All countries have immigration policies, and have different immigration views and goals. That's fine. Personally, I'm not a fan of high immigration, and wish immigration was a lot lower in my own country for a variety of reasons, and I don't particularly like 'multiculturalism' for a variety of reasons.
But, given a particular stance on immigration, there are sensible ways to implement it using the law, and there are dumb ways to implement it using silly laws that don't achieve the desired goals.
So it is important to identify (a) what you are trying to achieve, (b) why you are trying to achieve it, and (c) craft laws carefully so they achieve the desired goal in the desired way.
The first thing to think about is that there are 5 main types of foreigners coming to your country:
1. Tourists
2. Refugees
3. Illegal immigrants
4. Standard legal immigrants who are seeking residency and citizenship through normal channels
5. People who have been already granted residency and/or citizenship (e.g. green card holders), and temporarily left the country on a holiday or to visit their relatives in their old country.
Each of these have different types of issues related to them. For example, tourists are something that usually everyone wants to see more of because they bring in money for the tourism industry and the country generally. But the attackers in 9/11 entered the country as 'tourists', obtaining tourist visas. So that introduces contradictory desires - on the one hand the US doesn't want to "crack down on tourists" because getting rid of all tourists would deal incalculable damage to the US economy, but it makes sense to try and prevent a repeat of 9/11 by identifying particular policies that could have prevented it and implementing them. e.g. by running an extensive background check when a single male in the age range of the attackers from the countries the attackers came from and related countries tries to obtain a tourist visa. Whereas "banning all tourists" would be a silly response.
To achieve a sensible response rather than a silly response involves researching the facts to create a carefully targeted law that is neither too broad nor too narrow and achieves the carefully stated goals in a carefully thought out way. This requires consultations with experts, discussions with lawyers, consultations with allies etc.
Whereas what you don't do, is pick countries at random, make no distinction between the different types of immigrants from those countries, consult no lawyers or allies on the matter, and simply ban them all suddenly and without warning, and have no rational reason for the ban. e.g. Trump's executive order, which failed in court because the court ruled essentially "yes, as president, you have a great deal of power as to immigration policy, but you've got to be able to demonstrate that your policy is rational in some way and is aimed at achieving a particular thing".
A lot of Trump supporters cite national security as a major concern for them, and their belief in the danger of Islamic terrorism leads them to want to prevent such people from entering the country. There are a few problems with this. Firstly, they tend to have over-inflated beliefs in the levels of danger posed by Islamic terrorism, as the number of people who die in Islamic terrorist attacks is not actually very large compared to the numbers of people who die from other preventable things (e.g. toddlers with handguns) that these Trump supporters show no interest in trying to prevent.
Secondly, stopping people by religion seems dubious because do you ask them as they enter the country if they are Muslim? What is to stop them lying? Do you demand that they curse Mohammed and eat pork in front of you to "prove it"? Isn't that likely to annoy Muslim countries and cause some zealots to enter the US and fake your test and then bomb you just to demonstrate their annoyance? And isn't this in danger of running afoul of the US constitution in any case as it's religious discrimination?
One better way to go about this sort of thing (which Trump got half-correct in his executive order) is to be a bit selective about the countries you're admitting new immigrants from (although you need to do a lot better than Trump did in distinguishing between people of type 1-5 above (e.g. don't block green card holders), and a lot more sensible than Trump in your choices of countries). Historically, how most countries did this was using a policy of "culturally similar immigration": The immigration authorities were much much more likely to let you in if you were from a country that was deemed 'culturally similar' to the country you were trying to enter. However, a lot of Western countries, including the US, dropped the cultural similarity requirement at some point in the 20th century, passing a law to say that discrimination on the basis of country of origin isn't allowed. So a potentially sensible way for Trump to move forward, depending on his precise goals, is to undo that law and reinstate a policy of 'cultural similarity' of country of origin. Doing so cannot be done by executive order and would require Trump to get the Republican-controlled congress to pass a law explicitly undoing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that outlawed this policy. (Unfortunately, I don't believe Trump understands basic civics with regard to how government works and doesn't understand the idea of working through congress to pass laws and thinks he is some sort of dictator who can just sign whatever executive order he feels like.) And then the immigration department, which Trump would have control over via his cabinet appointees, would be given leeway in the law to interpret what 'culturally similar' meant precisely and could tweak what countries they were allowing immigrants from.
Another way to go about this sort of thing, which my own country is now using is put a stringent requirement on the quality of English that must spoken by the potential immigrant. Requiring that someone must be able to read and write and speak to a very high or near-native level of English (there are formal testable levels of English quality you can tie this to) is a nifty way of filtering immigrants that bypasses accusations that you are filtering by religion or country of origin (but which nonetheless very effectively filters by religion and country of origin). This sort of criteria is very rationally defensible - e.g. "if people coming to our country can't communicate with other people that's going to cause problems". Though I note that English is spoken near-natively in India and India has large Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh populations so this policy opens you up to high Indian immigration with the corresponding religions. I am uncertain of the precise state of US law concerning a requirement that immigrants meet a language criteria, so I don't know for sure whether Trump would need congress to pass a law or whether he could do this by executive order, but I suspect that he could do it very easily without even needing an executive order and that he could just pick up the phone and talk to the people in the immigration department and get them to tweak their immigration criteria so that the level of required proficiency in English was higher.
So, speaking for myself, as someone who's not a fan of Islam because it's a violent and stupid religion, and also is not a fan of people coming to my country who don't speak my language and whom I can't talk to, I can totally see why various Americans might want to block various types of immigrants. But for goodness sake do it right and do it sensibly. Don't hyperventilate about refugees, when refugees have never done any terrorist attacks in the US. Don't randomly choose 7 countries that have never done attacks in the US and randomly block people from those countries.
But, given a particular stance on immigration, there are sensible ways to implement it using the law, and there are dumb ways to implement it using silly laws that don't achieve the desired goals.
So it is important to identify (a) what you are trying to achieve, (b) why you are trying to achieve it, and (c) craft laws carefully so they achieve the desired goal in the desired way.
The first thing to think about is that there are 5 main types of foreigners coming to your country:
1. Tourists
2. Refugees
3. Illegal immigrants
4. Standard legal immigrants who are seeking residency and citizenship through normal channels
5. People who have been already granted residency and/or citizenship (e.g. green card holders), and temporarily left the country on a holiday or to visit their relatives in their old country.
Each of these have different types of issues related to them. For example, tourists are something that usually everyone wants to see more of because they bring in money for the tourism industry and the country generally. But the attackers in 9/11 entered the country as 'tourists', obtaining tourist visas. So that introduces contradictory desires - on the one hand the US doesn't want to "crack down on tourists" because getting rid of all tourists would deal incalculable damage to the US economy, but it makes sense to try and prevent a repeat of 9/11 by identifying particular policies that could have prevented it and implementing them. e.g. by running an extensive background check when a single male in the age range of the attackers from the countries the attackers came from and related countries tries to obtain a tourist visa. Whereas "banning all tourists" would be a silly response.
To achieve a sensible response rather than a silly response involves researching the facts to create a carefully targeted law that is neither too broad nor too narrow and achieves the carefully stated goals in a carefully thought out way. This requires consultations with experts, discussions with lawyers, consultations with allies etc.
Whereas what you don't do, is pick countries at random, make no distinction between the different types of immigrants from those countries, consult no lawyers or allies on the matter, and simply ban them all suddenly and without warning, and have no rational reason for the ban. e.g. Trump's executive order, which failed in court because the court ruled essentially "yes, as president, you have a great deal of power as to immigration policy, but you've got to be able to demonstrate that your policy is rational in some way and is aimed at achieving a particular thing".
A lot of Trump supporters cite national security as a major concern for them, and their belief in the danger of Islamic terrorism leads them to want to prevent such people from entering the country. There are a few problems with this. Firstly, they tend to have over-inflated beliefs in the levels of danger posed by Islamic terrorism, as the number of people who die in Islamic terrorist attacks is not actually very large compared to the numbers of people who die from other preventable things (e.g. toddlers with handguns) that these Trump supporters show no interest in trying to prevent.
Secondly, stopping people by religion seems dubious because do you ask them as they enter the country if they are Muslim? What is to stop them lying? Do you demand that they curse Mohammed and eat pork in front of you to "prove it"? Isn't that likely to annoy Muslim countries and cause some zealots to enter the US and fake your test and then bomb you just to demonstrate their annoyance? And isn't this in danger of running afoul of the US constitution in any case as it's religious discrimination?
One better way to go about this sort of thing (which Trump got half-correct in his executive order) is to be a bit selective about the countries you're admitting new immigrants from (although you need to do a lot better than Trump did in distinguishing between people of type 1-5 above (e.g. don't block green card holders), and a lot more sensible than Trump in your choices of countries). Historically, how most countries did this was using a policy of "culturally similar immigration": The immigration authorities were much much more likely to let you in if you were from a country that was deemed 'culturally similar' to the country you were trying to enter. However, a lot of Western countries, including the US, dropped the cultural similarity requirement at some point in the 20th century, passing a law to say that discrimination on the basis of country of origin isn't allowed. So a potentially sensible way for Trump to move forward, depending on his precise goals, is to undo that law and reinstate a policy of 'cultural similarity' of country of origin. Doing so cannot be done by executive order and would require Trump to get the Republican-controlled congress to pass a law explicitly undoing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that outlawed this policy. (Unfortunately, I don't believe Trump understands basic civics with regard to how government works and doesn't understand the idea of working through congress to pass laws and thinks he is some sort of dictator who can just sign whatever executive order he feels like.) And then the immigration department, which Trump would have control over via his cabinet appointees, would be given leeway in the law to interpret what 'culturally similar' meant precisely and could tweak what countries they were allowing immigrants from.
Another way to go about this sort of thing, which my own country is now using is put a stringent requirement on the quality of English that must spoken by the potential immigrant. Requiring that someone must be able to read and write and speak to a very high or near-native level of English (there are formal testable levels of English quality you can tie this to) is a nifty way of filtering immigrants that bypasses accusations that you are filtering by religion or country of origin (but which nonetheless very effectively filters by religion and country of origin). This sort of criteria is very rationally defensible - e.g. "if people coming to our country can't communicate with other people that's going to cause problems". Though I note that English is spoken near-natively in India and India has large Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh populations so this policy opens you up to high Indian immigration with the corresponding religions. I am uncertain of the precise state of US law concerning a requirement that immigrants meet a language criteria, so I don't know for sure whether Trump would need congress to pass a law or whether he could do this by executive order, but I suspect that he could do it very easily without even needing an executive order and that he could just pick up the phone and talk to the people in the immigration department and get them to tweak their immigration criteria so that the level of required proficiency in English was higher.
So, speaking for myself, as someone who's not a fan of Islam because it's a violent and stupid religion, and also is not a fan of people coming to my country who don't speak my language and whom I can't talk to, I can totally see why various Americans might want to block various types of immigrants. But for goodness sake do it right and do it sensibly. Don't hyperventilate about refugees, when refugees have never done any terrorist attacks in the US. Don't randomly choose 7 countries that have never done attacks in the US and randomly block people from those countries.
Comment