🔒Democrats don’t want any immigration enforcement

Blustering and chest thumping as always, President Trump botched the announcement and implementation of his executive order suspending immigration from seven war- and terrorist-ridden countries in the Middle East and Africa. It was as if the White House had never heard of green cards, visas, and due process of law.

This caused much unfair hardship to certain travelers. Fortunately the administration got a quick education about it from reports by the hated news media and injunctions from a few federal judges.

Critics of the executive order noted that even after the correction for green card and visa holders it was still inconsistent. For Saudi Arabia, where most of the terrorists of the 9/11 attacks came from, was left off the list, as were Afghanistan and Pakistan, where 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his accomplices hid out. But those omissions needed little explanation — Saudi Arabia being the oil-exporting colossus and Afghanistan and Pakistan still facilitating U.S. military operations — and no amount of consistency would have assuaged the president's critics. For the most part they want no restrictions on immigration whatsoever.

The president's critics call the executive order a “Muslim ban,” but it's not. Yes, most people in the countries covered by the order are Muslim but Muslim countries that are not war- and terrorist-ridden are not affected.

And the tears shed by the president's critics for refugees seemed a bit crocodilian. For the countries generating most of the refugees at the moment have been destabilized or even destroyed by U.S. military intervention in pursuit of “regime change,” intervention about which the president's critics have been largely indifferent, particularly in regard to Syria and Iraq but also Libya and Yemen. End the interventions and most of the refugee problem will end too.

Thus the protests at the airports have seemed less idealistically pro-refugee and pro-immigration than cynically anti-Trump.

Besides, even former President Obama acknowledged that Islam is engaged in a civil war between medievalism and modernity. It is a civil war that has overflowed into Europe with the massive uncontrolled immigration there, immigration that is threatening to change the continent's culture from democratic and secular to fascist and theocratic.

Religion is one thing, culture another, and fascism and theocracy can already be seen in recent immigration to the United States, which has begun experiencing mass murders, “honor killings,” and the oppression of women and homosexuals because of the importation of medieval culture from the Middle East.

No one including President Trump himself may really know what he means by “extreme vetting,” but with an estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States, this country cannot be thought to have done much “vetting” at all. The culture and politics of potential immigrants are of urgent concern, and given this country's incompetence with immigration enforcement, it is a bad idea to keep accepting immigrants from Religious Crazy Land.

Trump's incompetence and incivility probably will discredit some necessary policies, weaken the Republican Party, and strengthen the political left. In Connecticut the Republicans want to run against Governor Malloy's unhappy record, but now the governor is eager to change the subject by running against Trump, who seems determined to make himself a gift to Democrats everywhere.

The position on immigration of most Democrats, the political left, and illegal immigrants themselves seems to be that anyone who breaks into the country illegally and manages to reach a “sanctuary city” like New Haven or Hartford should be not just exempt from law enforcement but also immediately awarded every social welfare benefit. This sense of entitlement is as offensive as the president is.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.