Donald, Bar the Door?

 As expected, feared or cheered, President Trump has signed an executive order imposing a four-month moratorium on refugees coming into the United States, with Syrian refugees in particular banned indefinitely. General entry from seven Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East is banned for 90 days until an enhanced screening program is put in place. The goal is to keep radical Islamic terrorists from entering and gaining a foothold here to carry out attacks.

Let me be clear: I do not have a problem with the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” or even enhancing the vetting process where needed. For Syrians in particular, however, the process was already daunting. Sadly, those in the final stages of this process now have the door slammed in their faces. And the discriminatory nature of the President’s order is right out there, as other Muslim nations in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are conveniently not on the “banned” list. Plus, an exception is to be made for Christian refugees.

I well understand that we can’t let in just everybody. But we never have. More often than not, we have discriminated. Many Jews fleeing the Nazis were not admitted during World War II, as an example. And it works in reverse: those with special skills considered necessary to our economy have always been welcomed. Adult male Irish immigrants who came during the Civil War were paid a nice bounty to join the Union Army almost as soon as they got off the boat. Lady Liberty may welcome the tired and poor, but is that what we really do?

As I have said many times, the U.S. and the West are almost complicit in the Syrian crisis. We shook our heads and said, “Ain’t that a shame?” when the Assad regime began murdering civilians using its own military. Even after President Obama’s infamous “red line” declaration when the regime was said to be using chemical weapons, we let Russia take charge – and take advantage of the situation to expand its influence. As wistful as many of us have been over the end of the Obama administration, our non-involvement in Syria remains a policy failure of cataclysmic proportions. The very existence of ISIS is a symptom.

Many of those who stand in crowds shouting “USA” and call for the building of walls conveniently forget that their American citizenship is a total accident of nature. Most of us just happened to be born here. We didn’t have to flee anything. Our ancestors were the ones who did the hard work. Not that living here is a picnic for everyone, but if we were born here, we all got free passes that we didn’t earn, and the oceans on either side of us have provided a convenient bubble for non-involvement in the rest of the world’s troubles.

What it boils down to, though, is that we each have to decide as Americans if President Trump is speaking for us with this executive order. He isn’t for me.