In a column focusing largely on President Obama’s use (or misuse) of current events to pump his legislative agenda, Victor Davis Hanson asks National Review Online readers to ponder the links between another current event — the Boston Marathon bombing — and another hot political topic — U.S. immigration policy.
The checkered immigrant family of the two Boston bombers is a tragic advertisement of almost everything wrong with our current immigration policy. The idea of life-saving asylum doesn’t make any sense when supposed refugees, like both of the Tsarnaev parents, can return to live safely in Russia. The elder of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan, himself had likewise just spent six months in a supposedly deadly homeland — for what exact reasons we can only speculate. Do our immigration authorities really believe that Russia is so dangerous for Muslims that they must be allowed unquestioned admission to the United States, but not so dangerous that they cannot from time to time choose to revisit their deadly place of birth?
Can a resident alien no longer be summarily deported for breaking the laws of his host country — in the case of the skilled boxer Tamerlan, for domestic violence against his non-boxing wife, or, in the case of his mother, for shoplifting over $1,600 in merchandise?
Does being on public assistance years after arrival in this country, like the Tsarnaev family, no longer qualify a resident alien for deportation?
Does being investigated by the FBI for apparently loud and public expressions of support for anti-American radical jihadists not mean much?
In short, if a Tamerlan Tsarnaev cannot be deported, then perhaps no resident alien can be under any circumstances.
