Time for More Travel Bans

This week, in some of the best news of the year, the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional for the President to ban immigrants from certain countries by executive order. In this case the ban covered everyone from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and North Korea, as well as certain government employees and their families from Venezuela. The court rejected two reasons some claimed the ban was unconstitutional: that it went beyond the power of the President (“executive overreach”), and that it represented discrimination against Muslims. Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the ban has “a legitimate grounding in national security concerns,” and that it is “a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”

There was always a good reason for the ban: Mr. Trump wants to spare Americans the terror attacks and crime that Middle East immigration has brought to Europe. The simplest way to avoid the same fate is not to let in the same people.

The policy has worked. Between September of last year and April of this year, 33,176 people from these “banned” countries applied for visas — only 579 were granted. That’s 32,597 (about the population of Juneau, Alaska) fewer Third Worlders in six months than America would have otherwise admitted. America has not recently been subject to horrors like the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the Bastille Day truck massacre, the London Bridge attack, the Ariana Grande concert bombing, etc.

A memorial in Nice, France, where a truck drove into a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations. (Credit Image: © Andreas Gebert/DPA via ZUMA Press)

With this week’s legal precedent, President Trump should issue a new executive order banning immigration from three other dangerous and dysfunctional nations: El Salvador, Honduras, and Jamaica. These nations have, respectively, the first, second, and fourth highest murder rates in the world (Venezuela has the third). All three are awash in drugs. El Salvador and Honduras are home to tens of thousands of members of the MS-13 gang, long an object of Mr. Trump’s ire. These facts justify an immigration ban on grounds of national security. No unlawful discrimination was found in the current ban, so none could be found in a new one either. El Salvador and Honduras are both Hispanic, with large indigenous populations, while Jamaica is Anglophone and over 90 percent black; there is no common linguistic, cultural, or racial thread tying the three countries together.

Such a ban would save lives and slow the displacement of white Americans. Mr. Trump should act. Last week’s powerful precedent means further bans will withstand legal challenges.