Would you let absolutely anyone in your house, with no conditions? Of course not. If even an invited guest got rowdy, trashed your kitchen, took over your bathroom, insulted your religion, or invited their friends to set up tents on your lawn, you’d send them packing.
By the same token, no nation should be forced to admit people who hate that country and its values. Visas are a privilege, not a right.
Furthermore, foreigners visiting, studying, or working here have fewer rights and more limited “due process” than citizens—as they should. The rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship should be held to a much higher standard, not watered down and “given” to those with lesser immigration status or skin in the game.
I was a U.S. Foreign Service officer from 1999-2022, and my first tour was to our embassy in New Delhi, India. We officers on the “visa line” did around 150 interviews a day to determine whether Indian applicants were qualified to come to the U.S. We used a two-page paper form that had little information, which we checked against a criminal and terrorist records database that was not as comprehensive as today’s. If the communications systems went down, we had to rely on CDs that were weeks old to check the names.
All the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were in the United States on nonimmigrant visas; mostly tourist/visitor visas, although there was at least one holding a student visa. The world became a lot riskier, and the U.S. needed to adapt the way we admitted foreigners.
The massive 9/11 Commission Report detailed inefficiencies and loopholes in the way U.S. intelligence and national security agencies worked with the Department of State to check the names, dates of birth, and other personal information of applicants before issuing them visas.