Immigration policy should serve the national interest and the common good of Americans. This means that immigrants themselves should be patriotically assimilated into the American way of life and that our system of immigration should be consistent with protecting national security.
Commonsense measures to strengthen national security within immigration law have been proposed for years by congressional leaders such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and think tanks such as the Center for Immigration Studies.
What should be done? First, end the diversity visa lottery. This is a program that allows 50,000 people from countries with low immigration rates to participate in a lottery to obtain legal permanent residence, or a green card, in the United States. The program makes little sense logically and is divorced from any serious concept of national interest. Why would we choose immigrants by a lottery? For years, the major beneficiaries of the diversity visas have been immigrants from “high-risk” countries more likely to produce national security threats requiring extensive vetting: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Algeria, and Sudan.
Twenty-two years ago, the State Department inspector general testified before Congress that “the diversity visa program contains significant national security threats.” Five diversity visa recipients have been involved in terrorist attacks in the U.S. Moreover, the program has a high level of fraud and according to a State Department audit it is a “costly unfunded mandate that saps personnel resources.”
Second, pass the RAISE ACT, introduced in 2017 by Cotton and then Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). It would create a merit-based immigration system by eliminating the diversity visa lottery and ending chain migration that allows immigrants to bring in adult siblings and extended family members.
Third, the U.S. should withdraw from the United Nations Protocol of 1967 to the refugee treaty of 1951 and amend or repeal the Congressional Refugee Act of 1980. There is a distinction between refugee resettlement and the “right” of asylum. For example, under refugee resettlement during the Cold War, the U.S. government decided to admit persons from communist countries who suffered political persecution. The process was initiated through the American political system to accept refugees. Under asylum rules, migrants arrive in the U.S. illegally and initiate action by claiming the “right of asylum” based on a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
With refugee policy, decisions are made by citizens through our elected officials. Under asylum, illegal immigrants who have crossed our borders without the consent of citizens are the prime movers. They initiate a legal process by declaring a “right” of asylum. This process can then last for years until they are well entrenched in society, never to be deported.
The U.N. refugee treaty and the later protocol obliterated the crucial distinction between refugee and asylum-seeker. The U.N. treaty and protocol limit Americans’ right to determine our immigration policy. That’s why President Harry Truman refused to sign the treaty in 1951. Unfortunately, President Lyndon Johnson signed the protocol of 1967. It was incorporated into U.S. law by the Refugee Act of 1980. National security, let alone government by consent of the governed, would be best served by returning to the clear legal distinction between the refugee and asylum-seeker by altering the Refugee Act of 1980. As Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian put it, “Asylum needs to be abolished altogether.”
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Fourth, the U.S. should return to our pre-1990 policy of the ideological exclusion of immigrants. Since the 1790s, immigration law has required foreigners seeking citizenship to be of “good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution, and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.” Not surprisingly for a nation with a strong ideological core, a country formed by both a creed and a culture, throughout most of history, immigrant visas were denied to foreigners who were not “attached to the principles of Constitution” and were not “well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.”
Anarchists, communists, Nazis, fascists, advocates of terrorism and genocide, purveyors and adherents of violence, and those hostile to American ideas and culture were not welcome as possible citizens of the U.S. or even as visitors and students. Nor should Hamas supporters and other haters of America be welcome today. Certainly, the recent pro-Hamas, antisemitic, pro-genocide violent demonstrations recommend the wisdom of restoring some form of ideological exclusion for immigrant and nonimmigrant — visitor, student, business — visas. This is in the commonsense interest of national security.
John Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of Sovereignty or Submission, the 2012 winner of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute book award.