A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

We are a creedal nation.  Regular readers know the argument.

"Give these kids an America to buy into, and an America that buys into these kids, and we'll be OK."  Pajamas Media contributor Jamie K. Wilson would like to restrict that a bit.  "An American is a person who belongs to the historic political, cultural, and moral community formed by the United States — a community joined not by ancestry alone but by entering, adopting, and upholding its constitutional order, its laws, its common language, its civic story, and its ethic of self-rule, ordered liberty, and mutual responsibility."  I suppose my youth in Milwaukee where one could still find storefronts and sometimes libraries labelled in German, Polish, and Spanish makes me less inclined to be restrictive about language, and I've tended to view cultural and moral communities as emergent and evolving: do we still want to observe Sundays in the way of the Puritan rather than of the German?

The "missed opportunity" my post refers to is the upcoming deportation of Iranian women alleged to be kin of Iranian terrorist commander Qasem Soleimani, who have been living in California and much more in the way of the Californian than of the Shiite.  "Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, who celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military bases in social media posts, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, were nabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday and had their green cards revoked over ties to the Iranian regime."  Power Line's John Hinderaker notes that Western fashion influenced the ladies in a way that, put simply, would not go down well with the guardians against vice back in Asia Minor.  "Afshar may have reviled the U.S. as the Great Satan, but she herself reveled in a luxurious Los Angeles lifestyle, presumably courtesy of the oppressed people of Iran."

I'll expand on my "missed opportunity" thesis, complete with eye candy, below the jump.

As I understand it, there is a large community of Iranian emigres, expatriates, refugees, and for all I know people yearning to breathe free in the American way, just as we've been doing for years.  And there is the root of the missed opportunity.

We have one cohort of political leaders strongly advocating restricted immigration and accusing the other cohort of importing wage slaves and future welfare recipients.  That is not the way to recruit, put bluntly, Republican voters in immigrant neighborhoods, whether it's Los Angeles or Pilsen or Milwaukee's south side.

We have another cohort of political leaders who seem to be in favor of expanding social services for illegal immigrants in order to keep the labor pools for gardeners and nannies stocked. That's not a vision favorable to immigrants pursuing professional degrees or hoping to be entrepreneurs.

Was there no filthy lure from West persuasive enough to turn this young lady into an advocate for all things American?  Do California's politicians simply see another rich person who doesn't pay her fair share of taxes?  Mr Hinderaker might be right about the geopolitics.  "Nothing like the Great Satan for a good time. And nothing like having the world’s worst mass murderer in your family tree for that all-important knowledge of impunity."  And yet, the right application of soft power could produce a useful influencer.