Trump, Refugees and the American Left

President Trump issued an executive order on January 27th suspending indefinitely admission of refugees from Syria and halting all potential refugee immigration from six other Islamic countries for a period of 90 days, after which time a significant percentage of 50,000 refugees worldwide could be admitted annually from the Middle East. During this interval, a new process will be put in place to significantly tighten vetting of all refugees from this region while giving preference to persecuted religious minorities. One need only look at the numerous terrorist attacks in Europe over the past year, due almost entirely to their open border policies regarding refugees from the Middle East, to conclude this is a common-sense order. However, it is being totally misrepresented by the media and the American Left as an anti-Muslim, racist and inhumane. The usual suspects on the Left, such as the ACLU and numerous advocacy groups are in a total meltdown. Some within this ideological assemblage are utilizing the threadbare tactic of isolating a few examples of true hardship as the image of all refugees from his region and the inevitable few that fall through the cracks, as happens when any new law or order is implemented, as confirmation of the heartlessness and illegality of Donald Trump and Republicans. Others on the Left attempt to make the case for the inhumanity of these orders by comparing this refugee flow to that of pre-and post-World War II wherein the globe was awash in displaced Jews and survivors of the most devastating five-year period in human history.

This tactic of conflating two entirely different sets of circumstances to pull on the heartstrings of the American populace as a means of advancing a political or social agenda has been a tactic of the Left for far too long. Another part of their strategy that has gone on for far too long is intimidating and thereby shutting down all who may disagree or have another viewpoint on an issue they claim as their exclusive domain -- because of their “compassion.” The most common tactic is to claim that unless people are African-American, or female, or gay, or (fill in the blank) they are disqualified from expounding on any matter involving these groups, unless, of course, one agrees with the Left’s orthodoxy on matters relating to these groups. The other is to simply scream at the top of one’s lungs that anyone who disagrees is racist, misogynistic, callous and ignorant. As many readers of these pages are aware, I am a refugee as well as a WWII survivor and displaced war orphan. I daresay very few citizens of this nation are more acutely aware of the suffering and hardships endured by children caught up in the maelstrom of war. But I am also aware that the first duty of this government is to protect the citizens of the United States. I was brought to America under the terms of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which allowed, over a four-year period, just 8,000 war orphans and 400,000 others, all of whom were displaced as of the end of the war in Europe and by December 1945 living in refugee in camps within the zones of US, France and British occupation, to immigrate to the United States. It should be noted that virtually all German, Austrian and Italian citizens were ineligible. In 1948 it was estimated there were upwards of 11 million displaced persons in camps and on the streets of innumerable devastated cities and towns in Europe. The Law required extraordinarily stringent vetting as well as enforcement in order to make certain those allowed to come ashore truly wanted to become productive and loyal American citizens. This screening took place not in the United States but in the various countries of Europe. Within the universe of non-German, Austrian and Italian refugees in postwar Europe there were no radicalized Islamic terrorists or others whose religion and upbringing promulgated conquest, intolerance, revenge and forced conversions at the point of a gun. Although displaced, those seeking asylum could be interviewed and the validity of their documentation verified. Is it not too much to ask, therefore, considering the nature and background of the societies from which today’s refugees emanate, to subject them to equally stringent vetting? The Obama policy has been the equivalent of including all Germans under the Displaced Persons Act and not vetting them for their Nazi sympathies. But the true motivation of the vast majority of those on the Left is not compassion for the Middle East refugees, rather it is to use their misery and misfortune to advance their agenda. As their political and economic tenets, have been a spectacular failure wherever tried, they can only seize the reins of government through intimidation, fear, a pliable functionally uneducated populace, and by causing chaos by flooding the nation with both legal and illegal immigrants, some of whom are willing to kill and maim Americans, and whose first loyalty is not to this country but to a religion, ideology or another nation. Thus, the American Left is beneath contempt. Yet they see themselves as morally and intellectually superior when the vast majority are no more than part of a herd of sheep incapable of generating an original thought or concept. They willy-nilly throw around the accusation of Nazism and comparisons to Hitler whenever confronted by any opposition, yet they are today’s Nazis in their determination to shut down by threats or violence free speech and assembly, severely limit religious freedom, undermine self-determination, control all economic activity, manipulate the media and transform the United States into a fascist nation. Having survived the end product of Nazism, I do not use that epithet lightly, but the actions of the Left over the past eight years plus the cynical manipulation of the Middle East refugee crisis, created in large part by the ineptitude and deliberate misfeasance of Barack Obama, compel me to do so. It is my fondest wish that we, as a nation, will take in those vetted refugees who truly desire to be Americans from the cauldron that is the Middle East, particularly Christians who have been systemically persecuted and murdered. I have experienced first-hand the compassion and charity of the American people. They are a populace that deserve far better than what the contemptable horde that is the American Left and its alter ego, the Democratic Party, are espousing and executing.