In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, civil liberties hero Rand Paul asks the question — why did we allow someone from Chechnya to immigrate here in the first a place? A region which Rand Paul more than likely knew nothing about until last week.
We should not proceed until we understand the specific failures of our immigration system. Why did the current system allow two individuals to immigrate to the United States from the Chechen Republic in Russia, an area known as a hotbed of Islamic extremism, who then committed acts of terrorism? Were there any safeguards? Could this have been prevented? Does the immigration reform before us address this?
Read another way — Rand Paul believes we should discriminate against persons who wish to flee their home country for America because of the behavior of their fellow citizens. There are other implications one could draw from Paul’s hat tip to Islam specifically, but I’ll leave that to readers.
Is that not one possible motivation for immigration? To seek a better life in what is purportedly a better country?
America has the highest number of gun deaths in the western world. Should other countries discriminate against Americans because it’s a hotbed of gun fetishism and mass shootings? You never know when one of us might crack. We’re loose cannons. We have our fair share of homegrown terrorists as well.
We don’t know if the Tsarnaev brothers even identified with their native home at this point in their lives or if it had anything to do with their actions. All we know for sure is that 19 year old Dzhokhar was American citizen who at some point in the recent past became unhinged and hatched a plot to lash out along with his brother Tamerlan. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s application for citizenship was still pending at the time of the bombing.