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Interesting. It turns out that the culprit of the firebombing of the London tube was a refugee…who had been placed in the British foster care system. So grateful was he for being taken in by the British government, that he demonstrated his gratitude be trying to kill as many Brits as he could on public transportation.
While President Trump has been mediocre up to this point in my mind, I think one of the best things he has done is pursue a travel ban from 6 countries which are cesspools of religious extremism and terrorism. This does constitute discrimination…there is no question about that. In fact, every one of the world’s 195 sovereign nations practices some form of discrimination when it comes to travel and migration. There is a reason, for example, that visa and passport and immigration requirements for citizens of Sweden and Switzerland are very different than those of Somalis and Sudanese.
- Read More: Viewing Trump’s Travel Ban Through the Prism of Pragmatism
- Read More: Rule of Law, the Elephant in the Room in Trump’s Travel Ban Debate
No nation on earth has seriously considered a totally “open borders” policy…the results of implementing such a policy would surely be disastrous. Thus, there are very valid economic, social, and political reasons that every nation on earth practices some form of what we must concede is “discrimination.”
If you are a liberal free-thinker who believes in democracy and capitalism and Western values…it’s understandable enough why you’d want to move to the UK or the US.
That desire, unfortunately, does nothing to address or remedy the serious problems at home, or help their fellow Syrians, Libyans, Somalis, Yemenis…et cetera. Until these societies take drastic measures to eliminate the cancer of jihadism and Wahhabism from their societies, there will be no peace in this world. That is their responsibility, not the West’s.
Assigning blame to a certain group of people for the actions of a few is a very difficult political issue. I am rather uncomfortable with this idea in general. For example, the vast majority of civil libertarians would concede that Japanese internment camps during World War 2 were a travesty. However, there have to be exceptions for extenuating circumstances.
While the social justice crowds howls and hollers about Trump’s travel ban, they seem unaware, for example, that Obama essentially instituted a temporary travel ban on Iraqis in the wake of the discovery that several al-Qaeda linked Iraqis had been given green cards and were found living in Kentucky. Their fingerprints were found on a roadside IED in Iraq.
If there was a way to determine who was emigrating to the United States to work hard, play by the rules, and believed in the Western values we generally cherish (tolerance, diversity, rule of law, freedom of speech, religious and ethnic pluralism, etc), then I would have no problems with people from any of these 6 “travel ban” countries entering the US. It’s difficult to screen and vet people when we have bad relationships with their governments, or these countries are dealing with civil wars and/or largescale presence of radical jihadi groups.
When I see all of these left-leaning young people with their “Refugees and Immigrants Welcome” signs I figure they at least have good intentions.
However, they don’t have answers to some important questions. For example: what about moral hazard theory? If refugees from these countries know that they will be allowed to go to the West, it provides incentives for them to hire human trafficking networks to smuggle them across borders and seas. It then essentially rewards both the refugees and the human trafficking outfits who see a boom in business. That is distasteful to me, and to many people.
During the unaccompanied minors crisis over the last few years of the Obama administration, the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala suggested that moral hazard theory was to blame for the surge of youngsters arriving alone on American soil, courtesy of human traffickers. They had an extremely good point: if the word gets out in Central America that border security is not being enforced, then why would anyone not have an incentive to pay coyotes $6,000 or $7,000 to smuggle themselves or their children to the United States?
If we’re going to talk about taking in refugees we need to come up with a number and a budget. And refugee status should be conferred on people under extraordinary circumstances. Many of the current refugees are actually economic migrants posing as refugees. I’ve talked about this problem with many people here in Europe. It’s a serious problem. The EU is actually rewarding people for throwing away their passports and then lying about their identity.
In general, I’m all in favor of immigration for the right reasons: to work and study when certain requirements are met and background checks have been done. But for lefties who think that the real solution is for the West to take in millions of refugees from Syria and Iraq misses the mark. It is not a permanent solution. The only real and permanent solution is for the people of Iraq and Syria to rise up and demand an end to dictatorships and religious extremism. Then they can get back to the business of running their economies, which are in shambles.
It’s easy to picture a bunch of idealistic college students conceiving a world where anyone can go anywhere at anytime for any reason as John Lennon’s “Imagine” plays in the background. Unfortunately, this sentiment is almost ludicrously incongruous with reality. Regardless of political ideology, diplomatic alignments, race, class, religion, economic strategy, and history, no nation on earth has a “discrimination free” immigration policy.
