Two of the biggest stories in the past couple of months have been about travel and immigration. First, with the fall of Afghanistan, we have opened our borders to refugees escaping the tyranny of the Taliban. And then just last week, President Biden has placed travel restrictions on eight African nations. What is interesting is that both occurrences, an opening and a closing, have drawn the most criticism from the right while the praise came from the left. As most readers of this column know, immigration and travel restrictions are not in any way new and, historically speaking, we have been having similar debates for more than a hundred years.We do not have to go back very far to find travel restrictions. In Trump’s last year of office, he placed similar restrictions on African nations because of COVID. The only difference then was the right praised his actions while leaders on the left condemned them as racists. Nancy Pelosi released a statement that said, “The Trump administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our value, and the rule of law. The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy.”While this type of hypocrisy is expected today, barring travel or even those escaping persecution go back much further, and with some of our most respected presidents. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter put a ban on all travel and immigration from Iran. The previous year the Islamic Revolution took over the country and held American embassy workers hostage for what turned out to be 444 days. Even though many Iranians worked with the U.S. and feared the revolution, they were cut off from seeking refuge in the U.S.Even more tragic were the events in Europe leading up to WWII. You have probably heard the Holocaust referred to as the “final solution.” The meaning behind this term is that the eradication of the Jews in death camps was not the Nazis’ first attempt to solve the “Jewish problem.” Earlier plans included shipping Jews off to somewhere like Madagascar or, better yet, push for Jews to immigrate out of Europe on their own. As the Nazis began to make life difficult for the Jews by clamping down on their rights, many Jews did try to immigrate to neighboring nations, but soon those nations came under ...
