Ann Coulter: Can’t America have a little self-respect on immigration?

Couldn’t America have a little self-respect? Japan, Denmark and Israel do.

Year after year, for decades, America has accepted more refugees than the rest of the world combined. No country we admire does anything close to this.

Score one for Donald Trump: In 2017, after he became president, our refugee admissions finally dipped slightly below “more than every other country in the world combined.” Go USA!

These aren’t immigrants the host country specifically wanted. We’re not saying, “You know, this country could use some people who know how to restore 17th-century woodwork” or “Wow, this guy and his wife are both neurosurgeons!” Refugee admissions to America are so reckless that this country has taken in Iraqis who deployed IEDs against our own troops and, in at least one case, one of the perpetrators — not victims — of the Rwandan genocide.

The idea of humanitarian immigration is that people are being persecuted in their own countries and must immediately seek safety elsewhere. Naturally, therefore, most nations accept refugees from their area of the world. The transport is shorter, the climate and culture are similar, and it will be easier for them to go home once conditions improve.

Since the civil war in Syria, for example, millions of Syrians have sought refugee status abroad. The majority resettled nearby, in the Middle East and North Africa. About 20 percent headed for Europe’s generous welfare states.

But the U.S. also took in Syrian refugees — more than 21,000 of them.

Why did we take any? We’re two oceans away! “Help me! Help me! Just get me anyplace but here — actually, I think I’d like to go to Los Angeles. I want a house like in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”

How about this? The U.S. will admit as many Syrian refugees as France takes in Central American asylum-seekers. Why is it unthinkable to send Central Americans to France but perfectly logical for Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, Asians and Africans to resettle in the USA?

Japan is closer to Syria than America is. Guess how many Syrian refugees Japan has granted asylum? Twelve. Not 12,000. Twelve.

In fact, Japan barely allows in any immigrants at all. Less than 2 percent of Japan’s population is foreign-born — and most of those are Chinese and Koreans.

No one denounces Japan for “racism.” To the contrary, Business Insider rushed to explain that Japan had reasons for refusing refugees that are more “complex” than they appear. (Not really.)

The New York Times explained Japan’s highly restrictive immigration policies as proceeding from “a desire to preserve their culture, a goal echoed by some conservative groups in the United States.” (Duh.)

And National Geographic clarified that Japan’s policy was simply a matter of the Japanese preferring “a racially unique and homogenous society.”

Luckily for the Japanese, they aren’t white, so this utterly logical, natural position on immigration didn’t trigger “white nationalist” alarm bells in our mainstream media.

Denmark is white! That happy, homogenous country is hailed by American liberals such as Bernie Sanders as a socialist paradise. Of course, the precise reason Denmark has been able to maintain those munificent social welfare programs is that it shut the door to immigrants with low “integration potential.”

For nearly a decade, the “integration potential” test effectively operated as a Muslim ban — long before the Muslim ban was a twinkle in Trump’s eye. Eventually, Denmark dropped the “integration potential” — and soon thereafter suspended its participation in the United Nations refugee resettlement quota program (apparently after noticing that it was a country and not a subdivision of an international debating society).

To be extra sure their prelapsarian society would not be disrupted, during the migrant crisis of 2015, Denmark suspended railroad service from Germany. Government services for refugees were cut back, and an incentive was offered to those who learned Danish. Indeed, a law was passed allowing authorities to seize cash and valuables from refugees to help defray the costs of their resettlement.

In addition to the gushing tributes from American liberals, Denmark routinely ranks as the No. 1 or No. 2 “happiest country.”

Another country with a basic sense of self-respect is Israel. Syria is in Israel’s backyard. Guess how many Syrian refugees Israel took? Zero.

A few years ago, more than 20,000 Eritreans and Sudanese fled to Israel seeking asylum — they just wanted a better life! Israel initially granted refugee status to a grand total of seven Eritreans and two Sudanese. The rest were put directly into detention camps and given a choice: stay locked up or leave. Israel closed the camps in 2018 after accepting thousands with conditions and deporting others to third countries or their homelands. Maybe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) should have gone to cry at those camps. 

The Israelis, who seem to be fairly competent at running their own affairs, also built a fence — 15 feet high — along their entire 150-mile southern border. In year one, illegal immigration was reduced by 99.8 percent. After a few more wall enhancements, the number of illegal immigrants crossing Israel’s southern border was cut to — let’s see, checking my notes … ZERO.

Why doesn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tell Israel that a wall is “immoral” and “ineffective”?

Our country is being inundated with 100,000 Latin Americans every month. That’s in addition to the thousands of refugees being admitted each month from the rest of the world.

Did we vote for this? I’m fairly certain we did not. In fact, as I recall, Americans have voted for the exact opposite every time they’ve been given the chance to vote on immigration. We even chose an utterly implausible individual as president of the United States — because he was a developer and he said he’d build a wall.

Ann Coulter is a lawyer, a syndicated columnist and conservative commentator, and the author of 13 New York Times bestsellers. The most recent, “Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind,” was published in 2018. Follow her on Twitter @AnnCoulter.