Franklin Graham is right: time to reconsider Muslim immigration

By Bryan Fischer

Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"

Host of "Focal Point" on AFR Talk, 1-3pm CT, M-F www.afr.net

Rev. Franklin Graham, in an April 20 post on his Facebook page, said the following (emphasis mine):

"We should make sure our government and the current administration recognizes Islam for the danger it is, and that they are doing all they can to work against it. Our government needs to..[i]mmediately look at immigration reform to halt all immigration of Muslims from countries that have active terrorist cells – the threat this poses to our nation is huge and could end up costing thousands of lives in the future if we don't act now."

Now every Muslim nation in the world, to my knowledge, has active terrorist cells. If there are any who do not, we all need to see the list of completely jihadi-free Muslim nations and be told exactly what evidence there is that there are no existing terror cells anywhere within their borders.

We rightly restrict immigration access to anyone who has been exposed to the Ebola virus, in order to protect the health of the American people. We must do the same with those who have been imprinted with the toxic ideology of Islam, in order to protect the security of the American people.

Now if we are correct in believing that every Muslim nation in the world has at least one active terrorist cell, Rev. Graham would in effect be calling for a virtually complete suspension of Islamic immigration.

In my personal opinion, he would be right to do so.

The reality is that we will eventually suspend Islamic immigration out of necessity if we do not do it out of wisdom. This change in our immigration policy must be made before it's too late rather than after it's too late.

Pew some time ago released the findings of its worldwide survey of Muslims, and revealed that two-thirds of Middle Eastern Muslims believe in the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to Christianity, and one-third believe in suicide bombings. This is not a religion of peace or liberty. Every tenet of Islam is fundamentally, irreversibly, subversively and implacably hostile to every value we cherish in America.

Every Muslim immigrant believes in a "holy book" which calls for the followers of Allah to "slay the idolaters wherever you find them" (Sura 9:5). The more devout a Muslim becomes, the more likely he is to obey such a command, as Dzokhar Tsarnaev illustrates, and the more of a threat he becomes to the security of the United States and the safety of the American people.

Rev. Graham is not alone. Andy McCarthy has called for the suspension of immigration from Muslim majority nations, and Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has called for precluding "shariah-adherent Muslims" from our shores, in a fashion similar to our post WWII ban on immigrants who adhered to communist ideology.

Since the Boston Marathon Massacre, Laura Ingraham has called for a ban on Muslim immigration, and more significantly, even John McCain has suggested restrictions on immigration from countries with a "significant influence of radical Islamic extremism."

Suspending Muslim immigration to the United States may be an idea whose time has come.

Of course, the majority of Muslim immigrants do not want to kill us, but they are not the Muslims we have to worry about. The problem is we have no way of distinguishing the Muslims we do have to worry about from the ones we don't. And we can't watch them all.

While this may seem unfair to Muslims who have no hostile intentions toward us, that's not our fault. The blame for such a blanket policy lies with the Muslims who have been responsible for more than five dozen terrorist attempts on our soil since 9/11. If friendly Muslims are looking for someone to blame for being unable to enter the U.S., that's where their finger should point.

Is banning Muslim immigration constitutional? Of course it is. No one has a right, constitutional or otherwise, to immigrate to the United States. In our system of government, immigration rules are the exclusive province of Congress. One of its express powers of action, as set forth in Article I, Section 8, is "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization."

In Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), (Mandel was a Marxist ideologue) the Supreme Court affirmed that "the power to exclude aliens is 'inherent in sovereignty, necessary for maintaining normal international relations and defending the country against foreign encroachments and dangers – a power to be exercised exclusively by the political branches of government' . . . .The Court without exception has sustained Congress' 'plenary power to make rules for the admission of aliens and to exclude those who possess those characteristics which Congress has forbidden'...[O]ver no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over the admission of aliens'...The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by our previous adjudications." (Emphasis mine.)

Bottom line: Congress can ban Muslim immigration from countries with active terrorist cells if it wants to. And it should.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

© Bryan Fischer