Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), for example, said at today’s immigration hearing he was worried about gaps and loopholes in the system and wondered how security checks could be “beefed up” to prevent people like the Boston bombing suspects from coming to America. Last week I argued that Kermit Gosnell has as much to do with the debate about abortion laws as Adam Lanza does to the debate about gun control. I think the analogy works just as well in this situation. It’s just as preposterous to believe a background check of some sort would’ve stopped the Boston Marathon bombing suspects from ever immigrating to the United States as it is to believe that a background check would’ve stopped Adam Lanza. The issue of restricting student visas from countries where terrorists might come from, for example, comes up every time a foreign terrorist plot is foiled, yet students are among the most highly-regulated foreigners that visit the United States.

Millions of immigrants, legal and otherwise, live in America. Their radicalization, at home or abroad, is exceedingly rare. Those intent on harming America are unlikely to abide by any new immigration controls, and like most criminals, will find a way around them. Just as gun control laws, then, only serve to impede otherwise law-abiding people, so would new immigration controls.