I have been contemplating this essay for several days now. While on the surface one would think that this would be an easy essay to write, I have been thinking about the emotions floating around why people misunderstand immigration. I will try to express this in a fashion that makes sense, and doesn't sound trite.
One of the standing facets of American civilization is the idea of immigration. A nation carved from the wilds of a huge continent, it could not have been done without the hard work of those from other lands. The French sent us a statue to commemorate the ideals we and they were aspiring to. Most of us know that at her base is carved a poem instructing the world that we would take those who were despised elsewhere and they would make us great. There is no nation on earth that has not sent a son or daughter to our gleaming shores to find a better life. This concept is built into our mythology and identity as a country. Except it's really a fairy tale.
For the first 140 years we took most everyone. We would only stop those who seemed to be carrying major diseases. But we had quota's. We would only take so many Germans, so many French, so many Italians. Part of my family couldn't get into America in the 1920's because the quotas from Prussia had been filled. They went instead to Brazil and walked north to America.
With the coming of WWI we decided that America would not take Croats and Serbs, as their anarchic factions had killed Prince Ferdinand and started WWI. So because we couldn't figure out reliably who was a Anarchist and who was not, they all had to stay out. America then decided in 1926 that we had so many refugees from the Great War that we really needed to stop all immigration until they had been assimilated, and our culture was stabilized. It wasn't until 1965 that we reopened the borders to legal immigration.
In 1952 we passed a bill through Congress that allowed the President to declare any group of nation of people to be ineligible for legal entry into the United States. It passed through both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the President. This law is still on the books, still active. That makes the idea of blocking Muslims entry into our country not only sound reasoning but lawful and right under the Constitution.
In the mean time President Eisenhower spent some time worrying about those who were coming here illegally and taking American jobs. So he put out the word that if you were here illegally you had better get out. Shortly thereafter he sent out the police to round folks up and send them home. It is estimated that he sent home around 600,000 illegals, and more left because they didn't want to get deported. There was also that little blip of WWII where we said that if you were a citizen of the Axis powers you couldn't come here. If you came from those countries you were rounded up and sent to camps where you could be "protected".
Next came the whole mess around our embassy being captured in Tehran. They took a bunch of prisoners and held them for a long time (444 days, That would be more than a year and a half). In order to try to get them back, President Jimmy Carter (a Democrat) ordered the end of diplomatic relations. As part of that declaration we didn't allow any Iranians to come to America, on the principle that the Theocracy (they were ruled by the religious (Muslim) leaders) of Iran had declared war on the United States. I am not sure when that ban was lifted, or if it actually was.
Now we have an entire religion that has major movers and shakers declaring war on the United States. They are a lot like those Anarchist of the 1900's. We don't have a reliable way to sort them out. So under the law I mentioned above, banning them is legal. They declared war on us (and call often for our deaths) so we have the grounds as before with the Germans, Italians, and Japanese to ban them access,
My conclusion is that not only is Donald Trump right about what we should do, but that all the claims that he has no legal way to do it are completely false. As my friend Richard said, "Close the borders to all of them, and when we really can vet them all, then we can let them start to come in again."
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