Congress needs to clamp down hard on immigration fraud or see support for legal migrants plummet
The news keeps offering stark reminders that America’s legal immigration system needs reform to align it with what Americans actually want. Late last month, a California federal court handed abusers of our immigration system a big win, ruling that the laws under which terrorist-loving Jew-hater Mahmoud Khalil was targeted for visa revocation and deportation are unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds — meaning, Uncle Sam can’t deport you because the government dislikes your speech. This hardly makes Khalil safe, since the essence of the case against him is that he plainly obtained his residency status under false pretenses, i.e.
by lying about having worked for Hamas-aligned UNRWA. But the decision is a stark reminder that, even as Team Trump battles illegal immigration, the rules for legal immigration stand in desperate need of reform. Consider rapist Gurmeet Singh, in the news again last week as the Trump administration revoked his US citizenship.Singh came to this country on a six-month visa in 1992; he overstayed that half-year by almost a decade, yet managed to get legal permanent residency status in 2000 and naturalized status in October 2011.Except that, weeks before he filed his naturalization petition, Singh committed a heinous crime: While driving a cab, he sexually assaulted a passenger at knifepoint and threatened to kill her. He wasn’t ID’d and arrested until three years later; tried and convicted, he’s been in prison ever since — but only now did his citizenship get revoked. Let’s be clear: If legal immigration functioned in a rational way, people like Singh who violate the law and overstay their visas by close to a decade would be permanently barred from ever getting permanent residency status, let alone seeking naturalization.Khalil, too, would have lost all residency rights as soon as his lies became known. And none of this empowering-the-worst-people approach is what most voters want.Morning Report delivers the ...