Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he will rescind student visas of foreign nationals in the U.S. and deport them to their home countries if they expressed support for Hamas terrorists’ attack against Israel.
In unequivocal terms, the presidential hopeful made it clear that the United States had no place for terrorist-supporting foreign nationals attending U.S. colleges and universities, as many pro-Palestinian student groups at various institutions across the nation release statements and organize demonstrations endorsing Hamas’ largest attack against Israel in decades.
“You see students demonstrating in our country in favor of Hamas,” DeSantis said. “Remember, some of them are foreigners.”
DeSantis told them he will be “canceling your visa, and I’m sending you home” if he wins the presidency in 2024.
DeSantis’ statement comes against the backdrop of hundreds of pro-Hamas and Pro-Palestinian student rallies across the United States.
After the attack against Israel by Hamas on October 7, Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a statement signed by about 30 student organizations that read, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and other pro-Palestinian student groups at many other universities, including George Washington University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Berkley, also released similar statements on the weekend of Hamas’ attack.
Many other pro-Palestinian student groups at institutions across the U.S. still have their statements posted online and continue to participate in protests celebrating Hamas’ attack.
This is all reminiscent of Britain in 2019. In that year Britain stripped ISIS terrorist Jack Letts (known as Jihad Jack) of his British citizenship. Letts also possessed Canadian citizenship. Since the Islamic State fell in March of 2019, Britain faced the horrific possibility of scores of ISIS terrorists returning to the UK. Letts had travelled to Syria when ISIS declared its “caliphate” in 2014; there he admitted to fighting on the frontline with SIS and offered himself as a suicide bomber. After being wounded, he grew disillusioned with ISIS.
He had stated that he hated his family for the sake of Allah, and that he was an enemy of the West, and that he wanted to decapitate a British soldier. The British people have never forgotten the perils of returning UK citizens who are also terrorists. Salman Abebi was allowed back into the UK after living in a war zone with his family. After returning to England he detonated a suicide bomb that claimed the lives of 22 people in Manchester. The youngest victim was only 8 years old.
Earlier in the year the UK government also stripped Shamima Begum of her citizenship after she left her home in East London in 2015 at the age of 15 and married an Islamic fighter in Syria. No one forced her to marry and leave the UK.
In the case of Jihad Jack in England and the revocation of his citizenship, and of Shamima Begum, we should be impelled to think about the conditions and circumstances in the United States that legitimize DeSantis’ intentions. One ought to be grateful to the United States for the privilege of being a student here. By what infernal impertinence would one dare aspire to be in America and espouse support of her sworn enemies? Let us remember that the Charter/Covenant of Hamas not only calls for the elimination of Jewry from the region and the world, and the obliteration of Israel. It calls for the establishment of a Global Caliphate which would see—among other horrific occurrences—the destruction of Christianity and Judaism from the United States.
America will produce its own homegrown terrorists. Why would we import and support foreign nationals who come with a burning hatred of this country that runs so deep they would support terrorist groups that seek the destruction of the West – Israel and the United States in particular?
When I applied for US citizenship after years of being a legal immigrant by virtue of having a green card, I was asked a few citizenship-disqualifying questions. One was whether I had ever been a member of any communist party in the United States; the other was if I had ever advocated and practiced polygamy. These questions were important ones. Polygamy challenged the fundamental tenets of the version of Judeo-Christianity on which most American religious values were based. Communism was and remains inimical to the political and economic DNA of this country. Its political antipode—capitalism—is the bedrock on which our socio-political and economic systems are derived. To promote the antithesis of such foundational systems would be to destroy the United States as we know it and as it ought to be.
I might go further than DeSantis. I would call for the revocation of citizenship of naturalized persons who not only support Hamas, the Taliban, and communism but who, by whatever means and through whatever medium, communicate a deep hatred for the United States.
We are in the midst of a civilizational crisis. It is time to close ranks and revert to type – that is, revert to being patriotic Americans. The right to demean and belittle the United States is not the first right granted to foreign nationals when they are graciously allowed on American soil. Given the war on the West, and the attacks on American civilization on so many fronts, I would recommend that each foreign national student be thoroughly vetted for any anti-American sentiments before entrance into our universities. They must sign a loyalty oath mandating them to defend—if called upon to do so—the reputation of the United States which has granted them refuge, an education, and a chance to make something of their lives which most of them were denied in their home countries. And let us not forget one thing: immigration is not a right; it is a privilege.
If we made naturalized citizenship conditional by literally requiring aspiring citizens to sign a pledge of allegiance and something on the order of a non-disclosure clause that prohibits them from making, not legitimate and rational criticisms of the state but rather, hateful invectives against our republic, we might see a reduction in the proclivities for defamation and destruction among many naturalized immigrants from certain groups who use and abuse this country, who become Americans or permanent residents for reasons of political and economic expediency—such as the 9-11 terrorists.
The time has come for great purges because in a civilizational war when the enemies announce themselves in the open and act with impunity, we must act in the spirit of self-preservation and exercise justice. Why should Americans live in fear of foreign nationals, supercilious young people, many of whom can barely write a term paper, but who want to dictate the terms of our domestic and foreign policy? By what right?
The recommendations laid out here call for a massive re-examination of our refugee and immigration policies. We not only need skilled and growth-enhancing immigrants, we need patriots—folks who love America before they even arrive on her shores. We want immigrants who are assimilable and willing to adapt themselves to American culture and values and to grow into becoming Americans. People who, in the end, will see no distinction between their moral identities and their American identities. These are the vanguards and sentinels who will help us rebuild our crumbling civilization and defeat the nihilists and value junkies from assuming ascendancy in our country.
If such recommendations seem harsh, look around you and consider the results. If you feel fearful of posting your value-laden views on social media for fear that you could be harmed by any sinister monster lurking in the shadows, ask yourself: Why? Why should our universities be the breeding ground for hatred, for bullying, for the celebration of the murder of innocent victims? Why should the universities and their students contribute to radicalism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism at the expense of the American people? And why should the visitors to our country, or those on whom citizenship was bestowed as a gift, start dictating the terms of their visit, and be given the freedom to participate in rewriting the American narrative which then determines a redefined way of life for us? One alien to the essence of who we are.
When guests in your own country begin to make you feel as if you cannot understand the order of your home any longer, then, in the words of the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Schold—“Unfortunately, they cannot stay.”
