Trump needs to stand firm on immigration, ‘religious-test’ insticts

Nothing this year provoked the ire of America’s political class as much as Donald Trump’s proposal that the U.S. should suspend the acceptance of refugees from Syria and other terrorist-supporting nations until we perfect the screening process to ensure that we are not admitting terrorists or terror sympathizers.

{mosads}On its face this proposal was not unreasonable. Most of these refugees do not have adequate documentation, intelligence agencies do not have sufficient information to determine whether or not they have terrorist connections or intend to engage in terrorism, and the heads of our security agencies have warned that active terrorists will inevitably slip through security screening cracks. 

Why have our political leaders, despite these facts, been willing to expose the nation to such potential danger? — a danger that is surely greater than we now imagine.

One only has to observe the results of the refugee crisis in Europe to see what is in store for the American homeland. Yet the Obama administration has been adamant that the number of Syrian refugees — and Muslim refugees generally — must increase substantially.

As a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton named German Chancellor Angela Merkel as her favorite world leader and frequently indicated that acceptance of refugees is an important reaffirmation of America’s commitment to diversity.

It is a reaffirmation of “who we are as Americans,” she said, as if the American character is defined by its unlimited openness to diversity. And to show the bipartisan nature of this commitment, Speaker Paul Ryan has used the same phrase to explain his approval of the refugee program.

In both cases, the clear implication is that America’s commitment to diversity outweighs considerations of national security — and indeed, that any opposition to the program is racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic. 

Consider what this means.

Germans have been warned that it is their duty to accommodate themselves to newly arrived refugees and not to place politically incorrect demands upon them — that is, not to demand that the refugees adapt to German ways.

Some have advised German women in particular that if they don’t wish to be harassed by male refugees, they should cover up and travel in groups.

Washington Post – Leaked document says 2,000 men allegedly assaulted 1,200 German women on New Year’s Eve https://t.co/QAhkrRF7dj

— Silber World News (@SilberWorldNews) July 10, 2016

Merkel, like Obama, has based her immigration policy on a globalist view of the world. Secretary of State John Kerry propounded this view in a speech last spring, warning that Americans must prepare themselves for a “borderless world.” But a world without borders is a world without citizens, and a world without citizens is a world without the rights and privileges that attach exclusively to citizenship.

Rights and liberties are the exclusive preserve of the nation-state. Constitutional government only succeeds in the nation-state, where the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. By contrast, to see the globalist principle in practice, look at the European Union.

The EU is not a constitutional government; it is an administrative state ruled by unelected bureaucrats. It attempts to do away with both borders and citizens, and it replaces rights and liberty with welfare and regulation as the objects of its administrative rule.

Remarkably, many politicians and pundits have argued — contra Trump’s proposal — that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion prohibits Congress and the president from banning the emigration of people to the U.S. based on religion.

But we must surely wonder how those who are not American citizens or legal resident aliens — indeed, even those who have never been present in the country — can assert rights under the Constitution.

By the terms of the Constitution, free exercise of religion is one of the privileges and immunities attached to citizenship; it can hardly be said to be possessed by all those who seek refuge in, or wish to emigrate to, the United States.

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As a sovereign nation, it is beyond dispute that the U.S. has plenary power to determine the conditions for immigration.

One condition for claiming refugee status in the Refugee Act of 1980 is religious persecution. This necessarily means that any applicant for religious asylum would have to submit to questioning about his religious beliefs and (presumably) the sincerity of those beliefs.

Also, it is not beyond reason that a sovereign nation would be allowed to inquire whether the religious beliefs of an asylum seeker are compatible with the American constitutional order.

Should asylum be extended to the adherents of religions that do not recognize the free exercise rights of other religions? Should those religions whose adherents refuse to pledge or give evidence that they would support free exercise be ineligible for asylum?

Religion — and inquiry into religious belief — has always been part of the asylum law, and there is nothing in the Constitution that bars such inquiry on national security grounds.

Indeed, Article I of the Constitution clearly states that Congress has plenary power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.” This has always been understood — by a necessary rule of inference — to mean that Congress also has plenary power to regulate immigration.

Congress has wide latitude to choose the “necessary and proper” means to accomplish this end as long as it doesn’t violate some specific prohibition of the Constitution.

To sum up, only in the perfervid imaginations of the politically correct — those who reject the idea of borders — could the Syrian refugee controversy be confused with a constitutional controversy.

Donald Trump, more than the establishment members of either party, has demonstrated a grasp of what American citizenship means and what constitutionalism requires in terms of immigration policy. Let us hope he carries through with his plans despite the bi-partisan establishment opposition he is sure to meet. 

Edward J. Erler is a visiting distinguished professor of politics at Hillsdale College, professor emeritus of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and co-author of The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration.