The word “contentious” doesn’t begin to describe the American immigration debate over the last two decades. But in recent days, the lines are being redrawn — and with it, the national conversation. The focus is no longer being dominated by illegal immigration south of Texas but “legal” immigration coming from across the Atlantic, where a bold new enemy is exposing weaknesses in the West’s tolerance.

Attacks in Paris, followed by a mass shooting in California have made believers of Americans, who doubted that radicalized Muslims were one of the greatest threats to our nation. Now, with President Obama offering to throw open the door to more Syrian refugees, more voters from both parties are ready to put the brakes on the process until a better, safer vetting protocol is in place.

As the national discussion turns to immigration, people are starting to stake out positions on who should and shouldn’t be in the country. But first, we need to consider one of the unfortunate realities — in America and elsewhere — which is that the purpose of immigration has changed. It used to exist for people who wanted to come to America and assimilate. Now, in a dramatic shift from even our grandparents’ generation, the “sensitivity” and “diversity” doctrine of the modern age is suggesting that we create cultural enclaves, where outsiders come to our country and live as if they never left home.

That doesn’t work, as Europe will tell you. Instead, we lose our identity in the shadow of multiculturalism. It’s happened in France, and it’s happening in Britain. Leaders are learning a painful message that if you tiptoe around the global realities, you’ll pay for it. If people want to live in America — including Muslims — they need to embrace our Constitution and our culture. Others have said in less artful ways what conservatives have been warning for years: there is no such thing as coexistence between Sharia law and our constitutional republic. That isn’t religious prejudice, but an ideological reality.

What most people either don’t realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion — the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn’t a judicial or economic code — but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment. Under the framework proposed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Santorum, America wouldn’t vet refugees based on religion but an ideology that’s incompatible with American liberty. “I’ve proposed actual concrete things [like eliminating the visa lottery system] and immigration law that would have — not the effect of banning all Muslims, but a lot of them,” Santorum explained.

The bottom line is this: the U.S. Constitution is an agreement between people about how they’ll be governed. What good is it if people immigrate to America with the sole purpose of undermining that contract? We shouldn’t be embarrassed to say that we oppose those who want to come to the United States to destroy it. And while most Muslims are not radicalized, Sharia certainly encourages it. Based on polling from the Center for Security Policy, that’s the system most would choose. The majority of Muslims in America believe they “‘should have the choice of being governed by Sharia [law].’ Sharia authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings, and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.”

In America, we have freedom under the construct of ordered liberty. Even the Wall Street Journal struggles with the clash of these ideologies. “Certainly Islam and the America way of life are compatible in as much as America is capable of welcoming Muslims who are not Islamic supremacists. On the other hand, it’s always struck us that categorical statements to the effect that Islam [is peaceful] are far more hortatory than empirical — which is to say that there is a gap between Islam as it actually exists and Islam as…President Obama would like it to be. How wide that gap is, and how dangerous, we do not know.” Nor, I would argue, should we risk the future of our nation to find out.

Originally published Thursday, Dec. 10.