The U.S. Must Start Culturally Vetting Prospective Immigrants
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Some cultural practices, such as female genital mutilation, are so incompatible with American values that they cannot be allowed to propagate here.
When I had a meeting at a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Northern Virginia some weeks ago, five FBI agents sat me down and told me that they’re investigating many cases of female genital mutilation (FGM), an abusive cultural practice that is far too common in the U.S. As I am someone who lives in Minneapolis for most of the year, the agents explained that the city is one of the country’s FGM hotspots, especially because of its Somali population. While much of the country is rightly focused on pervasive Somali fraud in Minnesota, FGM has largely gone under the radar. Yet, FGM is a far more sinister issue.
FGM involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs, for non-medical reasons. FGM has no health benefits and gravely harms women’s health and sexual development in the short- and long-term. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies FGM into four major types, with type three—infibulation, or the “narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal”—being the most severe.
FGM is primarily practiced throughout Africa and in select countries across the Middle East and Asia. The highest risk country for FGM is Somalia, where 98 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have undergone the procedure.
While FGM is federally illegal, it’s primarily a hidden practice. It’s taboo for survivors to speak about their experiences, a reality that is compounded by the left’s inability to criticize the repugnant third-world practices that some immigrants bring to the U.S. Consequently, FGM is severely underreported.
FGM is “likely to persist more than you think because there’s a real unwillingness on the part of American authorities, especially in a lefty place like Minnesota, to impose standards, as opposed to: ‘Wow, this is just their culture,’” explained Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian when I spoke with him. When I asked experts at the FBI, the CIS, and The Heritage Foundation about FGM’s prevalence, they all told me that it’s hard to track.
But even the data that can be found is startling. Over the last two decades, those at risk of experiencing FGM in the U.S. have dramatically increased. Nearly 600,000 girls and women on American soil have undergone or are at risk of undergoing FGM.
According to a 2023 report from the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation, roughly 68,000 women live with type three FGM in the U.S., with the largest number in Minnesota. A study by the Hennepin County Medical Center estimated that type three FGM is observed in 99 percent of Somali women in Minneapolis. Additionally, it’s reasonable to assume that taxpayer money has been used to fund illegal FGM operations at medical facilities or to treat health complications that arise from the practice.
FGM’s prevalence in Minnesota and the country at large illustrates the impossibility of total cultural assimilation. “No groups ‘assimilate,’ so to speak. No groups become clones of the natives,” said Jason Richwine, a resident scholar at CIS and former Trump appointee, told me.
Contrary to the many conservatives who optimistically (and naively) believe that immigrants will naturally assimilate over time, immigrants and their descendants invariably reproduce their culture here. For example, studies show that Swedish Americans are more civic-oriented than Irish Americans, who are more civic-minded than Italian Americans.