"U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media."

The NYT reports.

Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

But does the NYT expect us to believe that U.S. immigration officials can perform the kind of fine-grained analysis that is a necessary premise for hating Donald Trump's crude proposal to exclude all Muslims?

The discovery of the old social media posts has exposed a significant — and perhaps inevitable — shortcoming in how foreigners are screened when they enter the United States, particularly as people everywhere disclose more about themselves online. Tens of millions of people are cleared each year to come to this country to work, visit or live. It is impossible to conduct an exhaustive investigation and scour the social media accounts of each of them, law enforcement officials say.

Inevitable... impossible... so they say, as they excuse their lapses.

Ms. Malik faced three extensive national security and criminal background screenings.... Ms. Malik also had two in-person interviews.... All those reviews came back clear, and the F.B.I. has said it had no incriminating information about Ms. Malik or Mr. Farook in its databases. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have said they followed all policies and procedures....

Meanwhile, a debate is underway at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services...  over whether officers conducting interviews should be allowed to routinely use material gathered from social media....

[T]he vetting for refugees is a separate, longer and more rigorous process than the checks for K-1 and most other immigrant visas. And there is an extra layer of scrutiny for Syrians, who are referred to a national security and fraud office at the Department of Homeland Security for a final look. In that last step, officers can include a social media search, federal officials said.

Can.... But do they? So, there's "an extra layer of scrutiny" for the Syrian refugees, but

Social media comments, by themselves, however, are not always definitive evidence. In Pakistan — as in the United States — there is no shortage of crass and inflammatory language. And it is often difficult to distinguish Islamist sentiments and those driven by political hostility toward the United States....

Interesting last sentence. Is the NYT suggesting that we should discriminate against the true "Islamists" but not those who are "driven by political hostility toward the United States"? Does that mean that those who hate the United States should be kept out only if their hatred is premised on religion? How is the NYT using the word "Islamist" these days? Does it — standing alone and unmodified — include a terrorist agenda? Elsewhere, I see the word given definitions as mild as someone with "the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life." Searching the term in the NYT archive, I'm seeing a recent convention of duly appending a modifier — "radical Islamist," "Islamist extremist," "Islamist militants" — to avoid generally impugning Muslims whose religion pervades their social and political beliefs.

ADDED: I'm trying to understand where the NYT is right now. It think it's moving.