophobic confusion regarding economics, the mobility of labor, the American welfare state, and cultural diversity,” writes Thomas Lehman, Professor at Indiana Wesleyan University, in his article “Coming to America: The Benefits of Open Immigration.” In addition to discrimination against Muslims, Americans are hesitant to accept immigrants of several different backgrounds. From Mexican migrants seeking labor and to East Asian expatriates seeking educational opportunities, people pour into the United States from all over the world, where they are faced with unwarranted prejudices. These prejudices are rarely grounded in fact. Many people want limited immigration because they fear that all immigrant Muslims are potential terrorists, as several terrorist attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist groups, such as the attacks on the World Trade Center during the events on 9/11. Of course, the assumption that all Muslims are terrorists is completely incorrect. Extremists constitute a tiny minority of the Islamic world. In fact, many of the recent tragedies in America have been carried out by white males. Ryan Lanza (Newtown, CT), James Holmes (Aurora, CO), Jared Loughner (Tucson, AZ) and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (Columbine, CO), all committed mass murders and were all Caucasian. Similarly, the stereotypes held by some Americans about Mexican immigrants are an inaccurate characterization of the majority of Latino migrants, and an unjust reason to bar their access to this country. Often these people are viewed as lazy, disruptive and predisposed to crime. However, statistics prove this incorrect. According to the November 15th, 2011 article in the “Huffington Post,” titled “Does Immigration Fuel Crime?” United States cities with a high immigrant population and close proximity to the Mexican border, like El Paso, Texas, actually display lower crime rates. As stated in “The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation” by Ruben G. Rumbaut, Ph.D. and Walter A. Ewing, Ph.D., the rate of imprisonment for native-born men is actually higher than foreign born men in the United States. In addition, “even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent.” These statistics disprove the unfair stereotypes held against this immigrant group, just as it is incorrect to claim that all Muslims are terrorists. Clearly there is no correlation between race, religion and disruptive behavior. The obsession with racial profiling and ethnic prejudice must stop, as the United States is currently sinking deeper into a national mentality which discriminates against Muslims and Middle Eastern foreigners. Such discrimination runs contrary to the values of freedom and liberty that America supposedly champions. These immigrants are asylum-seekers; they come from countries that could be rife with political conflict and terrorism of all kinds, or from economic downturn and soaring unemployment. They are looking for a better life here in the United States. It is unfair for Americans to give them such a negative reputation. We should not let the actions of the two violent individuals responsible for the Boston bombings—or any small minority unrepresentative of a group for that matter—determine the fate of thousands more searching for a new life in the United States. Lily Grossbard is a new Lower from New York, NY.
