Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
My first experience in the Netherlands was very pleasant, extremely pleasant. I mean, I got my residence permit, refugee status, within four weeks of arrival. People treated me extremely well.
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. Infidel. Free Press, 2007.
Ironically, where national quotas have been used in American immigration policy, it has rarely been used to keep nationals of countries with which we were having difficulty, out. In almost all cases, the national quotas have been used to discriminate against racial and religious minorities in America. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, Mormons and Jews have been the most frequent groups targeted. Even when we were in the midst of the Cold War, American policy was to accept immigrants from the Soviet Union and Cuba enthusiastically.
The issue of admission of relatives of citizens had, in the 20th century, become controversial as some political forces worked to restrict immigration. The result of politicizing this issue was that the relatives who would receive immigration priorities would change every time Congress legislated about anything involving immigration and asylum. Immigrants from some countries could have their aunts and uncles get priority while other countries it was only siblings, children and parents. And still others would be children only. There was also racial and ethnic discrimination in that nations with white populations received a broader right to have relatives immigrate than non-white.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar and former politician. She received international attention as a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, actively opposing forced marriage, honor violence, child marriage and female genital mutilation. She has founded an organisation for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali works for the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.
