It was pure delight to watch our brilliant young Vice President J. D. Vance tackle CBS’s Face the Nation scold Margaret Brennan in a recent interview. Brennan believed she had the facts to back up her assertions when she started a conversation on refugee admissions, but soon discovered otherwise.

Brennan insisted that the Afghan asylum seekers are properly vetted because “refugee screening takes 18 to 24 months to go through,” as if the length of time allotted to immigration bureaucrats to complete an assignment is a guarantee of quality work. Vance countered that “we know that there are cases of people who allegedly were properly vetted and then were literally planning terrorist attacks in our country.” Here, Vance cited the example of Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, the recently foiled Election Day terrorist in Oklahoma.

Brennan then defended the program saying, “It wasn’t clear if he was radicalized when he got here or while he was living here.” To which the Veep responded with the instantly iconic retort: “I don’t really care, Margaret.” Explaining “I don’t want that person in my country, and I think most Americans agree with me.”

In the late 1980s when I fled the USSR and went through the refugee vetting process, I was struck by the degree to which it was simply an honor system. Coming from a low-trust society, I and others in my community could not help but wonder how American authorities determined that we weren’t lying. Soviet anti-Semitism—the grounds for our admission—was well-documented, yet, as I recounted in 2015, writing under a pseudonym at Legal Insurrection:

We all experienced anti-Semitism, and we were asked to talk about that. Our stories were real but unverifiable.  What does the U.S. embassy know of problems a refugee could have had with the local Komsomol cell in Zhytomir in 1976, for instance?

Not many of us came to the U.S., however. Shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev opened the borders to all those wishing to leave, America stopped admitting Soviet Jews save for a few with first-degree relatives already in the country. This was a political move void of any security considerations—we weren’t at all hostile to the American way of life. But even within our small, low-risk group, some gentiles with forged papers were able to sneak into both the U.S. and Israel and the Russian mafia found a way to embed itself.

I don’t know how aliens from other parts of the world are vetted before coming into the United States, but I do know that we draw suspect refugees out of the countries from which our military withdrew because we can’t reliably tell a friend from a foe. I suspect most Americans share my—and Vance’s—skepticism about the immigration procedures.

At the same time, Brennan is not entirely wrong in her insistence that refugees get radicalized on our shores. It’s just that her insight does not suggest what she wishes it did. The sudden persistence of the homegrown jihadi problem is hardly a justification for continued refugee admittance. The New Year’s Eve New Orleans terrorist, for instance, is not the type that existed in this country in the 20^th century. To bar hostile foreigners from setting up shop on our soil, we need to halt the flow of potential recruits. If anything, the Face the Nation anchor gave us a better reason to drastically reform refugee admittance than J. D. Vance offered.

Vance signaled that from now on America will adopt a new thinking when it comes to population movement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this sentiment stating, “The era of mass migration must end,” and promising a more pragmatic approach—a return to the guiding principles of safety, prosperity, and strength. With that in mind, cultural compatibility should be of utmost concern of immigration officials. 

Life in the United States is comfortable, but as an immigrant I can speak about the difficulties of assimilation for new arrivals. Adopting a foreign language and new customs is a challenge even for the most committed. Just to give a few trivial examples, the locals don’t care very much for the songs playing on repeat in your head because, unlike you, they didn’t grow up hearing them on the radio. And the sour cream available in supermarkets appears as a stiff mass that just doesn’t taste right. These and other examples like them can sometimes feel isolating. But if these sorts of trivial examples can add up, and they do, then think of what a religious Muslim man experiences watching what he considers scantily clad American women walking puppies. It’s just not easy to bridge such cultural chasms.

Immigration is necessarily alienating. But we have a choice to avoid making it potentially dangerous. Destabilizing American society in the name of refugee acceptance not only harms the United States, it also carries with it deleterious effects on a global scale as it preoccupies Americans with unnecessary problems at home. And while it’s true that many who wish to come to America are unable to live in peace in their countries of origin, it’s not a given that they could not find more suitable homes apart from our shores.

We can and we should, if only for our own security, assist those we can help in this. But President Trump is right to deport foreigners who endanger us or who engage in anti-Semitic activities, just as he is right to look for a home for displaced Gazans in other Muslim lands. There are plenty of other more suitable places for them to go. The proposals floated include Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, and Albania. We should not, under any circumstances, include the U.S. among them. The situation here is already too complicated

Taking a chance on the future of our nation by inviting poorly vetted people to experience culture shock—and to be radicalized—is as devoid of sense as assisting people in “gender reassignment.” Suggesting otherwise ought to be considered beyond the pale.