The Sky is Falling

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling." Chicken Little became famous for his role and exclamation in the children's story. He (or is it, she?) is reprising that role in the current protests of the ban on travel from terrorist countries. "Our university systems will be irreparably damaged. Critical research will suffer across the globe. The US will become a second class educational nation. This is not the  America that I know." These are just some of the plaintive cries of academics protesting the ban.

Did I say "temporary travel ban?" They make it sound like it is permanent and impenetrable. "No one, ever from anywhere will ever get in again." And did we say that it is from seven countries that are known for terrorism?

Is this an extreme reaction? Absolutely. The flow of immigrants is like a flood bursting through an earthen dam. To save the dam and protect downstream residents, the engineers employ every piece of earth moving equipment at their disposal. They plug the breach in the dam. Only then do they begin to reconstruct the spillway to control the release of water into the river.

The previous administration threw open the floodgates and the dam broke. The primary task is to cut off the uncontrolled release (or entrance in this situation) and then begin to filter out the bad actors and pass the acceptable ones.

Extreme circumstances call for extreme reactions. Once the situation is normalized, we can get back to life as usual. Ninety and 120 days seems like a long time to the people caught in the flood tide. But for the proper controls to be installed, that is a short window. In the long run immigrants will be free from suspicion, having been vetted properly, and the country will be safer.

A second children's story also comes to mind. There once was a little boy who cried, "Wolf!" He did it when there was no real danger. When a real crisis occurred, he cried again, but everybody just assumed that it was another false alarm.

In the past week and a half, everything President Trump has done has been "wrong." The hue and cry has gone out. "Wolf!" If a true emergency occurs the fake adrenaline rushes will numb the populace to the calls and we could end up in real trouble. (Not that we expect any untoward event to happen. But neither did the little boy.)

Speaking of boys, the Boy Scout motto is "Be prepared." That must surely include not overreacting at minor events. The sky is not falling.