In Defense of Trump's Delay in Refugee Admission

Stephen Kershnar

Donald Trump’s Delay in Accepting Refugees

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

February 6, 2016

            Donald Trump put a temporary three-month delay on people coming into the U.S. from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. He limited refugee admission to 50,000 a year. After he did so, all hell broke loose. Among other things, he has been harshly criticized for implementing a Muslim ban, breaking new legal ground, violating the Constitution, and failing to recognize that refugees are the children of God.  

            The criticism is unbelievably ignorant. First, because the delay is not a ban and does not apply to the five most populous Muslim nations, it is not a Muslim ban.

Second, this does not break new legal ground. President Carter delayed Iranian immigration in 1980 and President Obama delayed processing of Iraqi refugees in 2011. The ban does not violate the Constitution because people who are neither citizens nor residents and are not held by the U.S. government do not have Constitutional rights. Even if they did, they would not include a right to immigrate to the U.S. There is an issue as to whether the policy violates the 1980 Refugee Act or the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, but in any case the issue is not a Constitutional question.

The Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops charged that by implementing this policy, the country fails to respect the dignity of potential refugees. 50,000 refugees a year was, roughly, the average for the George W. Bush and Obama administrations at least through 2015 (data from the Migration Policy Institute). The country admitted fewer in 2002-2003 and 2006-2007. The Obama administration had planned on opening up the spigot (110,000 refugees in 2017), but luckily neither he nor Hillary are in a position to do so.

More generally, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in 2013 there were more than 14 million refugees. We already let in roughly a million immigrants a year. Unless we are going to admit millions more per year, there has to a limit. Trump set forth a generous limit. Saying that this fails to recognize refugees’ dignity is childish nonsense.

There is good reason to believe that Trump’s delay is tied to security. First, citing Germany’s intelligence agency, Reuters reports that ISIS is sending fighters disguised as refugees to Europe. Writing in the Washington Post, Sudarsan Raghavan reports that a 2015 poll found that one in five Syrians supports ISIS. At the very least, this tells us that we should consider whether our vetting process works.    

Second, as National Review’s David French has pointed out, given the string of horrific attacks by Muslim immigrants and their radicalized children, it is clear that our current approach and that of our European brethren is failing. Consider the string of attacks in Boston (marathon bombing), Brussels, Chattanooga, Fort Hood (American soldiers shot), Nice (truck attack), Orlando (gay nightclub slaughter), Paris (Charlie Hebdo and later concert slaughter), San Bernardino, 9-11, and on and on.  French points out that we know some Somalian immigrants and their children launched jihadist attacks in the U.S. and tried to leave the U.S. to join ISIS. Even if only a few of these attacks were done by refugees from the seven countries, the fact that the population is vulnerable to be being radicalized makes them a threat worth taking seriously.   

That the risk is not worth taking can be seen when one considers other undesirable features of some members of these groups. First, their anti-Semitism and anti-gay attitudes make them bad neighbors. Muslim anti-Semitism is causing Jews to flee France. Elsewhere gays are fleeing Muslim populations. We should be hesitant to subject American Jews and gays to such hatred. Fun fact: Herald Sun reports that six of the seven delayed nations ban Israeli Jews from visiting.  

Also, according to Rick Noak, writing in The Independent, mostly Muslim immigrants from North Africa (for example, Morocco and Algeria) sexually assaulted nearly 1,200 German women on 2015-2016 New Year’s Eve in seven German cities. Also, from 1997-2013, nearly 1,400 female children and teenagers were sexually trafficked, abused, raped, and abducted by Muslim British-Pakistanis in England. We should think long and hard before subjecting American women and girls to such misogyny.

Consider the threats or attacks made against Salman Rushdie, Pam Geller, and the Danish cartoonist who drew Mohammed (attacked with an axe) as well as the killing of moviemaker Theo van Gogh. We might consider whether this population will enhance or lessen our free speech.   

Financially, refugees are a bad deal. Writing in Breitbart, Caroline May found that in 2013, the Office of Refugee Resettlement reported that of the of Middle Eastern refugees to the U.S. accepted between 2008 and 2013,  91% percent received food stamps, 73% were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68% percent were on cash welfare. Assuming that over a lifetime, the average refugee receives $300,000 more in government benefits than she pays out in taxes (a conservative estimate based on a Heritage Foundation study of illegal aliens), the 50,000 immigrants that Trump wants to let in this year will cost U.S. taxpayers $15 billion. This is plenty generous.   

If we must continue to flood the country with immigrants, we should choose the best and brightest or, at least, people who don’t hate our way of life. By analogy, Cornell University chooses elite students. There’s no reason why the American people can’t choose their neighbors in a similar way.    

Leaving aside the refugee issue, the country has added nearly 131 million people since the 1965 immigration bill, 55% came from immigrants and their descendants (Pew Research Center). I don’t see a good argument why the country should keep on adding people at such a fast clip. By 1980, the country was plenty crowded.

Trump promised the American people that he would sharply reduce, if not stop, the torrent of immigrants (legal and illegal) flooding our country. Americans voted for him in large part because of this promise. He should live up to his word and not waste time with such a sissy half-measure.