A very not great policy
As the song “You’re a Grand Old Flag” tells it, America is a land where “there’s never a boast or brag.” OK, modesty may not be our long suit in practice, but George M. Cohan’s lyrics express an American ideal: We don’t need to talk about how great we are; we’ll let the world be the judge of that.
And for decades, the world, by and large, judged America great. America was a land of freedom, opportunity, pluralism. It greatness showed in the masses of people who yearned to come here, and still do. It showed, too, in how open America’s arms were to those in need of refuge.
Yet now, even as that need is greater than it has ever been, with an estimated 25.4 million refugees in the world, America is all but shutting its doors, using a facade of national security to barely hide the bigotry underlying this heartless shift in policy.
For the second year in a row, the world’s wealthiest nation is slashing the number of refugees it accepts, to 30,000 from 45,000. The year before, the Obama administration had set the cap at 110,000.
Exactly why such a cut is even necessary is unclear, since in reality less than half the cap — 21,000 — have been allowed in this year under President Donald Trump. So the cut, announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, was more of a “Refugees Need Not Apply” sign, or a national “Unwelcome” mat.
That’s especially so for Muslims fleeing extremist violence; Mr. Trump made it quite clear in his campaign for president that he wanted a “total shutdown” of Muslim immigration until the U.S. could “figure out what the hell is going on,” whatever that meant. And he has had his way, in large measure, through his ban on travel from Muslim countries.
And why? Mr. Trump would have us believe the threat of Islamist terrorism is so great that such drastic measures are required. Yet in all the years the U.S. went without his draconian policies, terror was a comparatively minor problem here. From 2001 to 2017, terrorist incidents in the U.S. claimed 3,276 lives, most of them during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. And many incidents logged as terrorism since were domestic — anti-government, anti-muslim, anti-semitic, white supremacist, anti-abortion, and so on.
Far more Americans — more than 500,000 — were killed by firearms in that period, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Yet the Trump administration, and Republicans who control Congress, prefer to ignore the far greater problem of gun violence while the administration goes out of its way to stoke fear of people of a darker shade of skin and a different religion than his and many of his supporters, and send the message that they aren’t welcome here.
The world is surely watching this dimming of America’s beacon, and judging. Boasts, brags and cheap red hats may have to do until America is led again by people who know that a nation’s greatness lies in great deeds, and good ones, too. Not in empty words.