The conversation we aren’t having: Mass immigration from Muslim-majority countries remains an insane policy.
Watching the fallout of Donald Trump’s mishandling of the Khizr Khan affair over the last week, it seems that our media is fully enjoying open season for Trump hunting. It’s an all-too-familiar time of year for the GOP, whose presidential nominees, fair or fowl, continuously draw fire from the liberal media right around the time of the national conventions and continuing on through early November. To use a duck-hunting metaphor, the media and Hillary Clinton were sitting in their blinds, having set up their sleek and shiny Khizr Khan decoy within firing range, and were just waiting for an overly enthusiastic and careless Donald Trump to fly in and land nearby. And then—BANG!
The media and Democrats hope that once they bag their trophy Trump, there will be nobody to ask those pesky questions about the Obama/Clinton immigration policy of bringing in tens of thousands of impossible-to-vet Muslim migrants to the U.S. each year, and that Democrats won’t have to explain what unique skills and talents these immigrants, en masse, are bringing here that justify their being granted citizenship. Too many Republicans, understandably discomfited by Trump’s rhetoric, are too eager to comply.
Let us stipulate up front that the Khan incident showed all of the things about Trump that conservatives (and many others) loathe: the thin skin, the vulgarity, the poor judgment, and last, but certainly not least, the unwarranted and cruel criticism of a family that has indeed sacrificed something of great value for America. A better and more in-control man would have simply saluted the Khan family’s sacrifice, expressed regret at their criticism, and explained how he felt his policies would keep America safer than Hillary Clinton’s. Occasionally, Trump made gestures in that direction, but they were inevitably drowned in an ocean of needless bluster and confrontation.
All that having been said, what did the media, in its overwrought coverage of Khan’s father’s speech, the subsequent wall-to-wall interviews of Khan, and its relentless tut-tutting of Trump from various figures, hope to accomplish?
Does anyone outside of a small but loud fringe element actually believe that there are not patriotic Muslim-American citizens? Did they think we aren’t aware that there are Muslim-American soldiers? Even those of us (myself included) who believe that to have increased Muslim immigration after 9/11 was an insane policy, believe that most Muslim-Americans simply want the things that all other Americans want—peace and prosperity for their families and the opportunities that America offers. And most of them, and their children, will make fine American citizens.
But that isn’t really what’s at issue when deciding policy. If there is even a small but meaningful minority of such immigrants that are subject to radicalization, and evidence suggests there is, and a larger minority of Muslim immigrants who, while not supporters of terrorism, hold values – on gender relations, the role of religion in the state, on sharia law, on religious pluralism, or other issues, that are badly out of step with the traditional values of this country, then it is a good idea to be more cautious about granting that group the rights and privileges of American citizenship than we are about immigrants from non-Muslim countries and cultures. We need to consider what unique skills and assets each of these immigrants from these backgrounds will bring to America before we heedlessly and recklessly fling open the door to all of them. That’s just common sense: And common sense is very dangerous to the Democratic/GOP establishment and media agenda on immigration. Conveniently for them, they can focus on hunting Donald Duck, the GOP’s erratically flying waterfowl, instead.
To pretend that it is not relevant whether we welcome hundreds of thousands of immigrants from a religion in which large numbers of its adherents in survey after survey indicate hostility to the U.S. is not serious policy. To ignore the fact that, for example, 26 percent of those Americans who have attempted to join ISIS, are, in the Newspeak of our Orwellian Mandarins “Minnesota Men,” a reference to Minnesota’s large Somali Muslim immigrant community, is both intellectually incoherent and morally cowardly.
Trump asks whether it serves our interest to continue mass immigration from countries like Somalia, which has, in Minnesota, contributed a great deal to Minneapolis street gangs and ISIS recruiting, but not, by contrast a great deal to our innovation industries (as many other immigrant groups have). Hillary is desperate for us not to talk about this, thus her delight when she could set up her Khizr Khan decoy duck, knowing that, once Trump started chasing it, the media would dutifully follow her decoy wherever it went. Conservatives would spend the week discussing how awful Trump is, rather than how awful, and how dangerous, Clinton’s immigration policies are. No doubt, Clinton herself believes that even asking such questions is illegitimate and hateful — one more reason why she is dangerously unqualified to be president.
At least Trump has raised for discussion, however, inartfully and over-broadly, a core issue of American national interest, unlike Hillary Clinton, who is eager to bring in thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, from all over the world, regardless of whether their presence here benefits American citizens, provided only that they vote reliably Democrat.
Germany (and indeed most of Europe) has taken Clinton’s approach and is now paying the price in lives and treasure. One terrorist attack after another rocks the continent as European countries deal with swelling, large, and disaffected Muslim populations amidst a retreat of Europe’s historically Christian cultural identity. Pope Francis seems sadly to be a prisoner of political correctness, but the martyred 85-year-old priest, Jacques Hamel, who told his jihadi murderers “Go away, Satan!”, clearly suffered from no such illusions.
The media wants us focused on Trump’s fight with the Khans because it doesn’t want us talking about what’s happening in Germany and France – and what could happen here if we allow the Democrats’ immigration policies to continue.
Pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and even Never Trump conservatives shouldn’t be fooled. When the Democrats come out of their blinds and take off their camouflage, they are simply (if I may mix my cartoon metaphors) a party full of Elmer Fudds shooting off wildly and dangerously in all directions. Regardless of our feelings about Trump, let’s be sure we, as Americans, don’t fall victim to their recklessness.