Give Me Your Tired… Never Mind

For one-hundred forty years, the Statue of Liberty has stood as a beacon for those aspiring for a better life in America. A plaque inside the statue’s pedestal declares:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has rescinded that invitation. On December 1, she announced, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every d— country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

If Noem’s recommendation is enacted, the United States government will no longer judge a person’s character by his choices and actions, but by the nation of his birth. In principle and in practice, this is the same as judging a person’s character by the color of his skin. Judging an individual’s character based on non-volitional traits is intellectually lazy and morally repugnant.

Noem’s announcement came shortly after an Afghan immigrant was arrested for allegedly shooting two members of the National Guard. Because of the actions of one Afghan, all Afghans are to be treated as criminals. Imagine the outrage if Noem announced that, since some white men born in Ohio have engaged in criminal activities, all white male Ohioans will be treated like criminals.

After a Portuguese national was suspected of killing two at Brown University, as well as the murder of an MIT professor, Noem doubled down. Noting that the suspect was in the country on a DV1 visa, Noem announced, “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

Noem’s actions, and indeed the Trump Administration’s entire immigration policy, is founded on collectivism. Collectivists judge individuals by membership in a group, not their chosen ideas and actions. To the collectivist, individuals are merely cells in the “social organism.” To the Trump Administration, immigrants are cancer cells that will infect and kill their host. The solution, to Trump and Noem, is to eliminate the threatening cells before they can inflict damage.

That the overwhelming majority of immigrants do not commit crimes is irrelevant to the Trump Administration. To Noem and Trump, one bad immigrant spoils the whole bunch.