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 violent acts is legitimate and proper, and current federal law addresses that problem by filtering out members of authoritarian parties and terrorists, among others whose goal is to inflict harm on Americans.
But Trump’s policy goes far beyond that. It is designed in part to protect America from becoming like the places some immigrants come from — generally authoritarian, leftist regimes that exercise censorship and despise democracy. The belief is that immigrants will turn America into the places from which they escaped.
But foreign-born citizens typically come to America to enjoy its freedoms, not to recreate the regimes they fled. And people are not determined to think in one way or another based on where they come from or their race, as Trump’s recent success with Latino voters shows.
New immigrants, despite what Trump and others have claimed, do not have the power to vote, run for office or effect concrete political change unless they’re naturalized (a process that takes many years and is not mandatory). This fact makes ideological screening all the more relevant for American citizens who already can vote, be elected and implement actual changes. If the government becomes the thought police, it will eventually be interested in rooting out allegedly evil ideas from the people who can actually create change — by using tools such as censorship and control of the press.
Freedom of speech and of thought are fundamental American values, as demonstrated by their protection in the Constitution. By withholding them from immigrants, we betray our core principles. In granting the government permission to police these things for immigrants, we would surrender the universality of those rights, imperiling them for Americans as well.
Many governments have claimed authority to decide what the “right” ideas are, and to root out the “wrong” ones. A few current examples include Venezuela, Cuba and China. All of these regimes are based on thought control: they control the press and have quashed dissent; they control what people can see and share online; and they have a monopoly on education to indoctrinate students. All this is in the name of protecting the government’s chosen ideology.
It’s not a coincidence that immigrants escape those regimes to live in freedom in America. But implementing ideological control would take America much closer to the authoritarianism of those regimes.
There are people (whether foreign or native-born) who do hate America, and many actually aspire and attempt to hurt Americans, including by trying to interfere with elections or overthrow the government. Government has the obligation to protect the rights of Americans by screening for foreign agents, terrorists, spies and others actively seeking to cause harm to America and its institutions.
But seeking through action and force to violate the rights of Americans and impose an idea is different than believing and expressing that idea, no matter how morally appalling or twisted we may consider such thoughts. Government must stop people from attacking others or their property and violating their rights. That’s how to uphold and protect the freedom of individuals. That’s also part of what current law already does by rejecting those who want to harm America.
Ideas have power, and bad ideas can be dangerous. But it’s not the role of the government to root them out — it’s the role of citizens. It is the responsibility of each American to argue against ideas they consider evil and to ostracize people they deem immoral, to counteract bad ideas with better ones using the tools that a free society and the Constitution provide.
Americans should reject thought control and oppose the extreme ideological vetting of immigrants out of principle if they want to preserve core American values.
Agustina Vergara Cid is a Young Voices contributor.
