The Immigration Ban Is Horrifying, But Not For The Reasons You Might Think

Let’s be clear up front. Yes, I believe the current Executive Order regarding the ban on immigration from seven predominantly muslim countries is not just bad, immature policy but is also unconstitutional and violates our international agreements.

I also believe, because Rudy Giuliani said explicitly, that this is a “Muslim Ban” couched in language to try and make it legal. I believe it’s a ridiculous notion that these seven countries are our primary threat given that not a single U.S. citizen has been killed on U.S. soil by anyone from these countries according to records kept from the CATO Institute from 1975–2015. Not one. While the fear word “9/11” is being used by the administration in every interview, the countries of the perpetrators of 9/11 are nowhere to be found on the list. Odd no?

But my fear and concern are not rooted in what’s making the news, the airport protests, and so on. It’s the fact that our president, intentionally or not, just undermined the very purpose of the CIA and in turn has made us incredibly less safe by a very large order of magnitude. The opposite of what the Executive Order states as its aim. For what? To show authoritarian power to ‘make good’ on campaign rhetoric?

Let me explain. There are two separate, but connected, issues that will drive an explosion in radicalism and hatred of the west.

First: Refugee camps that are intended to assist perhaps 70,000 people are trying to deal with double those numbers in the camps. The humanitarian groups, while doing their very best, cannot cope. These camps look like concentration camps. Children are quite literally dying of starvation and disease every single day in these camps. Camps where the majority of people are from Syria. I truly cannot explain the horror of them in words.

Now, that was with our existing immigration policies. Imagine what will happen when their conditions worsen now (if that’s even possible), their children and loved ones are dying before their eyes, and now they have someone to direct all that heartbreak and rage towards. When we become ‘The Great Satan’ to an entirely new group of people. When we provide the fodder for radicalism to grow within these camps, groups will form and embed themselves in the flow of refugees. They don’t have to come here to do damage, we can set up all the policies we like but when they have sympathizers within the U.S. we have effectively created, radicalized, and activated persons already within our borders.

How does this relate to the CIA you might ask? Because the CIA regularly infiltrates refugee camps that are susceptible and try to identify what groups are forming, who the heads of those groups are, and determine the threat level to the U.S., if any. Why won’t they be able to do that effectively any more? Because they rely on intel from individuals that they’ve co-opted or induced to provide them information from the inside. And that information will stop flowing. To understand why, read the next point.

Second: Case Officers in the field need to identify, cultivate, and ultimately recruit individuals (spies) to acquire the critical HUMINT that protects this country. However, when those recruited individuals or prospective recruits can no longer be confident of a potential future life in the United States (a common motivator for recruitment) and their anger grows at our policies targeting their country and religion, that pipeline of information dries up. In turn, our ability to protect ourselves from extremists goes up.

This is what happens when you don’t involve the proper people in your policy decisions. It’s what happens when you think you’ve got it all figured out and can make unilateral decisions and simply fire anyone who disagrees with you afterwards. The worst possible thing you can have at the heads of all of these political appointee posts are ‘Yes Men’ (or women). You need people who challenge your thinking so as to add to your perspective, to broaden your viewpoint when it becomes too narrow, to advise on the repercussions that might not immediately be obvious. Yet when the ego is large enough, when the narcissism is allowed to lead without checks and balances and be guided by those around you who know how to play to that weakness, the exact opposite happens. You put in place only those who will blindly execute your orders in disregard of their oaths:

“I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

I am for secure borders. I am for vetting of refugees and immigrants. I am for meaningful policy and regulatory agility. I am an Independent. I believe that America is already great, and that it should remain a shining beacon of opportunity and an example of humanity at its best. That we learn from our mistakes of the past and continue to evolve.

I also believe that in a single week we have shown the world that we wish to put a wall around that beacon so that it can no longer be seen, that it is for ‘us’ alone and ‘us’ refers to only a subset of our own people. I believe this is devolution, a desire to bring back a fictitious time in which rose colored glasses look back on history and perceive it to have been better.

Going backwards is never better. Dismantling trust in our sources of information is never better. Gutting critical arms of the government to make it respond to your whims is never better. Belittling the educated with anti-intellectual rhetoric and aligning them with the hated ‘elite’ is never better.

Freedom is not static, it is not something bestowed upon us, it is something that must be nurtured, protected, and fought for. All sides would seemingly agree on that point albeit with slightly different versions of what freedom means, yet partisanship and cowardice to keep ones ‘job’ as a civil servant stands idly by while we replace freedoms with authoritarianism. We jeer at protesters exercising their freedoms. We jeer at gun owners exercising their freedoms. But while the magician directs your attention to one hand, the other is slowly eroding those freedoms, eroding our safety, and eroding our republic.

Always look at the other hand.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!