More Misinformation from the Media:
It is disheartening—if not entirely predictable—that President Trump would look up on Tuesday’s truck attack in Manhattan that killed nine and injured 11 . . . as a way to attack immigration policy. . . . The driver, identified by police as Sayfullo Saipov, came legally to the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan . . . reportedly through a diversity program. Uzbeckistan wasn’t even on Mr. Trump’s list of Muslim-majority countries from which travel should be restricted. . . . [G]etting killed by a foreign-born terrorist of any kind on U.S. soil is uncommon in the extreme. Americans are far more likely to be killed by a fellow American. . . . Even Islamic terrorism has a shaky connection to immigration policy — most people convicted of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11 have been U.S. citizens. Trump promotes a world view of the U.S. as a bunch of paranoid nationalists instead of the welcoming immigrant-built and democracy-loving country that the founders intended. – Immigration and Terror. Baltimore Sun, Editorial, 11/1/17 [Link]
Fact Check: Why shouldn’t President Trump link this crime to immigration policy? The link is obvious. There could be nothing more reasonable than tightening immigration policy to screen out potential criminals. One problem is the diversity lottery, which allowed Saipov to enter, is that many of its applicants come from countries where inadequate records prevent effective background checks.
It is true that few Americans will die from terrorist attacks. It is also true that few will die from any kind of homicide. But does that mean we should neglect the enforcement that could prevent those deaths? Furthermore, we have to put up with American terrorists and other criminals because they are here. As for foreign terrorists, we can choose to keep them away.
It interesting that the Sun tries to minimize the terrorism of foreign-born Muslims “since 9/11.” So why didn’t they include 9/11, a Muslim terrorist attack which took the lives of 3,000 Americans? With this bit of selective editing the Sun gives a false impression. Also the link between 9/11 and immigration is not so “shaky” as the Sun claims. At least three of the 9/11 conspirators were illegal aliens whose legal visas had expired. If we had had an effective Entry/Exit system to track visa-holding foreigners in the U.S.—a system promised prior to 9/11—perhaps these conspirators could have been deported.
President Trump is not a “paranoid nationalist” for wanting to protect his fellow citizens. Indeed he is acting as a responsible leader. The Sun’s suggestion that our nation’s founders would have endorsed the kind of reckless mass immigration policies we have today is fake history. A number of the founders expressed strong concern about excessive immigration.
One was Alexander Hamilton who stated, “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment. . . . The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”