Friday, May 3, 2024

Don’t Bring Gaza to America

National Review Online

Friday, May 03, 2024

 

What is the Biden administration thinking? Reports say that Biden administration officials are batting around plans to bring Palestinian refugees from Gaza to America under the United States Refugee Admissions Program. Such an initiative would be a security nightmare, a potential diplomatic problem, and likely to work against the political interests of the Biden administration.

 

The Biden administration’s top political problem is its negligence of immigration law, combined with its expansive abuse of asylum and refugee status, both of which caused the record flow of aliens into the country. In December of last year, 371,000 illegal aliens were encountered by border enforcement, a new monthly record. That is like encountering the city of Cleveland and a few of its suburbs.

 

The Biden administration has completely neglected even the basic screening of illegal entrants into the United States, even the type of screening liberals believe in, such as for Covid, before giving them bogus trial asylum status that will effectively allow them to stay forever. And now the Biden administration thinks it’s wise to give a special incentive for Gazans to come to the United States as refugees. This is a population in which 70 percent of those polled believe the terroristic assault against Israel on October 7 was just and good. It’s no surprise that neighboring Arab countries, led by Egypt and Jordan, have steadfastly rejected any Gazan refugees.

 

Beyond the very real security issues of bringing in a population sympathetic to Hamas, there are also diplomatic problems. Refugees would have to be certified by the United States as fleeing some form of persecution. That could mean fingering Israel or its armed forces as their persecutor, causing an immediate diplomatic scandal with Israel and lending indirect support to the most geopolitically obtuse nations of the world, such as South Africa, which launched a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ with the support of Ireland.

 

Besides provoking the ire of border hawks, a category which includes a large majority of the nation, a Gazan resettlement program will not even solve the administration’s political problems with the far Left, as it will be reinterpreted by Hamas supporters as cooperation with Israel’s determination to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinian Muslims.

 

If we are looking for signs of brain death in the Biden administration, a plan to settle Gazans as refugees in the United States is one of them.

 

The Biden administration’s utterly lawless record and ad hoc amnesties, work-permit giveaways, and special-status awards to Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans mean that appeals to the rules will not work. Congress must be proactive, affirmatively banning U.S. funds and resources from being used for these purposes. If we’ve learned anything, though, it’s that it is very hard to save Biden from himself.

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