OPINION:
Let’s just cut through the clutter of all the border control proposals, packages, deals and discussions that have marked U.S. politics for the past, oh, let’s say, gazillion campaign seasons, and narrow it down to one consideration and one consideration alone: What can you do for America?
That’s the question that should be first and foremost asked of anyone seeking permanent or semi-permanent entry to America’s soil.
That’s really the only question that matters.
What can you, oh mighty migrant, oh wanna-be refugee, oh hopeful immigrant — what can you bring to the table that betters America?
And if the answer is lame — if the answer is all about what America can provide, what America can offer — slam! Sorry, don’t let the door hit you.
A majority merit-based system is the way to go.
America’s immigration policy should be almost entirely about the U.S. of A., and almost not at all about the plight of the one knocking at our doors. This isn’t so much selfish as safety-conscious.
And it isn’t so much biased as it is selective.
Border policy should not and should never be more about the needs of non-citizens than about the concerns, considerations and yes, security, of our citizens.
President Donald Trump was on to something when he tweeted, post-New York City terrorist attack — radical Islamic terror attack, once again — that the “terrorist came into our country through what is called the ’Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.” And he followed that by telling America, via a press conference, he was going to request Congress put a speedy end to lottery immigration.
Trump, in his tweets and televised message, was referencing a program that came out of Congress in 1990 allowing for the awarding of a certain number of permanent resident visas each year — all as part of a larger, rather dubious goal of diversifying America’s population. The system generally targets those countries with lower immigration rates — something that Schumer proposed during the 1990 discussions of this program.
Well, note to politicians: America’s diverse enough.
It’s high time to start putting safety first when it comes to border policy.
Trump’s tweet came as it was still being determined if the suspect in this recent New York City terror strike, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, from Uzbekistan, had indeed entered the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery. And of course, the media pounced, calling him too quick to judge, too fast with the politicking. But either way, it doesn’t really matter.
The fact that he could have should be enough to send shivers.
The bigger message is that America is at war, and it’s a war of ideology as well as religion. And it’s being waged on the backs of followers of Islam. If courts want to shutter a temporary ban on migrants and refugees from terror hotspots from entering this country — based on some blind-eye theory that it’s a ban on Muslims — well then, the next best option is for America’s border system to be all about the merit.
Enough diversification.
Enough compassion — faux compassion, in many political cases — for the oppressed, that comes at the risk of our own nation’s citizens.
It’s high time those who want to come to the country be pressed to explain just what they can offer their would-be American colleagues, and how they intend on assimilating into U.S. culture — something the Founding Fathers themselves would have demanded.
Discriminatory? Racist? Well consider this then, from one of black history’s own, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said at a time of heavy immigration: “The old employments by which we have heretofore gained our livelihood are gradually, and it may be inevitably, passing into other hands. Every hour sees the black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived immigrant whose hunger and whose color are thought to give him a better title to the place.”
The spirit of that message?
Minorities are hit hardest when immigration spirals out of common sense control, too. And some minorities, the honest ones at least, don’t mind speaking the truths of rampant immigration.
But it’s not just jobs, as Douglass referred — it’s safety.
If those seeking entry to America don’t have any good reason to be here — if they don’t have a verifiable background that shows a skill set of high demand in American society — then one has to wonder: What is it you want?
Can’t answer?
Or, the answer’s all about the me, not thee? See ya.
Those are red flags of bottom feeders or terrorists — either way, of those who would seek to do America more harm than good. And on that note, we don’t need them.
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