Times of Israel: Is Donald Trump’s proposal to keep out anti-Semites practical — or ethical?
US Jews once pushed for ideological tests to keep out Nazis and anti-Semites, but now worry such tests could be cover for discrimination
WASHINGTON (JTA) — How extreme does vetting need to be to keep anti-Semites from entering the United States, and is Donald Trump’s plan worth the effort?
The Republican nominee’s proposal to apply an ideological test to potential immigrants is based on precedent: The United States in the last century instituted a broad ban on communists and their sympathizers, and Jewish groups after World War II sought to extend similar strictures to those who sympathized with Nazis.
Nonetheless, Jewish civil rights and immigration groups today have questions about the viability of Trump’s proposal and whether it is ethical to institute an ideological litmus test on arrivals from countries with vastly different values and education systems.
Trump in his Aug. 15 speech noted the precedent.
“In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test,” he said. “The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting. I call it extreme, extreme vetting.”
Among those excluded, Trump said, would be anti-Semites.
“As we have seen in France, foreign populations have brought their anti-Semitic attitudes with them,” he said.
Trump also would extend his ban to those who are intolerant of other minorities, including the LGBTQ community, and to those who would seek to impose Islamic religious law on the United States.
The Trump campaign did not reply to a JTA request for elaboration on how Trump’s proposal would practically work.
Melanie Nezer, the vice president of policy for HIAS, the Jewish group leading advocacy for refugees, said current practice excludes immigrants who have actively participated in persecution, including having belonged to a terrorist group. Seeking to root out anti-Semitic attitudes would be harder to define, she said.
“I don’t know what you’re testing for,” Nezer said. “How do you determine if someone is anti-Semitic? What is in someone’s head? Ideas aren’t fixed.”
The proposal’s vagueness is troubling, said Marc Stern, legal counsel for the American Jewish Committee, and could indulge stereotyping if the practice was based on the assumption that natives of some countries would necessarily be bigoted.
“While we appreciate the impulse behind the suggestion that anti-Semites be barred from immigrating to the United States, we doubt it is a proposal that would have much practical effect — even if as implemented it does not succumb to dangerous stereotypes about entire groups of people being anti-Semites,” Stern said in an email.
Those asked if they are anti-Semites are likely to lie, said Shoshana Bryen, the senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
“If you say, ‘Do you hate Jews, Shia Muslims, Christians?’ they’ll say no,” she said.
Additionally, Bryen wondered how far the ban is extended.
“If you say, ‘I’m going to keep out the anti-Semites,’ do you keep out anti-Shia people or anti-Sunni people?” she asked. “You can’t go down that pike.”
It’s too much to expect immigrants to arrive with an outlook that is fully compatible with American values, said Abby Levine, the director of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, an alliance of groups with an agenda that includes immigration advocacy.
“It’s nonsensical to expect immigrants from very different cultural contexts to arrive preaching gender, racial and religious equality,” Levine said. “New residents can be shaped by their experiences living alongside people who are different from them.”
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, the director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, said the real threat of anti-Semitism “requires vigilance” but should not be used as a pretext to discriminate.
“We take issue with efforts to use anti-Semitism as cover for policy proposals that suggest religious tests for immigration, citizenship or public office, as well as those that call into question American values of religious freedom, respect and tolerance,” he said.
