I wrote yesterday about Habiba Soliman, the daughter of the man who staged an antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., last weekend, and who, along with the rest of her family, is now being deported. My view was as follows:

It is, of course, true that if the Solimans were an American family, the rules would be different. In that case, the federal government would be unable to deport any of them, and, quite rightly, it would be forbidden from punishing the wife and the children for the sins of the father. But the Solimans are not an American family. The Solimans are a unit of illegal immigrants, and, because they are a unit of illegal immigrants, it is wholly reasonable for the authorities to determine that their being here is against the national interest. Given the scale of the challenge, it is probably impossible to design a tourist-visa application process that will filter out everyone with a latent desire to commit jihad. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that, if we had known about Mohamed Soliman’s penchant for launching flames at American Jews, neither he nor his family would have been allowed to cross the border. It is a privilege for foreigners to come to America, and, had an agent with all the facts been privy to a file that indicated that the father was a jihadist, he would have been firmly within his rights to blacklist the entire group. As a matter of simple prudence, there would have been no plausible upside to counterbalance the risk of allowing the Solimans in.

I must confess that I am astonished this morning to see people pleading on Habiba Soliman’s behalf, as if there were something morally unjust about the government’s attempt to deport her, as well as her father. Here is a good example of the genre:

Like her father, Habiba Soliman is an illegal immigrant — which, alone, is sufficient warrant for her deportation. It is, I’m sure, extremely annoying for her that Daddy’s hamfisted attempt to recreate Kristallnacht has drawn attention to that fact, but that’s life. The way to avoid being outed as an illegal immigrant by the actions of other people is to not be an illegal immigrant. Habiba Soliman didn’t manage that, so Habiba Soliman is being kicked out.

But suppose that Habiba Soliman weren’t an illegal immigrant. Suppose that, instead, she were here on a current tourist visa. Why, in principle, would it be a problem for the U.S. to kick her out? The law is complicated here, I accept, and, as ever, I want it followed by the executive branch even if I do not like all of its terms. But as a moral proposition — is vs. ought — I would have absolutely no issue if America’s immigration rules treated families of tourists as a single unit.

As it happens, the American government already does this on the way in. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1182, the United States is bound to deny visas not only to those who have “engaged in a terrorist activity,” or are “likely to engage after entry in any terrorist activity,” or are a “representative of” a “terrorist organization” or “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity,” but to “the spouse or child of an alien who is inadmissible” under those terms. Habiba Soliman’s dad is a terrorist. Were she applying for a visa now, she and her family would be denied.

The system seems to work a little differently on the way out (which is irrelevant here, because Habiba Soliman is an illegal immigrant). But if it did not, why, exactly, would that be bad? The B-visa on which the Soliman family entered the country is for temporary tourists. It’s for people who want to visit the Grand Canyon or go to Disney World or spend a few nights in New Orleans. Visitors on tourist visas are not supposed to go to school, or work, or become part of a close-knit community, or create “lives in America.” They are supposed to come in for a vacation, and then leave. As a result, this visa type is the most discretionary of them all.

If, in response to this incident, Congress were to pass a law that echoed the admission rules in the deportation rules, what would be lost? It would, of course, be outrageous for the family members of non-U.S. persons to be charged with crimes that they did not commit. But that is not what we are talking about here. Rather, we are debating the rules that ought to govern the privilege of being present in the United States as a tourist. “Make sure that nobody in your immediate family is a jihadi or you’ll all be deported” does not strike me as an unreasonable standard.

As my readers know, I am, myself, an immigrant. And it is because I’m an immigrant that I know just how interested the U.S. government is in keeping out people who might be a threat — or, frankly, keeping out people who so much as know others who might be a threat. In the seven years that elapsed between my getting my first visa and my becoming an American citizen, I was obliged to promise over and over and over again that I had not, “ever”:

Etc.

I also had to list every school or university I’d attended; list everywhere I’d been in the last five years; list everywhere I’d lived in the last five years; relate any criminal record; list my marriages and name changes; and so forth. And, as my status changed, I had to do this not once but multiple times. When, on the day I became a citizen, I checked in at the ceremony, the officer with whom I filed my final paperwork asked me if I was “a communist.” I laughed, thinking that, at this late stage, he must be joking. But he wasn’t. He was deadly serious, and, moreover, he wanted to know why I thought the question was funny. Nervously, I explained that I wrote for National Review, whose main historical mission was hating communism. That satisfied him, but I’ve never forgotten the look I got.

I relate all this to highlight just how comprehensively our laws are set up to create red flags. If I had answered yes to any of the questions above — or, for that matter, to the hundreds of similar questions I answered over the years — my applications would have been delayed while I accounted for myself, and rejected if I could not. And, remember, I was living legally in the U.S., with a job, a wife, kids, a mortgage, and I was seeking work visas, permanent residency, and citizenship. I was not a tourist, who, by the plain terms of his admission documents, was forbidden to build a life in America.

In the case of the Solimans, all this is rendered moot by the fact that they were illegal immigrants. But, as a prudential matter, I simply cannot imagine having a moral problem with a system that rescinds the temporary visitor visas of the immediate families of antisemitic jihadis. Such people have no right to be here, would not have been allowed in had we known about their connections, and offer nothing to the existing citizenry that could possibly overcome the risk of their staying. Good riddance.