UN Secretary General Guterres Misspeaks on President Trump’s Entry Suspensions

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters Wednesday that President Trump’s measures to restrict the entry of visitors to the United States from seven listed Muslim majority countries “should be removed sooner rather than later.” He added that those measures “violate our basic principles.”

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The UN’s "principles" do not trump (pardon the pun) the United States’ own right and duty to protect its own residents from harm. The Secretary General has unfortunately fallen prey to the hysteria surrounding the executive order that President Trump signed last weekend relating to refugees and visitors to the United States. First of all, the restrictions have specific time limits, except for the entry of Syrian refugees which is suspended indefinitely pending the institution of more effective vetting procedures. Second, it is a gross distortion to call the measures anti-Muslim. Only seven countries out of the 56 Muslim majority countries belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation are affected. And the restrictions do not only bar Muslims from the affected countries. What all seven affected countries do have in common is that they are currently hotbeds of terrorism, and were the same “countries of concern” listed previously by the Obama administration. As for the indefinite suspension of Syrian refugee admissions until President Trump is satisfied that resuming admission will be “consistent with the national interest,” it was Barack Obama who precipitated the urgency of pausing to determine whether we were getting ahead of ourselves. He ramped up the admission of Syrian refugees during his last year in office to a pace that was seven times the average of the preceding five years without any demonstration that his administration had a robust process in place to carefully vet the vastly increased flow.

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Third, Secretary General Guterres reiterated the fallacious argument that the kind of restrictions imposed by President Trump “help trigger” recruitment of more terrorists. Germany and Sweden opened their doors to refugees and have experienced increased acts of terror and crimes especially against women as a result. Jihadists do not need to use border restrictions to inspire more would-be jihadists to join their ranks. They feed on hatred of what we stand for, not how welcoming we are. Finally, prioritizing the protection of persecuted religious minorities including Christians is not “discrimination linked to religion,” to use the Secretary General’s words. It is perfectly in keeping with one of the reasons for admitting refugees in the first place – to save victims of religious persecution. Christians are being slaughtered in a deliberate genocide being conducted by jihadists. Yet less than 1 percent of the refugees from Syria that the Obama administration admitted were Christians. The overwhelming majority were Sunni Muslims. Therein lies the real discrimination, which President Trump is trying to correct.

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