The very first day  I spent at a prestigious prep school—I was ten—I was punished for breaking the rule that no new boy was allowed to walk on the grass.  “Rhinies,” as we were called at Lawrenceville, had to stick to the paths, and the only time we could walk on the grass was during exercise periods.  The reason I broke the rule was simple: I didn’t speak English, and back then Americans spoke English, and even students from abroad were required to understand it.  Those were the good old days when America was a magnet for the bright and ambitious, even non-English-speaking boys like myself.  The headmaster was Dr. Healy, the assistant headmaster was Dr. Hyatt, the president of the school was Temple Brown, the captain of the football team was Karl McDonald, the campus hero was Homer Smith, and my housemates had names like Bill Trimble, Ben Cooper, Ludlow Miller, Carlie Ross, and Sam van Allen.  It was WASP heaven, and I fit right in with a name like Taki Theodoracopulos.  In those halcyon days one had to adjust to Uncle Sam, not the other way round.  People came over to find work, not to get free food and welfare.  I learned to speak de English in one week—not good English, but good enough to pass to the next grade the following year.

These memories came rushing back when I read Roger McGrath’s remarks a couple of issues back on Anglo-Saxon names of the owners of gas stations now being a thing of the past.  Roger was writing about California, but he could have been writing about New York or New Jersey, where yours truly grew up and attended school.  In New York State more than one third of young New Yorkers are packing their bags to escape crushing taxes, sky-high living costs, and a deteriorating quality of life.  When I leave my house on the Upper East Side in order to buy the newspapers, I hear Spanish, Swahili, Arabic, Russian, and some Greek, and the closest thing to English is Ebonics.  I am not exaggerating.  There is not a single food joint, shoemaker, newsstand, or barber shop where English is spoken.  People communicate in sign language.  Still, the ghastly mayor Michael Bloomberg insists we need more diversity, the ugliest word this side of neocon, as far as I’m concerned.  But at least the people I’m talking about are working, never mind their habit of spitting on the sidewalk or of never washing their hands.  These are the good guys.  The bad are further north and east, where the unemployed welfare recipients reside and receive.

Here are a few examples of the people we let into this country, taken from the newspaper accounts of one single day in May.  In Buffalo, New York, a Pakistani Muslim community leader, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, beheaded his wife a week after she filed for divorce and sought police protection.  Muzzammil was described as a mild-mannered man who fought against Muslim stereotypes.  Just imagine if he hadn’t been a community leader.

A crazed hot-dog vendor slashed a rival vendor’s face with a large machete outside the Time Warner Center.  Azmy Mansour spoke only the F-word when collared by cops after slashing Mohammed Ellabou­diy’s face.  Talk about the Arab Spring.

Mayhem-seeking Muslims Ahmed Ferhani and Mohammed Mamdouh were busted by New York’s finest as they tried to buy three handguns, a hand grenade, and ammo in order to attack a Manhattan synagogue and the Empire State Building.  Both are naturalized Americans and cannot be deported.

An Orthodox rabbi got 60 days in a federal prison for fondling a woman on a Delta flight to New York from Tel Aviv.  “Grabbi” Bidani is a married father of 11, but needed more cuddles during the flight.  I hope some tattooed type cuddles him in prison, although the Grabbi is so ugly he might emerge unscathed.  Give us your sex-starved, your perverts, your murderers longing to be free.

On this same day, in downtown Miami, Florida, a U.S. imam, whatever that means, was busted as a Talibanker, having raised 50 g’s for a Pakistani terror group.  Hafiz Muhammad—that name again—Sher Ali Khan was arrested after morning prayers at his mosque.

Vitaly Borker, a Russkie cyberbully, threatened to rape female customers after they complained about his shoddy merchandise.  He pleaded guilty, which was decent of him, as the feds had him cold.  I suppose he then sang “America the Beautiful,” rather than the Siberian anthem.

Finally, a sub-Saharan African fellow, whose name no one dared to ask for, was photographed in a New York subway during rush hour licking his filthy sandals, spit-shining them with his tongue.  The cringe-inducing shoe cleaner licked every inch of his sandals, then jumped up and got off on 125th Street.  He also picked some lint between his toes.  This is what the disgusting Bloomberg calls diversity.  I’m afraid Drs. Healy and Hyatt would not have approved.