Trump's Travel Ban To Defend The Values Of The West

Leading liberal and left-wing Jewish groups responded like Pavlov’s proverbial dogs last week when President Donald Trump issued his latest travel ban. Without hesitation, both the larger organizations, such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, in addition to smaller, more far-left ones like T’ruah, J Street and HIAS, dug out their old press releases condemning Trump’s previous efforts to curb the entry of people from countries he deemed most likely to be a threat to Americans.

Their current arguments are largely the same as the ones they put out in 2017 during the first Trump term. They insist that liberal immigration policies are a Jewish imperative because of the community’s history. More importantly, they claim that the president’s order is rooted in xenophobia and prejudice, rather than prudence, and disconnected from any real security concern.

Immigration and antisemitism

What makes it different now is that most of them have to take another factor into account, even as they reflexively attack the administration. Whether the group pretends to represent mainstream views, like the AJC and the ADL, or is more easily categorized as primarily interested in attacks on Israel and its supporters, like T’ruah and J Street, they all had to at least acknowledge the current surge of antisemitism in the United States. It is a fact that this has culminated in a number of violent and recent murderous attacks on Jews, even if only to claim that it had nothing to do with Trump’s actions.

Yet it takes a particular sort of obtuseness not to understand that the question of who is allowed to enter or stay in America—legally or illegally—can’t be separated from the unprecedented wave of hatred directed at Jews in the last 20 months since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023.

Biased media accounts and the indoctrination of a generation of Americans in toxic leftist ideologies such as critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism, which falsely label Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors, have played a decisive role in the mainstreaming of antisemitism. But as we’ve seen in both the unrest on college campuses and in the last two violent attacks on Jewish targets—in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colo.—the role of foreign nationals in this problem can’t be denied.

But as with the discussion about antisemitism, the one that has flared anew about immigration is also about more than just the controversies of the moment.

The legitimization of Jew-hatred is largely the result of the way so-called progressives have been able to inject their toxic ideas into public discourse, thus persuading many Americans to adopt, either wittingly or unwittingly, their distorted Marxist take on Israel and Jewish identity. This is just a small part, albeit particularly conspicuous, of their general war on the canon of Western civilization and the core foundational values of the American republic. In this way, the Jews are, as they have always been, the canaries in the coal mine, whose distress is an early indicator of the threat posed to everyone else.

Importing religious prejudice

Though Jewish liberals are too stuck in the past to realize it, the same standard also applies to the question of immigration. It’s not just that many foreign nationals are behind the surge of antisemitic invective on social and other media, and the targeting of Jews on college campuses and in the streets of U.S. cities, as well as being responsible for attempts to kill them. The real problem is that the broken immigration system is leading to the importation into the United States of a large population of people more likely to be unwilling to adopt traditional American ideas of liberty. Just as important, they are bringing their contempt for those values, as well as their religious prejudices, into the country in a manner that is antithetical to the preservation of democracy.

In the past, mass immigration was a process by which immigrants from lands ruled by tyrants arrived in the United States eager to embrace the blessings of liberty. Via the process of assimilation, learning English and adopting the culture of their new land—something that was neither easy nor always appreciated by their neighbors—the overwhelming majority of these immigrants became not only passionate American patriots but also devout believers in its democratic values.

What we’re witnessing in recent years is largely different.

Influenced by the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is itself at odds with the cause of equal opportunity for all that is the heart of the American idea, the process of assimilation has, in essence, reversed itself. Now it is immigrants, including some from the countries Trump seeks to ban, who are importing the values of tyranny and religious prejudice with them.

That’s particularly true of the international student programs, largely funded by the federal government, which sought to expose foreign-born students to American concepts of liberty, freedom and democracy in the hope they would take those beliefs back to their nations of origin. As the United States and the world have seen on college campuses since Oct. 7, many of those who have benefited from America’s open-door policy to higher education seek to impose the beliefs of their home nations on Americans.

Europe’s lessons

One need only look at Europe to see what mass immigration from Muslim nations has done to nations like France, Sweden and others, where not only are Jews targeted for hatred and violence, but the national identity and culture of those places are being called into question.

Indeed, even in the United Kingdom, which was long the bulwark of democracy and freedom, deference to the prejudices of Muslim immigrants has led to the erosion and perhaps the complete erasure of such values. As recent articles in The Free Press and The Spectator noted, Britain now effectively has, for the first time in centuries, blasphemy laws that prevent citizens from criticizing Islam and Islamists for their prejudice and violence. The case cited in those pieces is just one instance in which the impact of its immigration policies has caused authorities there to turn a blind eye to violence or other illegal conduct, including attacks on and intimidation of Jews, from that population, while treating those who speak up against these outrages as criminals.

Britain was not the only nation that opened its borders to a mass immigration composed of those who not only didn’t share their values when they arrived but actively sought to change their new home into a place where Western civilizational values were replaced by those of the Middle East or Africa. And the consequences have become all too obvious for those not ideologically committed not to see it.

That doesn’t mean that Americans should adopt prejudicial views against all foreigners or Muslims, but it does obligate their government to fully vet them in a way that has not been the practice in recent years. It also ought to influence the debate about how immigration should be allowed. The absence of such a discussion can lead to a situation where the nation is presented with a fait accompli, in which the public is told that they must simply accept the consequences of such actions. The point being: If you want to avoid a repeat of what has happened in Europe, then policies like those advocated by Trump are of vital importance.

The history of immigration

Much of the debate on this issue or anything connected to immigration, including the one about the millions of illegal immigrants and bogus asylum claimants that flooded into the United States during the four years of the Biden administration, hinge on the notion that a defense of American borders or enforcement of existing laws is somehow morally wrong or mean-spirited.

In a sense, that’s understandable in a nation where a substantial majority trace their roots to the arrival of members of their family in America in the last 150 years. That’s especially true for Jews. But it is both ahistorical and absurd to compare the Jewish immigrant experience to what is happening today. That’s true with respect to the days of mass immigration from Eastern Europe from the 1880s to 1924 (when immigration laws became substantially more restrictive), or the efforts of Jews to flee certain death at the hands of the German Nazis and their collaborators in the 1930s and 40s.

Unlike in the late 19th century, when immigration was vital for a country that needed more workers for labor-intensive industries and to fill a largely vacant continent, the contemporary situation is very different. The notion that those arriving from the Middle East, Africa or Central and Southern America are all motivated by the threat of certain peril comparable to that of the Jews of the past is also false.

HIAS, a group whose name was once an acronym for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society but is now merely a brand that stands for open borders for all, has a business model now solely concerned with getting payments from the government to fund their efforts to allow non-Jewish immigrants to stay in the country. Rather than helping Jews adjust to America, HIAS is paid to help facilitate the importation of people who are more likely than not hostile to Jews and Western democracy.

In the 21st century, big business may still want to import a vast number of unskilled workers, whether they enter legally or not, to depress the wages of working-class Americans. It also raises the price of housing and burdens municipalities with the cost of caring for so many people not supporting themselves. Some on the left may also believe, probably wrongly, that in the long run, these immigrants, who largely form a class of poorly paid serfs who perform low-income jobs for the credentialed elites, will ensure their future political dominance.

Even if we ignore those reasons to adopt a less liberal immigration process, the claims that what Trump is doing is harmful to American values is simply incorrect. Until the culture tilts back toward a demand that those arriving from nations adopt Western values rather than demanding that the West adopt the destructive mores they bring from abroad, the traditional attitude that open borders are synonymous with democracy and safety for Jews in America has it backwards.

The riots in Los Angeles that broke out over the past few days in response to an effort by federal authorities to arrest those who are here illegally (many of whom already have deportation orders in place) are based on an assumption that America’s borders and laws can be erased. As such, the anti-Trump “resistance” is wrong to claim that the attempt to roll back Biden’s open borders policies is racist or authoritarian.

Of course, many immigrants contribute greatly to American life. And many of them want, like those in the past, to embrace Western values. But to concede those points doesn’t erase the threat so many others pose. In the absence of a system that doesn’t promote the adoption of genuinely liberal values or prevent the creation of enclaves where some can work to make the country less safe for Jews and the future of the West, a more restrictive approach to the issue is necessary.

A flawed plan

It’s true that Trump’s travel ban is inconsistent and crafted more in response to judicial efforts to overturn past orders than to effectively deal with the problem it attempts to address.

The list of nations from which immigration and travel are to be limited has clearly been written to avoid the appearance of focusing solely on Muslim nations. And some Muslim countries where immigration is problematic, such as Egypt (the Boulder attacker was Egyptian) or Syria, were left off to avoid offending their current rulers, which Washington either counts as an ally, as is the case with Cairo, or wishes to convert it into one, as is true of Damascus.

The same might be said of leaving China off the list. Trump likely doesn’t want to inflame already tense relations with the Communist regime in Beijing, which actively seeks to influence and control the activities of those who come here as well as to undermine American democracy.

Flawed though it is, Trump’s order is an attempt to deal with a serious problem that many political liberals avoid because they fear being called racists or xenophobes.

At a time of an epidemic of antisemitic incitement and violence, support for limiting immigration from countries where Jew-hatred is normative, if not obligatory, is just common sense. More than that, anyone who cares about the preservation of democracy should also understand that this cause is undermined by the mass importation of those who are not merely unused to it, but actually oppose it because of their ideological or religious indoctrination. Think what you like of Trump, but the time has come for Americans to recognize that their democratic culture and the values of liberty that made this country a haven for Jews are under attack by progressives and immigrants who want to destroy the West rather than join it

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate.