It’s called “extreme vetting,” and no, it’s not a new event in the X Games. It is GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal for enhanced prescreening of potential immigrants to this country.
Though no one wants potential terrorists slipping into the country, extreme vetting is a nonsensical, unnecessary and completely unworkable policy.
Under Trump’s proposal, officials would interrogate and investigate applicants for immigration and asylum much more rigorously than is now the case, probing their histories and, more to the point, their belief systems, with the aim of preventing those holding anti-American, anti-Western or anti-Semitic views from entering the United States.
As our story this week reveals, key Jewish community professionals who work in the social justice sphere believe the proposed policy would not, indeed could not, accomplish its ostensible aim.
Why not? Because the parameters of personal belief are impossible to measure. Who can say what an applicant truly believes in his or her heart? And who can say whether someone is even telling the truth?
Furthermore, the United States already practices its own form of extreme vetting, with applicants enduring up to two years of screenings and interviews before they are permitted to enter the country. As the Economist put it in 2015: “If a potential terrorist is determined to enter America to do harm, there are easier and faster ways to get there than by going through the complex refugee resettlement process.”
Immigration policy deserves our serious consideration. We have seen how Europe has suffered incidents of terrorism, assault, rape and other crimes at the hands of immigrants. No one should pretend these acts did not occur, and an improved vetting process should not be discounted out of hand.
But Europe has admitted hundreds of thousands of war zone refugees over the last two years, at times in a chaotic manner. That has not been the case in the United States. Our country is on track to admit just 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of September and has struggled to meet that modest goal.
While there is no perfect system, our vetting process has proven to be orderly, strict and thorough. Turning it into an ideological test would be a disservice to desperately needy refugees and make a mockery of American values.
We stand with the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations in fighting anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly head. But building walls, blocking gates and mandating purity tests are not the way forward.