Just out of curiosity, how would you prevent terrorists from coming into our country?
I'd tell people to wake up.
• The overwhelming majority of terrorists in the US were born here, or at the minimum radicalized here. Tim McVeigh, the Weather Underground, right-wing militias, Omar Mateen, the Tsarnevs, Syed Farook....
The idea that you can stop terrorism by stopping Muslim immigrants -- or throw every Muslim out of the US -- is beyond absurd. It will not work. "Fortress America" is a xenophobe's pipe dream.
• Terrorism is a tactic, not a religion or ideology. You can't stop every lone wolf terrorist with suicidal tendencies and access to firearms (or a truck). Even if we lived in a locked-down police state, you can't stop every nutjob who drives around and assassinates random people whilst hidden in the trunk of his car.
• When existential threats do not actually exist, humans manufacture them anyway. The reality is that terrorism doesn't even rank as a cause of death in the US. This does not mean we should ignore terrorism -- obviously we don't want weekly repeats of 9/11 -- only that its importance, and the policy recommendations proposed, are
vastly out of proportion to the nature of the problem.
• Terrorism operates by
causing overreactions and overreach. While we do want to protect ourselves, high-profile reactions like a major Presidential candidate declaring "No more Muslims!" or suggesting that ISIS represents Islam plays right into the terrorists' goals.
• Terrorist movements almost never succeed. They tend to burn out, often losing support as they fail to achieve their goals, or take actions their own supporters do not tolerate. The very reason groups adopt terrorism is because they are locked into asymmetric warfare with a significantly more powerful opponent that they cannot beat.
This is not to say "do nothing." Rather, it's to say "keep it in perspective, don't panic, don't wound yourself more than the terrorists ever can by overreacting."
How would you stop the illegals coming in from our southern borders?
We're talking about immigrants now? Really?
OK, I'll tell you. But you really won't like it.
Hermetically sealing the border is another xenophobic pipe dream that doesn't work. The reality is that as long as the US offers a strong enough economic incentive, people will come to the US to work. We could throw billions upon billions at the southern border, and not stop unauthorized immigration.
To wit: Over the years, we have actually gotten more effective at policing the southern border, but this hasn't had the effect you might expect. In the past, unauthorized immigrants would "round-trip" -- frequently crossing the border to visit family, or to go home when agricultural labor wasn't needed. Better border patrols now means people come to the US and stay. It has also produced a thriving criminal market and interest in border crossings.
It also merely shifts who comes to the US. Most unauthorized immigrants coming into the US these days are not, in fact, Mexicans; they're
Asians. African immigration is on the rise. (
Asians Now Outpace Mexicans In Terms of Undocumented Growth - The Atlantic)
Ironically, all the screaming about immigration is happening at a time when
the unauthorized immigration population is slightly declining. This is almost certainly not because the southern border is tougher to cross, or because Arpaio thinks he's a bad-ass, or because of immigration enforcement. It's because the US economy was in a severe recession for years, and unemployment was high, which reduced the economic incentives to come to the US.
And of course, the real issue is that you're begging the question, and assuming that I support draconian immigration laws in the first place. I don't.
I do support limits, but I believe the limits at this time fail because they are arbitrary and unrealistic. Locking down each nation to a set percentage of the total, in particular, makes absolutely no sense. The limits need to be much higher, and we need to have better options for temporary worker visas. I might add that we know people will take high risks and pay lots of money to reside in the US. Why let
coyotes and cartels gain the advantage from this? Instead, we should levy residence fees, which go into general tax revenues. We can also deny them access to government services, such as AFDC or subsidized housing.
It's easy to criticize but if you have a better solution - let it be known.
lol
Sorry, that's actually not how it works.
Even if you don't accept my particular solutions, the reality is that locking down America is impossible, and the attempts will backfire in all sorts of ways. Nothing about my positive proposals mitigates the facts.
