ABC-7 in New York reports that Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, the truck driving, ISIS supporting terrorist who killed at least eight people in New York City today, came to the U.S. seven years ago from Uzbekistan under what is called the Diversity Visa Program. The program offers a lottery for people from countries with few immigrants in America.

The idea behind this program, which I became aware of only when Tom Cotton proposed to abolish it, is badly misguided. The U.S. isn’t Noah’s Ark. We don’t need immigrants from every country, and certainly not extra immigrants from Uzbekistan whose population is 80 percent Muslim, and thus is more likely than most countries to produce terrorists and future terrorists in the current environment.

According to Newsweek, an Uzbek citizen was arrested in Sweden in April when he ran a truck into a crowd in Stockholm and killed four people. He had expressed sympathy for the ISIS. Two Uzbeks and a Kazakh were arrested in Brooklyn in 2015 and charged with conspiring to support ISIS.

Following today’s attack, Newsweek ran an article called “Why young men from [Uzbekistan] keep threatening the U.S. and Europe.” An expert on Central Asia addressed the question — one that doesn’t seem terribly mysterious.

Frankly, I don’t care why. We should not have a program that brings extra Uzbeks to the U.S. in the name of “diversity” or for any other purpose.

Daniel Horowitz reports that 1.83 million green cards were issued to nationals of predominantly Muslim countries from 2001-2015, including almost 60,000 to Uzbeks. The dates are significant because they reflect post-9/11 immigration policy. After 9/11, we should have known better.

In addition to the 1.83 million green card holders, we let in roughly 155,000 foreign students every year from predominantly Muslim countries, according to Horowitz. In effect, we are asking for more domestic terrorism.

Meanwhile, as Horowitz observes, when the president proposes a modest moratorium on just a few of the countries – not even the primary drivers of our immigration from the Middle East – a single leftist district judge blocks the moratorium. The “resistors in robes” on the Ninth Circuit will surely back that judge, as they have in the past on this issue, and we will have to wait for the Supreme Court to uphold common sense and a decent regard for the power of the president with regard to who can enter the U.S.

Even thereafter, we can count on more obstruction from lower courts whenever the administration continues its efforts to protect America from an influx of terrorists and future terrorists.

Horowitz concludes:

Congress must clamp down on immigration, weaken the jurisdiction of lower courts to get involved in immigration cases, and further bolster Homeland Security efforts to identify the thousands of threats we already have in our country as a result of masochistic immigration policies.

If, as seems certain, congressional Democrats resist, they need to be called out. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the Diversity Visa Program, through which the terrorist who slayed New Yorkers today came to America, was formulated by New York’s own Chuck Schumer when he was in the House.

By contrast, President Trump and, as noted above, Sen. Tom Cotton have called for an end to the program.