Taking U.S. Citizenship Oaths In Iraq

The number of legal immigrants seeking to become United States citizens is surging, officials say, as printed in the NY Times. More than 4,000 new Americans were sworn in Wednesday in tradition-steeped — and some not so traditional — Fourth of July ceremonies. About 1,000 people from 75 countries took their oaths together under the turrets of Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., as Gloria Estefan sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In Iraq, 325 foreign-born soldiers who are fighting in the United States military took the oath of allegiance in two ceremonies. Wait a minutes did they say foreign born soldiers fighting for the US army? Why would anyone do that? Here' are some answers...

Taken from LA Times, July 5, 2007

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Hundreds of American immigrants serving in the military are naturalized in ceremonies around the war-torn country.

U.S. soldiers and Marines filed into the marble hall of Saddam Hussein's former Al Faw Palace on Independence Day as foreigners at home as well as here. But they left the room as American citizens.

Standing under a glittering chandelier, 161 service members took the oath of citizenship Wednesday, the largest group to be naturalized at once in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003. The mostly young, mostly male troops with last names such as Toledo and Serrano stitched across the backs of their caps vowed to "support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies," an abstract promise with a deeper daily meaning here.

"You chose to endure the same sacrifices as your fellow comrades in arms to preserve the freedom of a land that was not yet fully yours," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, military commander in Iraq, told the gathering in Baghdad. "It is the greatest of honors to soldier with you."

About 800 personnel filled the room, including 585 service members reenlisting as part of the ceremony, with onlookers straining to see from crowded balconies and stairwells. Among them were presidential contender Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both veterans, who flew in for the occasion.

Near the front of the hall, Pfc. Mark Ayson, with a black brace on one wrist and an M-4 rifle slung across his back, had tears in his eyes.

Ayson, 26, of Pensacola, Fla., was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 8. Less than a week before the ceremony, he was riding in a Humvee that was hit by a copper-plated explosive in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. A fellow soldier lost a his leg in the attack, but Ayson escaped with damaged eardrums, shrapnel in his right leg and a bruised left wrist. He was back to work within 72 hours.

Ayson said the experience underlines why he joined the Army, came to Iraq nearly a year ago and became a citizen on Wednesday.

"We're fighting for a cause," he said.

A large contingent of Mexican Americans from California milled around carrying U.S. flags, a gift from the government, along with their new citizenship certificates and pieces of red, white and blue sheet cake.

Pfc. Cecilia Rodriguez, 19, of Fresno, immigrated to California in 1997 from the town of Pastor Ortiz in the Mexican state of Michoacan. Her parents, two sisters and a brother are legal U.S. residents, but Rodriguez is the first in her family to become a citizen.

"It was a dream that my dad had for us, to come over here and have more opportunities," Rodriguez said of her new homeland.

She said becoming a citizen will help her career, both in the military and afterward, when she hopes to become a federal agent. Noncitizens are ineligible for the military promotions and security clearances she is pursuing.

U.S. immigration officials swore in 325 service members as citizens during ceremonies across Iraq on Wednesday. As of May, 1,186 service members had become citizens in Iraq since the beginning of the conflict, according to the Defense Department.

Immigrants have long filled the ranks of America's military, fighting in the Revolutionary War, Civil War and both world wars. The Navy recruited Filipinos from the late 1940s until the law changed in 1992, and they remain the largest nationality among noncitizen soldiers, followed by Mexicans and Jamaicans.

More recently, permanent residents, particularly the so-called Mexican "green card soldiers," have drawn attention for their heroism and sacrifices in Iraq. Lance Cpl. Jose A. Gutierrez of Lomita and Cpl. Jose A. Garibay of Costa Mesa were granted posthumous citizenship after they died in the first three days of the war.

Immigrants' military service has become part of the Washington immigration debate in recent months. Legislation that stalled in the Senate last week would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented youths who serve in the military for at least two years.

Although undocumented immigrants are ineligible for military service by law, some so-called "no-card soldiers" manage to join using false documents, said Margaret Stock, an Army reservist and part-time associate professor at West Point. Stock said many service members who hold green cards or are U.S. citizens have immediate family who are undocumented and would benefit from a provision granting them legal status, similar to laws that apply to Cuban nationals who enter the U.S. illegally.

The number of noncitizens serving in the U.S. armed forces peaked in 2003 at 37,000, after President Bush signed an order waiving the three-year waiting period for active-duty service members to apply for citizenship if they had joined before Sept. 11, 2001. Legislation passed the following year waived application fees for active-duty service members and allowed them to be sworn in as citizens overseas.

There currently are about 25,000 noncitizens in uniform, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman. About 8,000 noncitizens enlist each year, he said.

Some immigrant advocates say that more should be done to speed citizenship for immigrant service members and their families.

"These are folks who are on the front lines defending this country, but at the same time they have to defend their families at home from deportation," said Alvaro Huerta, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

But conservative experts such as John Fonte at the Hudson Institute in Washington say there is no need to speed immigrants' citizenship applications to fill the military ranks.

"It's not a job that Americans won't do; soldiering has been a job Americans will do for 200 years," Fonte said.

Wednesday's ceremony was dedicated to some of the 126 noncitizen service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 70 of whom received posthumous citizenship.

Sgt. Luis Ochoa, 35, of Fayetteville, N.C., said he wanted to avoid becoming one of those noncitizen casualties. He fought in Afghanistan and is in his second tour in Iraq.

"I wanted to die an American. I wanted to die happy," said Ochoa, who immigrated came to the U.S. from Tijuana in 1984.

Ochoa had wanted his wife and four children to be with him Wednesday, to show off his new citizenship certificate stamped "July 4, 2007." Instead, Ochoa stowed the certificate in his footlocker at Forward Operating Base Justice, northeast of Baghdad, where he returned soon after the ceremony — not to hot dogs or friendly fireworks but to his duty as an American citizen.

"I got a patrol," Ochoa said with a smile. "I got work to do."

US Immigration Officials Allegedly Drugged Deportees

An ACLU lawyer condemns the incidents in L.A. as 'horrifying.' Both men remain in the U.S. while appealing their cases.

Taken from The LA Times, May 9, 2007
By Anna Gorman and Greg Krikorian

U.S. immigration officials sedated two foreign nationals against their will during failed attempts to deport them in Los Angeles, the men and their attorneys said Tuesday.

Indonesian immigrant Raymond Soeoth, 38, who was appealing his case for political asylum, was sedated with antipsychotic drugs in December 2004 at a San Pedro detention facility; Senegal immigrant Amadou Diouf, 31, also pursuing an appeal for permanent legal status, was medicated in February 2006 while on a commercial plane at Los Angeles International Airport, according to both men and the medical files they said they obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"It's horrifying," said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents the two. "It's blatantly illegal. You cannot inject people with psychotropic drugs if they are not mentally ill."

The ACLU, with assistance from the law firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson, is investigating the incidents, which were first reported in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. Arulanantham said neither of his clients has been treated for mental illness.

Soeoth and Diouf have been released. Their cases are pending at the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to comment on the cases, but a U.S. Public Health Services official said authorities do sedate immigrants during deportation if they have a psychiatric disorder, are severely agitated during a flight or present a danger to themselves or others.

Dr. Tim Shack, medical director for the Division of Immigration Health Services, said medical escorts, who include nurses and doctors, sedate detainees against their will if they fail to respond to verbal counseling and physical restraints and still present an "imminent risk of danger."

In some cases, the agency gets a court order to administer medication. The drugs are given by escorts who accompany detainees with medical or psychological problems as they are transferred or deported. Medications commonly used are lorazepam, haloperidol, olanzapine and benztropine.

Soeoth, a Chinese Christian, fled Indonesia in 1999 to escape religious persecution. He applied for asylum but lost the case. He later appealed.

On Dec. 7, 2004, Soeoth said, immigration agents told him he was going to be deported. They did not give him a chance to call his attorney or his wife, he said.

An agent asked how he felt and if he wanted medication. Soeoth said he replied that he felt OK and that he didn't want any drugs. But a few hours later, Soeoth said, several agents came into the room where he was being held and told him they had to medicate him. Soeoth said the agents grabbed his arms and legs, pushed him onto a bench, pulled down his pants and injected him in the buttocks.

"Why are they doing this to me?" Soeoth recalled thinking before losing consciousness and being taken to the airport. "I am no animal."

His medical files indicate that Soeoth may have threatened to kill himself, but he said this was not true.

After they got to the airport, airline security officials canceled Soeoth's removal because of a lack of proper notification by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to his medical file.

Diouf came into the country from Senegal on a student visa in 1996 but overstayed because he began dating an American citizen, whom he later married. He was ordered deported but is appealing his case.

The night before his flight, Diouf said, agents told him he was going to be deported. He said he replied that he had a stay of deportation. But the next morning, Diouf said, agents told him he was being sent to his native country.

A medical escort — with a syringe in his pocket — told him they would be on a commercial plane and could not afford to have any problems, he said. Another agent offered to give him pills, he said.

On the plane, Diouf, who was handcuffed, said he told a flight attendant in French that he wanted to speak to the captain so he could tell him about the stay. The medical escort told him he wasn't following orders and took out the syringe and a bottle of water. Diouf said he began yelling as the agents wrestled him to the floor and injected him.

A note in the medical file said that he was not following orders and that he was "taken to the ground on board the aircraft after being given medication."

Diouf said the captain ordered them all off the plane.

"That was a pretty humiliating ordeal," he said. "I don't think I was making trouble. I just wanted to speak to the captain."

Although unaware of the cases until contacted Tuesday, legal experts expressed outrage at the alleged treatment of the two men and practice of sedating deportees.

"It is inappropriate to give these kinds of injections and put people on aircraft in violation of the federal air regulations that prohibit the transport of drugged individuals," said professor Abraham R. Wagner of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "It is not how America's constitutional democracy is supposed to operate in this century."

Another nationally recognized expert on homeland security issues and the law, Paul Finkleman of Albany Law School in New York, was equally harsh in his criticism and discounted the notion that deportees' combativeness or threats of suicide would justify drugging them.

"If you are using anti-psychotic drugs as a means of controlling people who do not need to be controlled, then the medical people are violating their own oaths as physicians and nurses and violating federal law by administering these drugs," he said.

Though data on such cases are hard to come by, Arizona immigration attorney Dan Kowalski said the concern about deportees being drugged has been around for years. Kowalski said the practice is part of a disturbing pattern that immigration officials are using extraordinary — and unnecessary — tactics to deport illegal immigrants who pose no danger.

"Because the subjects are not citizens, they are fair game for abuse and mistreatment," he said.

In the last several years, Denver attorney Sandra Saltrese said, she has had two deportation clients who were allegedly drugged before being sent out of the U.S. In both cases, she said, the men were seeking asylum.

"These men were docile … they were not suicidal," she said.

U.S. Seeks Closing Of Visa Loophole For Britons

Taken from The New York Times, 02 May 2007,
By JANE PERLEZ

Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.



But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

At the moment, the British are resistant, fearing that restrictions on the group of Britons would incur a backlash from a population that has always sided with the Labor Party. The Americans say they are hesitant to push too hard and embarrass their staunch ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair, as he prepares to step down from office.

Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.

Rather than impose any visa restrictions, the British government has told Washington it would prefer if the Americans simply deported Britons who failed screening once they arrived at an airport in the United States, British officials said. The British also screen at their end, and share intelligence with the Americans.

But Washington feels strongly, Mr. Chertoff has said, that it has the right to build controls against terrorists from Britain who do not have a prior criminal record — precisely the kind of man Mr. Khyam was until he was arrested in early 2004 and put on trial for plotting to blow up targets like a major London nightclub and a popular suburban shopping mall.

For its part, the British government looks with dismay at the frequency with which Britons travel to their ancestral land of Pakistan — an estimated 400,000 trips a year — where a small minority, like Mr. Khyam, link up with extremist groups and acquire training in weapons and explosives.

Foreign office officials have said they have discussed measures with the Pakistani Embassy in London, which grants Pakistani passports to Britons of Pakistani descent, to consider tightening the rules for Pakistani travel documents.

In Washington, an expert on terrorism and Pakistan, Bruce Riedel, who served on the National Security Council under President Clinton and in the early Bush administration, and who recently retired after 30 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, said that Mr. Khyam was perfect material for Al Qaeda.

“He is the classic U.K.-Pakistani connection that Al Qaeda has focused on since 9/11,” said Mr. Riedel, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “His U.K. passport gives him international mobility. His training at a camp run for Kashmiris by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency gives him expertise. Al Qaeda gives him direction.”

The trial that ended Monday with the conviction of Mr. Khyam and four other Muslim men on conspiracy charges did not establish whether Mr. Khyam or his colleagues belonged to a Qaeda cell.

But the head of counterterrorism at Scotland Yard, Peter Clarke, said after the verdict the investigations into the bomb plot had given “a new understanding of the Al Qaeda threat to Britain.”

At his sentencing, the judge, Sir Michael Astill, described Mr. Khyam as “the energy behind the conspiracy,” the man who attracted other young Muslims to the plan, and inspired them, and who knew how to shuttle from Britain to Pakistan for terrorism training.

From Mr. Khyam’s own testimony, as well as a cascade of official intelligence surveillance presented during the yearlong trial, a portrait of determination and ruthlessness emerged.

As a teenager, Omar became entranced by jihadist ideology. He moved on to the cause of Kashmir, and was then piqued by 9/11 and the Iraq war, things that inspired and angered other Britons with Pakistani roots. But he in the end turned to attacking Britain, where he was born and raised.

Asked on the witness stand his reaction to 9/11, Mr. Khyam did not disguise his delight.

“I was happy,” he recalled in his south England accent. “America was, and still is, the greatest enemy of Islam. I was happy that America had been hit because of what it represented against the Muslims, but obviously 3,000 people died, so there were mixed feelings.”

Mr. Khyam testified that his parents migrated to Britain from Pakistan in the 1970s, before his birth. He came from a family, he said, with a proud heritage of service, first in the British Army in Pakistan, then in the army of the newly independent Pakistan, and also in the intelligence services.

His parents were not particularly religious, he said, a pattern typical among Pakistani immigrants to Britain where the new generation, often turned off by what they see as the loose morals of binge drinking and broken marriages, has proven to be more devout than their elders.

At the age of 10, his father, a successful businessman with a textile factory in Karachi, left his mother and moved to Belgium, leaving behind Omar, the eldest, and two small children.

His mother’s English was poor. Quickly, Omar became the man of the household, organizing the finances, and bossing his siblings. Instead of enrolling in the local school where most of the students were South Asian, he attended a mostly white, government-run school, and led a middle-class British life.

He did relatively well in his final school exams and enrolled in college but, distracted by his larger cause, never followed through on his studies or sought steady employment.

By 1998, he had taken his first steps into the realm of radical Islam, when he was introduced to Al Muhajiroun, a group led in Britain by Omar Bakri Mohammed, in his neighborhood in West Sussex. The group indoctrinates followers in the virtues of an Islamic state and indoctrinates a strict code of personal behavior. It expects members to shun friends who do not practice strict Islamic mores.

On the political side, Mr. Khyam calmly told the court about how he watched bloody videotapes of Russian soldiers blowing up mosques in Chechnya, and of atrocities by the Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia, which were shown to members of Al Muhajiroun.

But he soon tired of Al Muhajiroun, he said, and yearned for something more than the group’s desire for an Islamic state in Britain, which he deemed to be “not realistic.”

He took his first trip to Pakistan as a vacation with his mother and his brothers in 1999, when he was just a teenager. There, he experienced firsthand what he had heard about at home: the cause of Kashmir, the border area claimed by both Pakistan and India. He met with a group, Al Badr Mujahedeen, that fought, he said, to free Kashmir from Indian control.

In early 2000, Mr. Khyam was back in Pakistan. He found a training camp for fighters being sent to Kashmir that was run, he said, by Inter-Services Intelligence.

According to his testimony, the American-led war in Afghanistan, and later Iraq, dramatically colored his views. Those wars, he said, were wars against Islam, and he hoped to join the fight.

“By this time I had a lot of contact with the I.S.I. because of my family,” he said, referring to the Pakistani intelligence service. He visited the headquarters of the agency in Islamabad, and was told that what the Americans wanted “is to stop anyone who calls for the return of an Islamic state or a caliphate.”

From 2002 on, Mr. Khyam said he shuttled between Britain and Pakistan, culminating in a trip in 2003 to a training camp in Malakand in the North-West Frontier Province with five of his fellow defendants, including his younger brother, Shujah, who was acquitted.

By late 2003, according to prosecution evidence, Mr. Khyam had decided from his trips to Pakistan to concentrate on a plot in Britain that would involve a fertilizer bomb.

Mr. Khyam, using some of the organizational skills he had honed as a young man at home, can be heard on surveillance tapes divvying up responsibilities for the plan.

Along the way, he found time to marry — in what he called a “religious marriage” — Saira, a Pakistani woman.

They finally married in a civil ceremony on March 25, 2004, and a few days later, Mr. Khyam was arrested by the police in a bedroom of a Holiday Inn in England while he was on his honeymoon with his wife.

Australia And US To Swap Refugees

Taken from The BBC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007

Australia and the United States have announced a plan to swap up to 200 asylum seekers every year.

Migrants held by the US in Guantanamo Bay will be resettled in Australia, while Canberra will send people held in its offshore detention camps to the US.

The move is aimed at deterring would-be refugees by preventing them from reaching their destination of choice.

But critics say the plan could backfire on Canberra, as many refugees around the world are hoping to get to America.

Atlantic exchange
The first asylum seekers to be exchanged are likely to be 83 Sri Lankans and eight Burmese who are being held in Australia's off-shore detention centre on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru.
If they qualify as genuine refugees, they could soon be resettled somewhere in the US.

In return, the Americans will be allowed to send Cuban and Haitian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay (the naval base housing asylum seekers, rather than the prison) to Australia.

Both Canberra and Washington insist the move will deter illegal migrants.

The hope is that potential refugees might think again about trying to get to the US if there was a chance they could end up in a faraway place like Australia, and vice versa.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard insisted the plan would also deter people smugglers.

"The thing that discourages people from people smuggling is the fact that we make it very plain that people will not be allowed to reach the Australian mainland," Mr Howard told local media.

But critics believe that the plan could backfire on the Australians, by encouraging asylum seekers from Asia and the Middle East who want to build a new life in the US.

An immigration spokesman for the Australian opposition Labor Party, Tony Burke, said the new policy would therefore mean even more boat people arriving on the shores of Australia.

"If you are in one of the refugee camps around the world, there is no more attractive destination than to think you can get a ticket to the USA," Mr Burke said.

"What John Howard is doing is saying to the people around the world: if you want to get to the US, the way to it is to hop on a boat and go to [Australia's] Christmas Island."

Australia has often been criticised by human rights groups for the uncompromising stance it takes on asylum seekers.

Under a policy introduced in 2001, would-be migrants are now intercepted at sea, and are routinely sent to off-shore processing camps in the South Pacific where their refugee applications are assessed.

The tactic is designed to ensure they never set foot on the Australian mainland.

Even if they are deemed genuine refugees, efforts are made to find a third country willing to accept them, although in practice this often fails and they are eventually accepted into Australia.
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This is probably one of the dumbest idea's that has come out of australia and US relations. How bizarre! Maybe this will be used as a way of transfering terrorist suspects that are found to be innocents to start a new life in a different country?

Further reading:
Sydney Morning Herald, 19. 04.07 Costs cited to justify refugee swap with US

US Senate In Wrangle Over English

Taken from the BBC 19.2.07

The US Senate has voted in favour of making English the national language.

The measure, backed by Republicans, came as an amendment to a controversial immigration bill currently going through the Senate.

Lawmakers voted by 63-34 in favour of the move, which calls on the government to "preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language".

US ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
# About 11.5m illegal immigrants in the US
# Four out of 10 have been in US five years or less
# 75% were born in Latin America
# Most enter via southern US border
# California, Texas and Florida host most illegal immigrants
# Many work in agriculture, transport and construction

But the Senate also approved a milder Democrat amendment describing English as the "common and unifying language". Neither of the bills would bar the use of Spanish or other languages in government services.

'Preserving our culture' The BBC's Emilio San Pedro, in Miami, says the issue of the preservation of the English language and American culture is for many at the heart of the immigration debate in the US.

Many Americans are concerned that the influx of immigrants from the Mexican border are altering the very fabric of American life, our correspondent says.

"This is not just about preserving our culture and heritage, but also about bettering the odds for our nation's newest potential citizens," said Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who sponsored the national language amendment.

Sen Inhofe said polls show around 80% of Americans would support a move to formalise English as the national language.

But critics fear the move could lead to discrimination against people who are not proficient in English. "Although the intent may not be there, I really believe this amendment is racist," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. "I believe it is directed at people who speak Spanish."

Both amendments will be included in the bill that the Senate sends to the House of Representatives, where the differences will need to be reconciled.

President Bush, during a visit to Arizona to promote his immigration reform package, did not specifically endorse the move but stressed the need for unity.

"Americans are bound together by shared ideals and appreciation of our history, of respect for our flag and ability to speak the English language," he said.

Mr Bush has proposed tightening border security while giving many existing illegal immigrants the right to stay. Many Republicans say the plan is too soft, arguing that illegal immigration should be criminalised, while Central American states have attacked the US proposal to build hundreds of kilometres of fencing along its border.

Limit Muslim Migration, Australia Warned

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, February 16, 2007
Barney Zwartz

LIFE can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by France, a Jewish expert on Islam says.

The Australian Jewish News yesterday quoted Raphael Israeli as saying Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.

Professor Israeli told the Herald that was a misunderstanding. But he said: "When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia."

Professor Israeli, an expert on Islamic history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been brought to Australia by the Shalom Institute of the University of NSW. The Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council is co-hosting many of his activities.

He said Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.

"Greeks or Italians or Jews don't use violence. There is no Italian or Jewish Hilaly [a reference to the controversial cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly of Lakemba mosque]. Why?"

Professor Israeli said that when the Muslim population increased, so did the risk of violence.

"Where there are large Muslim populations who are prepared to use violence you are in trouble.

If there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don't dare to do it - they don't have the backing of big communities. They know they are drowned in the environment of non-Muslims and are better behaved."

In Australia, Muslims account for about 1.5 per cent of the population.

Professor Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country's political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies.

"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.

"If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can't put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can't send them all back. You are really in trouble. It's irreversible."

Professor Israeli said that in Australia a few imams had preached violence. "You should not let fundamentalist imams come here. Screen them 1000 times before they are admitted, and after they are admitted screen what they say in the mosque."

He said some Muslims wanted to impose sharia (Islamic law) in their adopted countries, and when propaganda did not work they turned to intimidation.

Professor Israeli said his task was to describe, not prescribe. He also said his warning did not include immigrants, including Muslims, who simply wanted to improve their lot. As long as they respected the law and democracy, their numbers — Buddhist, Muslim or Jew — were immaterial. It became material when a group accepted violence.

"The trains in London and Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists but by Muslims, so it is them we have to beware," he said.

Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said "Not only religious clerics need to be screened before entering Ausralia but also academics … this type of academic does nothing but create hatred, suspicion and division … We should review not only what the man has said but also those who have sponsored him, to see if they endorse those comments."