On the current trajectory, we will take in 1 million Muslim immigrants or more over the next decade. It can’t be racist or out of bounds to ask whether that’s a good idea.

Or it shouldn’t be. The immigration debate is so encrusted with clichés, unexamined pieties and politically correct virtue-signaling that any suggestion that we reduce the number or the composition of the current immigrant flow is taken as an attempt to kneecap the Statue of Liberty.

We are indeed a nation of immigrants, but that doesn’t necessarily dictate ever-higher levels of immigration. We were still America in 1970 when the foreign-born population was 4.7 percent, significantly less than the current 13.1 percent. We would still be America if we decided to change course and not to reach the projected historic high for the foreign-born population less than a decade from now.

At bottom, the Trump doctrine on immigration is that our policy should serve our values and interests, and the status quo fails on both counts.