On immigration, Trump can strike a blow against tyranny

By Bryan Fischer

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

Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1-3pm CT, M-F www.afr.net

President Trump issued a revised version of his targeted travel ban yesterday, narrowly tailored to satisfy the low-level, unelected, unaccountable federal judge who struck the first one down.

The directive temporarily suspends immigration from six Muslim majority nations which are riddled with major jihadi-inspired unrest. This list, including countries such as Somalia and Syria, have an indisputable record of shipping infidel-killing terrorists to the West.

The Constitution gives Congress unilateral, unquestioned, unchallengeable authority to set whatever parameters it wishes regarding immigration. There simply is no constitutional right for anyone anywhere to immigrate to the United States. Whether someone is allowed to come here or not is entirely in the hands of Congress.

Congress gets to set whatever rules it wants. Using that power, it has passed a law that specifically, for instance, forbids entrance into the United States to anyone who has a "totalitarian" ideology. Says the law (emphasis mine), "Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible."

I would submit to you that this is precisely the case with Islam. It is totalitarian in its ideology from stem to stern. In Islam, infidels such as Americans are given but three choices: convert, submit, or die. Islam requires us to renounce Christ, convert to Islam, pay a submission tax (called jizya), or prepare for war. That's it. There is no such thing as religious liberty or even peaceful coexistence under Islam.

According to the immigration law passed by Congress, the only way a member of a totalitarian party, such as the Communist Party or Islam, can legally be admitted to the United States is by renouncing his allegiance to his totalitarian faith at least two years prior to seeking admission to the United States. "The membership or affiliation (must be) terminated at least – 2 years before the date of such application." It's. The. Law.

So in my view, based on the plain reading of U.S. law, a former Muslim who has renounced his allegiance to Islam at least two years prior to his application to immigrate may be admitted to the United States. But admission can and should constitutionally be denied to any adherent of Islamic totalitarianism who has not renounced his allegiance to the worldview of the Prophet.

The Islamic vision of the world is a world ruled in every part by Sharia law, which offers absolutely no freedom of religion, punishes apostasy with death, cuts off the hands of thieves, throws homosexuals off eight-story buildings, justifies the genital mutilation of young girls, and is responsible for 95% of all the honor killings in the world. It has no regard for the rights of women. Its totalitarian vision of the world is a living nightmare. There is no grace, mercy, or compassion in the Islamic system. Dante, in fact, places Muhammad in the 8th circle of hell. Islam's view of the world must be resisted with every fiber of our being.

Let's be clear. President Trump's first travel ban was perfectly and entirely constitutional. Congress, using the authority given to it by the Constitution, enacted legislation that empowers the president, purely by proclamation, to deny entrance to any individuals or any groups of people he believes to represent a threat to our security, internal order, or cultural unity.

Here's how that section of law reads (emphasis mine):

"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

You will note that the president has unilateral, unquestioned, unchallengeable authority to deny entry to any class of aliens that in his judgment represent a danger to America. It is his call. He doesn't have to get approval from Congress to do this, and more to the point, he doesn't have to get approval from any court or judge in the land.

And he can do it by proclamation. He doesn't have to get authorization from Congress or anybody else. He has constitutional, congressional, and legal authority to enact such a ban simply by issuing a declaration.

The bottom line here is that the Constitution gives zero authority to the federal judiciary – zero as in zilch, zip, nada – to interfere with immigration policy. None. The First Amendment does not apply to would-be immigrants. There is no religious right to immigrate to the United States. Whatever the Founders meant by the "free exercise" of religion, it applies only to those who are in this country legally. Those who live someplace else in the world but would like to come here have no First Amendment claim to make.

I would further suggest that the only mistake President Trump made in issuing his first travel ban was to defend it in court in the first place. If the federal judiciary has no legal authority over immigration issues, then why confer it by showing up? Merely by appearing in court, the president was tacitly capitulating to the wholly unsupportable view that the judiciary has some right to tell him what he can and cannot do.

If an activist judge can find a way to throw the first ban in the shredder, another activist judge can be found to do the same with the second. The only mistake the president can make with this second directive is to show up in court again to defend it if it's challenged. He should simply ignore the court and go right ahead and implement this security-protecting proclamation by directing those who work for him to implement it as written. Immigration officials work for him, not federal judges. Federal judges can't fire them for not doing their jobs, but the president can.

If one lowly, unelected lawyer wearing a black robe tells the president he can't implement the ban, and the president ignores that unelected lawyer and goes right ahead and implements it, what can the unelected lawyer do? The answer, of course, is nothing.

This would not, I hasten to add, be civil disobedience in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it is the judiciary that is guilty of civil disobedience by ignoring the plain stipulations of the law and the Constitution.

No, the president's actions would be a display of constitutional obedience, the actions of a president who would be fulfilling his sacred oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. No president has ever taken an oath to uphold opinions issued by judges. The authority to which he swore allegiance is much higher than theirs.

If the president were to do this, perhaps this would be the first blow against the tyranny of the courts. Dethroning our judicial tyrants is like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. President Trump may soon have the opportunity to strike the first blow. Our country will be safer, and a glimmer of liberty may peek through the clouds.

(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