During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump resurfaced his idea of implementing “extreme vetting” of new immigrants. Now that he has been reelected, he may try to make his idea a reality.
The Republican Party platform states that Trump wants to “keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” While the president-elect has not yet disclosed a practical procedure for how he would accomplish this, he and his advisors would be wise to abandon the project altogether.
I oppose communists, Marxists and socialists myself, but I also know that “extreme” ideological vetting of immigrants is a fundamentally authoritarian practice, one that promotes the very ideas the policy claims to oppose. Instead of monitoring newcomers for ideas the government might not like, the new Trump administration should continue the current system’s focus on vetting for actual national security threats.
Ideological screening is not merely an immigration policy that would affect new arrivals. It’s a concession of sweeping government power that would affect American citizens as well by authorizing the government to police thought and decide which ideologies are correct, surrendering core American values.
Vetting actual criminals and terrorists who engage in........