Legal immigrants will now be screened for anti-Americanism.

 

A woman with an US flag at a naturalization event. AP. 

Legal immigrants will now be screened for anti-Americanism. AP. US immigration officers will now be able to screen applicants for green cards and other immigration benefits for anti-American or antisemitic views. It is unclear how those terms will be defined. Officers will still ultimately have discretion in who they accept into the country. It comes after other executive orders that factor in positive attributes and social media behavior. Experts predictably disagree about the legality of the move.  

My Comment:

This is a positive development. It has never made a lick of sense to let people that hate America become American citizens or even enter the country. Vetting them for this seems like another of those things where you go "wait, we weren't doing this already?"

Letting these folks in has had predictable results. Many of the leaders of the various riots and demonstrations, especially the anti-Israel ones, are led by folks that could have been screened out before they ever came into the country. We have enough people in this country that already hate it that were born and raised here, we don't need to import any new ones. 

Of course it's very possible for folks to lie to an immigration officer. The social media check will root some of those folks out, but some of them will be smart enough to either not post on social media or wipe their accounts long before they enter the country. So this isn't a panacea. It's still a positive step, but it's not going to solve the issue. 

The big question is to what exactly anti-Americanism means? Antisemitism is pretty easy to define, though some would argue simply being anti-Israel is not proof of antisemitism. But being anti-America is harder to define. Does it mean being critical of one of the two political parties or the President? Because in that case I could be rejected for being disgusted by the Democrats and greatly disliking the presidency of Joe Biden.   

That decision will come down to the individual officer and that is where some folks could slip through the cracks either way. We might have a few good people that don't make the cut because they were falsely accused of being anti-America and a few bad ones could slip through the cracks. 

Either way, this is a better system than the previous one where we just let in everyone and anyone. There was some screening but not for this kind of activity and beliefs. If we are going to let folks come into the country at all (and not doing so is a discussion we should be having) we should absolutely make sure they aren't folks that hate us.