President Trump’s executive order on refugees has been widely, and rightly, criticized on policy and moral grounds. But while criticism of the executive order is indeed proper and necessary, one aspect of the new policy, namely the prioritization of claims of religious persecution by religious minorities in refugee applications, which has received wide criticism, should in fact be hardly controversial. Critics of the measure have rejected it on both moral grounds—it discriminates based on one’s faith, as well as on practical ones—the perception of such bias towards Christians by the United States would impact the US negatively and may harm those very same Christian communities in the region, who will be viewed as Western agents. These concerns are of course hardly new. Opposition to such policies has been constantly expressed in the past by the Patriarchs and clergy of these communities who fear that an open door for their flock in the West would further contribute to the eradication of Christianity from the Middle East. As serious as these concerns may be, prioritizing religious minorities is neither discriminatory nor likely to result in worse conditions for Middle East Christians. Nor is such a measure even novel, but rather one that has been repeatedly used in the past and continues to be used by the United States in other cases. Rather, any refugee policy driven by realities on the ground has to prioritize Middle East religious minorities. Continue Reading…