When was the last time you saw the House of Representatives pass a piece of legislation more significant than naming a post office with a majority of Democrats voting alongside the Republicans? How about a bill that passed by a 407 to 19 margin? Well that’s the vote tally from a proposal to cut off most waivers for visitors hoping to come to the United States without a visa. And that applies to our closest allies, too, if they have visited terror infested nations. (Politico)

An overwhelming majority of House lawmakers voted Tuesday to tighten restrictions on individuals entering the U.S without visas from ally nations — the chamber’s strongest border control move yet after Islamic terrorists killed 130 people in Paris. Passing the measure may give Republican leaders more space to maneuver on a must-pass government spending bill. Many conservatives want to add provisions to the omnibus that would bar Syrian and Iraqi refugees from entering the U.S. until tighter vetting restrictions are in place. But GOP leaders hope that Tuesday’s stand-alone visa measure will satiate the Republican appetite for action on the Syrian issue. The bill would stop individuals from traveling to the U.S. from certain countries without a visa if they’ve previously traveled to countries like Iraq or Syria that are known terrorism hotbeds.

Yesterday we had a rather lengthy and hotly contested discussion about the limits of the government’s ability to modify and twist immigration laws. (Spoiler alert: there are almost no limits.) Fine tuning like this is a no brainer and you’ll notice that nobody is screaming about it or setting their hair on fire. After all, we’re talking about ending the granting of exceptions to the rules and letting people in the door without a visa which would normally be required. But that’s still a “restriction” of sorts, right? It represents a change to the normal way we’ve been doing business for quite some time.

We’ve had more radical exceptions in the past, though. Front Page Magazine reminds us that way back in the day when I was sailing around in a Navy uniform, Jimmy Carter flatly cut off any and all immigration from Iran unless they were basically fighting against their own government.

Trump is a monster, a madman and a vile racist. He’s just like Hitler. Or Jimmy Carter. During the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter issued a number of orders to put pressure on Iran. Among these, Iranians were banned from entering the United States unless they oppose the Shiite Islamist regime or had a medical emergency. Here’s Jimmy “Hitler” Carter saying it back in 1980. Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury [State] and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly. Apparently barring people from a terrorist country is not against “our values” after all. It may even be “who we are”. Either that or Carter was a racist monster just like Trump.

There’s actually very little that the government can’t do when it comes to immigration policy. The big difference among the commentariat just seems to be a question of who’s proposing it at any given moment. For the record, here are the 19 members who voted against ending the waivers: