Donald Trump is in the news for the sensible proposition that Muslim immigration should be halted until the problem with Muslim terrorism in the United States can be solved. Those who know Islam know that means a permanent bar to Muslim immigration until those numbers are reduced to that level common in the 1950s. All thinking people know that Islam is an inherently violent religion from its inception, with violence, terror and death following in its wake. At any numbers over 0.5% of the population, Muslims are a real threat

Some have responded, like Peter Brimelow, with a call to deal with the Fifth Column of Muslim traitors, terrorists, and sympathizers, the sea in which a guerrilla swims, by expelling Muslims. A good and necessary idea. That is clearly what must be done. However, not all that must be done, will be done. Steve Sailer suggests a half-measure, have the Federal government screen aliens better. That, of course, is possible. There is no ideological screening of aliens today. Witness the open support for terrorism that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik expressed openly to family, friends, neighbors, and to the public via the internet.

All well and good, but expensive. (Though that cost can be born by the aliens themselves through higher fees on immigrant and non-immigrant visas.) There is precedent for that, as all H-1b visas have a fraud fee attached, in the case of H-1b visas that fee is $500.00, which goes to fraud investigations by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fraud Detection and National Security for their anti-fraud programs in the H-1b area.

In the spirit of half-measures, let at least the half-measures be effective. And to be effective in countering the already radicalized Muslim, and for other frauds, infiltrators, and mala fide aliens, it must be more than interviewing family and friends, checking the nature of educational institutions attended, and reviewing social media. All of those have their own problems; friends and family will lie, the aliens themselves won't admit to attending problematic madrassas, and social media can be scrubbed or contain misleading information. Alien Muslim terrorists can easily adapt to a review of these issues.

However, there is something that can look into their souls and get at the truth. The Psychophysiological Detection of Deception (PPD) programs, popularly known as polygraph or lie detector systems, administered by the Federal government can be an invaluable tool in ferreting out deception in visa applications. At the Federal level, the Department of Defense dominates PPD training and administration at the National Center for Credibility Assessment.

PPD examinations are scientifically valid and overwhelmingly accurate. Those examinations, usually lasting 2-3 hours, not including preparation time by the examiner, nor including any subsequent interrogation when deception is found, are not cheap.

However, given that the dollar cost would be born by the alien, and that not all aliens would require such exams, e.g. profiling would reduce the exam rate to those aliens who represent a terrorist, national security, or fraud threat, the exams would be limited to such consular posts and USCIS offices that deal with high fraud threat nationals, e.g. nationals from predominately Muslim nations, all Chinese nationals, and all nationals from poor countries.

As a political compromise, and as a half measure, all Muslims should be subjected to a PPD screening as part of any application for a visa, application for participation in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) as part of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) system by which aliens using the VWP are pre-screened in intelligence and law enforcement data bases before they are allowed to enter the United States without a visa, as should be all Muslims who apply for any immigration benefit in the United States, such as extension of stay, adjustment of status, legal permanent residency, and naturalization. Other groups that should be targeted include ethnic Chinese because of the intelligence threat, and any national from source county for illegal immigration, such as Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Philippines, India, Korea, Ecuador, and Vietnam for example, but any country with high visa denial rates or high over-stay rates would be subject to this requirement.

A concomitant benefit would be that those who intend to immigrate illegally by overstaying a visa would be discouraged at no cost to the United States as they would fear being caught before even applying.

Those aliens might try illegal immigration, but a wall would help stop that. The fee necessary to administer the program would be approximately $1,000.00, a cost solely born by the alien and a deterrent in itself, as even jihadis don't want to waste their money.

Many will claim that the polygraph can be beaten. Generally, that's not so. In the community they say that the polygraph can't be beaten, only the polygrapher.

This was the case with Aldrich Ames, whose relationship with his polygrapher, not the exam, enabled him to remain at the Central Intelligence Agency for so long while spying for the Soviet Union. While someone highly trained, and with the use of certain prescription drugs may be able to beat the polygraph, few can. And jihadis just don't have the resources or the population to recruit from to find many who can beat the box.

So, as a first step, let us start using PPD to screen aliens seeking to enter the United States, starting with the greatest threats, Muslims intending or holding jihadist views and Chinese who represent an intelligence threat, and include those poor saps from the Third World intending to immigrate illegally via a visa.

It’s only a half-measure to the real solution, but an effective one.