OPINION:
Sometimes, the third time’s the charm. At other times, it’s three strikes and you’re out. President Trump is testing those bits of ancient wisdom by implementing restrictions on travel to the United States from violence-prone nations. Though the nation has been free from recent terror attacks, for which we all give thanks, common sense dictates sober efforts to screen out evildoers before they reach these shores.
The Trump administration announced new travel regulations on Sunday, replacing the current one just as they expired. The new rules add North Korea, Venezuela and Chad to the previously restricted Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. Sudan is dropped from the list and Iraqis will be subject to extra vetting when the updated travel protocols take effect Oct. 18. “Making America Safe is my number one priority,” the president tweeted. “We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet.”
The addition of North Korea and Venezuela refutes the charge by Trump critics that he is trying to bar Muslims. So does the inconvenient fact that the original travel ban affected only 12 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, in the estimate of the Pew Research Center. Nevertheless, the open-borders lobby revved up its legal machinery once more to obstruct the president’s national security efforts. “President Trump’s original sin of targeting Muslims cannot be cured by throwing other countries onto his enemies list,” says the American Civil Liberties Union. The president did no such targeting, of course.
Donald Trump campaigned for president with harsh and deserved rhetoric blaming Muslim fanatics for the scourge of terrorism, and promised fortification of the nation’s borders to include a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” His language was without art to the point of excessive, but this was a needed refutation of Barack Obama’s invitation to waves of unfriendly immigrants of the kind plaguing Europe, and terrorist groups have openly boasted of hiding violent sleeper cells among legitimate refugees.
An aggressive post-Inauguration Day executive order barring travelers from seven countries with Muslim majorities set off protests at U.S. airports when several federal judges ruled the measure discriminatory, and struck it down. A second order in March trimmed the number of nations affected to six, but it, too, was blocked. In June the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the restrictions, temporarily, and had been slated to hear the case on Oct. 10 but dropped it from the schedule with Sunday’s expiration.
Mr. Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric blaming radical Muslims for the scourge of modern terrorism has been tempered, but unrelenting opposition from the immigration lobby and most Democrats has not been. It’s a symptom of our fractured politics that partisans on the left seem more committed to the wishes and dreams of aliens of unknown purpose than the security of Americans. It’s the voters’ anger at this betrayal that elected Donald Trump to put “America first.” A Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted in July found that 60 percent of respondents support the president’s revised travel restrictions, and 28 percent oppose them.
The president’s first responsibility is to protect Americans, and he has demonstrated that he takes his responsibility seriously. It’s a testament to his internal fortitude that despite the slings and arrows the sore losers in both major parties have fired at him that he’s not hiding in a White House linen closet. If he prevails in his determination to impose tougher vetting of prospective visitors to the United States, the nation will be a safer place for everyone, including the ACLU and his angry adversaries.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.