OXON HILL, Md.—Conservatives urged President Donald Trump to adopt a stricter legal immigration policy, including disqualifications for saying criticism of Islam is hate speech.
At The Heritage Foundation’s Forum on Thursday, Center for Renewing America Executive Director Wade Miller; Immigration Accountability Project President Rosemary Jenks; former Virginia State Delegate Nick Freitas; and Center for Immigration Studies President Mark Krikorian raised concerns about many legal immigrants entering the United States.
“I think Americans will open up to the fact that illegal is always bad, but that doesn’t mean legal is always good,” Freitas said of immigration. The majority of immigrants with harmful views to American culture entered the country legally, he noted.
Miller said certain views should disqualify immigrants from coming to the country.
“Do you think that criticizing Islam is hate speech? That should be disqualified from getting here because if you fundamentally believe that you’re not going to come here and vote to uphold the principles of the Constitution,” he said, “then you’re not suitable for our country.”
Even if immigration raises the gross domestic product, it’s not worth it for the affect on American culture, Miller said.
“Our neighborhoods are less safe, our communities are less safe, and we’re losing our culture,” he said. “I’m not really concerned about GDP. I’d rather struggle with how do we grow our economy, how do we convince Americans to have more babies than to bring over people who are going to you know in 30 or 40 years we’re not going to have a society that’s even more defending.”
“Do we want to have a race to the bottom in terms of per capita resources, or is the GDP the almighty god of American immigration policy?” Jenks asked. “I don’t think it is.”
Jenks said the sheer volume of legal immigration poses security concerns.
“If we’re letting in a million-plus legal immigrants every year, plus another [750,000] to a million temporary legal immigrants per year, there is no possible way that every one of those people can be thoroughly vetted,” Jenks said. “So the numbers have to come down if we are going to actually protect our country. And can we all just agree that if you hate our country you don’t get to come?”
Miller thinks Trump has a more nuanced view of immigration.
“I think he’s open to the idea that that we need to, if we’re going to have immigration, it needs to be the right people, and that means necessarily de facto that there are the wrong people that are legally coming here, and there are certain programs, visa programs that we should start curtailing now,” he said.
“Implementing that is a lot more complicated and difficult, but I certainly think that his position is much more nuanced than than that.”