New National Security Strategy Identifies Indiscriminate Immigration as Greater Threat than China

The greatest threat to freedom, even in today’s perilous times, comes from no foreign foe.”
— Ronald Reagan, March 3, 1982

Ronald Reagan spoke those words more than four decades ago, yet they have never been more urgent. The United States already has laws on the books—laws that have never been repealed—that prohibit entry to anyone who advocates communism, socialism, or the overthrow of the government by force (8 U.S.C. § 1182 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) (title:8+section:1182 ). These statutes exist for one simple reason: certain ideologies are inimical to the American experiment. They are incompatible with individual liberty, private property, free enterprise, and constitutional governance. Congress judged, correctly, that admitting large numbers of people who reject the very foundations of our Republic is an act of national self-sabotage. In other words, if you don’t respect our way of life and are just here to take, we don’t want you in our country.

That same logic must now be extended beyond Marxism to any ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the American creed. If communism is rightly seen as a mortal threat to ordered liberty, so too is theocratic supremacism, honor-based tribalism, any worldview that treats women as property, or that regards free speech criticizing one’s beliefs as blasphemy that must be silenced by threats of violence and violence.

Sure, our own citizens are going to come up with horrible, damaging philosophies and we need to engage in the battle of ideas to combat these ideologies and show them up for what they are. But that does not mean we want to import masses of people who hold harmful ideologies who have no interest in the marketplace of idea. A country becomes what it ingests. Admitting millions who don’t believe in what made America the greatest country the world has ever seen and have no interest in adopting American values will not improve America. It is not enough for newcomers to refrain from violence themselves, even as they tacitly support those who do. They must actively reject and condemn those among them who preach it, even when the preacher claims to speak in their name. Allowing people into our country who will look the other way while people from their own community preach and commit violence is really bad for America.

American values are not merely one option among many. They are objectively superior because they have produced a country that people have risked their lives to reach by the many tens of millions. They came here because a society built on Christian moral foundations and a brilliant Constitution, representing the pinnacle of Western morality and philosophy, has produced a country offering opportunity, human flourishing, and genuine tolerance never before seen in history, and is yet to be matched. To keep America the place everyone still wants to live, we must require those who come to its shores to be open to adopting the very principles that made it worth reaching—and we already possess the legal and moral precedent to deny entry to those who embrace an ideology incompatible with our Constitution and broader American values.

Europe ran a dangerous experiment by ignoring that precedent—and the results have been devastating. For more than a decade, European elites who promoted disastrous immigration policies have sought to minimize and cover up the massive wave of violent crime and rapes perpetrated by immigrants from Islamic majority countries. Not only have these immigrants brought violence and a complete lack of respect for the countries that welcomed them in, but they have gone on to the public dole in numbers that threaten the host country’s ability to provide services to its own taxpaying citizens. From Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015–16 when roughly 2000 men thought to be Muslim attacked and sexually assaulted some 1400 women, to Rotherham’s 1,400+ groomed children sexually exploited by men from Islamic countries (the tip of iceberg), to the daily gang rapes in Sweden and the 708 rapes, robberies, etc. committed by Islamic immigrants livings in British migrant hotels in just three years, authorities have routinely withheld the nationality of perpetrators, delayed disclosure, or refused to publish immigration-status data altogether—citing fear of promoting “racism” or “Islamophobia” as a reason for concealing the crimes. This reaction by a public official is not tolerance; it is moral cowardice and a complete lack of respect for the law-abiding taxpayers whose daughters, sisters, and wives are being attacked and raped by the thousands.

While the United States is not yet seeing the level of horrific crimes that Europe is seeing, immigrant crime is on the rise and there are Islamic groups pushing for Sharia law and there are at least two dozen honor killings each year in the U.S. While the United States has not yet descended to European levels of disorder—thanks to geography and a culture at least somewhat less willing to tolerate such acts, the warning signs are unmistakable: billion-dollar fraud rings in Minnesota’s Somali community, rising gang violence linked to unvetted inflows of immigrants., and net fiscal drains from certain origin countries all demonstrate that not every group contributes positively when admitted en masse. The laws that once kept out communists must now be dusted off and applied consistently to every belief system, including the “religion of peace,” that is, by its own admission, hostile to the American way of life.

No information base exists capable of providing vetting by the individual; absent this kind of vetting, we must look at the individual’s ideology, culture, and country of origin. And if those factors indicate that people with these backgrounds are much more likely to be incompatible and even harmful to America, a responsible government cannot take a chance and allow that person entrance. Being harmful includes being a net taker vs a net contributor to American society and or being someone who hold ideologies incompatible with our Western values of freedom of speech. We don’t want or need people coming into our country who believe that violence and threatening violence against those who criticize their beliefs is morally justified. We don’t want people groups coming en masse into our country who hold a view of women’s rights that violates our Constitution. We don’t want people entering our country who bring a theistic legal system with them, which they believe should supersede our Constitution.

The Trump Administration's focus on shutting down illegal immigration and curbing harmful legal immigration is about getting our own house in order. By securing our borders, defending the superiority of Western civilization, and restoring cultural and moral cohesion, we restore what it means to be an American. We bring back genuine patriotism based not on some jingoistic view of America, but the utterly realistic view that America, with all her warts and flaws, is still the greatest country in the world. has led the world and history in establishing human rights and creating opportunities to prosper.

Controlling who comes into our country is not xenophobia; it is fidelity to the very statutes Congress has already enacted to protect our republic from bringing people into our country who hold views that are antithetical to what made it great. Welcoming those who genuinely wish to become fully American, while firmly excluding those whose ideologies are inimical to our survival, is the only way to keep America the shining city Reagan described. Because if we continue to allow those whose ideology is anti-Freedom and anti-Western civilization continue to flow into our country by the 10's or hundreds of thousands year after year with no requirement that they assimilate and adopt American values, no foreign foe will ever need fire a shot to destroy America.

Reagan was right. The biggest danger is not out there. It has always been about what is happening in the bounds of our country, and a big part of that relies on the choices we make about who we let become us. The 2025 National Security Strategy finally and rightly treats the border as the front line of ideological defense—just as U.S. law requires.

NOTE: A differently edited version of this can be found at the Epoch Times: https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/an-overdue-prioritization-immigration-control-as-americas-foremost-national-security-imperative-5962181