As diplomatically as you framed that, Hutch, stating religion should be a credulity test to enter the United States of America is appalling.
Well I don't think I exactly stated that Julian.
First of all, this is a discussion..there is nothing wrong with having it.
It doesn't have to be religion.. it can simply be most people from certain places who will of course happen to be of a certain religion...
This type of thing goes on all the time...
I don't think saying "we will not allow muslims in the US as immigrants or tourists" is possible or productive...but cutting down substantially over a few year span on the amount of foreign people from countries where large majorities of the people seem to despise us is doable...Government doesn't have to announce its discrimination policies.. it discriminates all the time on how it awards visas, permits etc.... in fact, arguably, that is one of its major roles...
I mean take Saudi Arabia.. do you know what kind of country you are talking about? We are supposed to go out of our way to take in Saudis when they won't let Israeli and arguably Jews into their country? When American women who go to Saudi Arabia with Saudi husband can only leave the country without their children?? Do you think the Saudi government does anything to help these American women?
Its very simple... every year for the next 10 years you lower the amount of people being let in from these places by say 10% per year (both as immigrants and tourists)... at the end you should maintain some token -very seriously checked out- cases admitted so that people can't say we don't allow muslims or people from these countries...
Now of course if Saudi Arabia, Turkey and many other of our friends in the region want to crack down on ISIS and somehow in the Middle East all of a sudden these "few radical extremists" disappear then we can reconsider our immigration/tourist levels... Doesn't seem like such a strange measure to me .. Plenty of people from Latin America more than happy to come in to the US legally.. never heard of international terrorists from these countries..that should count for something in their favor vis a vis their Middle Eastern brethren I should say unless we don't consider terrorism a threat.