Cue up the “s***hole countries” comment in 3, 2, 1…
Yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered a travel ban on 12 countries, most of them in Africa and the Middle East. In addition, he placed travel restrictions on seven other countries. He did so in the wake of Sunday’s sickening terrorist attack in the left-wing enclave of Boulder, Colorado, in which a Jew-hating Egyptian used a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack and set afire a group of peaceful demonstrators who were there to raise awareness of the hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas. According to DHS sources, that Egyptian, 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman, entered our country on a B2 visa during the open-borders Biden years and — surprise! — overstayed his visa.
While Sunday’s anti-Semitic attack might have been the catalyzing event, it was far from the only reason for Trump’s travel ban. Indeed, Egypt didn’t even make the list. As the president put it yesterday in a Truth Social video: “In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies, and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil. We will not let what happened in Europe happen in America. That’s why on my first day back in office, I directed the secretary of state to perform a security review of high-risk regions and make recommendations for where restrictions should be imposed. Among the national security threats their analysis considered are the large-scale presence of terrorists, failure to cooperate on visa security, inability to verify travelers’ identities, inadequate recordkeeping of criminal histories, and persistently high rate of visa overstays.”
The 12 countries whose citizens are banned from traveling to the U.S. are Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Additionally, citizens of seven other countries are banned from immigrating permanently to the U.S. or applying for tourist or student visas, although they’re still eligible for the H-1B work visa.
While several of the countries have high temporary-visa overstay rates, others couldn’t be counted on to verify their people’s identity. Haiti, the Original S***hole Country, is the only nation in the Western Hemisphere to merit a complete ban, and it made the list, according to the White House, because “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the U.S. during the Biden administration.” Indeed, we haven’t forgotten Springfield, Ohio.
Taken as a whole, the lists seem pretty solid — with one exception: China. After all, this lying, thieving, pandemic-unleashing menace is our foremost geopolitical foe, and two of its dutiful commies were, on Tuesday, charged with smuggling a “dangerous biological pathogen” into the U.S., ostensibly to study it at the University of Michigan. Uh-huh. According to federal prosecutors, the fungus in question, fusarium graminearum, attacks wheat, barley, maize, and rice, “is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year,” and can be used as an agroterrorism weapon. We’re already rightly revoking their student visas, so why not tighten the screws a bit further, especially in light of this week’s deeply disturbing news?
Trump added that “new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world,” so perhaps there’s hope for China yet. As for the unrepentant globalists on the Left, their reaction was entirely predictable. “Democrats condemned the administration’s announcement and cast the ban as a betrayal of American values,” reports The Washington Post. “Sen. Edward J. Markey (Massachusetts) said the move will not make America safer, and Sen. Adam Schiff (California) said the ban will serve to further isolate the United States on the global stage. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), who is Iranian American, said the ‘xenophobic and racist ban will devastate my constituents and families like mine.’”
This caterwauling misses the point entirely. These countries, and their people, have no right to be in our country. They are privileged to be here, and that privilege can be taken away if the American president believes they’re abusing it.
The ban from Trump’s first term was immediately labeled by Democrats as “a Muslim ban,” but, again, that claim misses the point entirely. These are bans of countries that aren’t holding up their end of the immigration and visitation bargain.
Think about it: When a guest wipes his nose on the tablecloth, you don’t invite him back.
“We don’t want ‘em,” President Trump said. And he’s right.
