President Donald Trump signs new travel ban, exempts Iraq
Actually, the courts (deliberately?) misinterpreted the first ban as having imposed a religious test. Yes, it would have given Sunni Muslims priority if they were persecuted in Shiite-controlled areas, and vice-versa, and would also have given Christians priority, which was probably its original purpose.
But this is nothing new.
Prosecuted minorities have always been given high priority for refugee status, irrespective of the cause, including religious freedom. I have a family member who was permitted to immigrate to the USA in the 90s simply because the dissolution of the Soviet Union left her, a white female atheist, stranded in a Muslim-majority country, denied any semblance of what we would consider human rights, like the right to work in the profession she was trained for, for example, along with many other things. Why would any Christians in Muslim-dominated countries or Sunnis in Shiite-dominated countries (or the other way around) not be afforded the same consideration?
When you get right down to it, what could be more American than fleeing religious persecution? At one time that was just about the whole freakin' point of America.
Now?
People are going to go through the same dance they went through last time. Federal judges are political appointees, so no matter what any President (liberal or conservative) orders, it is almost always possible to find a Federal judge somewhere who either has a political axe to grind or owes somebody a favor. The new ban will be challenged, some judge somewhere will order a stay, and an appeals court may or may not uphold it. At this point, Trump may be holding a losing hand. If the 9th Circuit upholds another challenge, and Trump appeals to the Supremes, the high court would probably deadlock at 4-4 somewhere along the line, thus leaving the Court of Appeals ruling intact. Looking at it from a practical standpoint, Trump perhaps should have held off this action until his new nominee is confirmed, thus creating a Supreme Court majority capable of overturning the 9th circuit.
The part I don't understand is Obama issued a like order when he first became President as did Bush 2, Clinton and Bush 1 and none of the snowflakes went batshit crazy over that. Why is it different with this president?
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple things wrong here.
ReplyDeleteIt was obvious religious discrimination against Muslims for a couple reasons:
1.The seven nations on the original ban list were chosen solely because they were Muslim majority nations that have terrorist incidents. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Muslims who come to the United States from those nations are any threat, or, at least, either any worse threat than any U.S citizen or any threat that can't be monitored through usual police investigation.
This may still be an issue. You are correct that lawyers go 'judge shopping' and I gather the right of a leader to pass any law they want is an area of contention between the executive branch and the judicial branch and also a question of whether Constitutional rights apply to non-citizens, but the idea of preventing rulers from passing arbitrary laws was origins of the Magna Carta.
The original ban and this ban are nothing but a temporary balm for the stupid and easily frightened, i.e Trump voters.
2.I'm not as familiar with this. You are correct that refugees can be given priority, but there are also millions of valid Muslim refugees in Syria and Iraq that are in desperate states. And, let's not forget, were it not for the actions of the previous Republican President, these Iraqis would not be refugees. In this case, I think the U.S (and the U.K) bears an extra responsibility to these people.
I'm also not sure that it is just the Syrian Christians refugees who were singled out for favorable treatment. My understanding is that Christians in all seven of those nations were given the de facto ability to appeal the ban, whereas Muslims were not.
As I wrote previously, the prior ban was a de facto ban of Muslims from seven Muslim majority nations.
There are several things wrong with the comment above, which seems to consist mostly of DNC talking points. It's not a "de facto ban of Muslims." There are over 40 majority Muslim nations unaffected, many with more Muslims than the nations on the list. The seven nations were actually chosen by the Obama Administration as being particular hotbeds of terrorist activity with governments that were either too hostile or unstable to provide reliable records for vetting refugees. ISIS has been publicly bragging that they plan to infiltrate the refugee population with terrorist moles, and it's obvious that in Europe, they already have. The current massive refugee crisis was not started by the previous Republican President; it started under Obama, with his decisions to pull out US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, decapitate the government of Libya, fail to back up his red line threat against Syria and let ISIS swarm across the Middle East. And there is no question of whether Constitutional rights apply to non-citizens. Non-citizens who are here legally are afforded Constitutional protections, but there are no such protections for citizens of other nations who want to come here, just as there is no right for a citizen of another nation to enter America and no obligation for the US to allow everyone who wants to come here to enter. And calling people "stupid" is not an argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd yours is a regurgitation of mostly false Republican talking points. You clearly are stupid.
DeleteJust for an example, I didn't write "de facto ban of Muslims" I wrote a 'de facto ban of Muslims from 7 Muslim majority nations. You either can't even read properly or you dishonestly misquoted me.
The only other point really worth mentioning, just to point out the stupidity of your argument is that if you take ISIS at their word when they say they're going to infiltrate the refugee population with 'terrorist moles' you must also take them at their word that if you die in their cause, you go to Heaven and receive 70 virgins.
I think you're stupid enough to believe that and that sounds right up your alley. Maybe you should join them.
Calling people 'stupid' is not an argument, but calling an argument 'stupid' is an argument because it gets to the validity of the argument or claim, and none of your claims here are valid.
When a person makes enough stupid claims, they can be correctly referred to as 'stupid', stupid.
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DeleteTo be fair to you, you did mention the 'seven nations' named after you misquoted me.
DeleteThe claim that they were shortlisted by Obama because refugees (what about visitors?) are impossible to vet is completely false:
You are confusing two things, the terrorist activity from those seven nations, and the ban on refugees that mostly affects just Iraqis and Syrians.
The 'hotbed of terrorist activity' is correct but the Obama Administration did not ban people from those nations from coming to the U.S, it just waived visa waiver privileges. To claim that the requirement for a visa is no different from banning all citizens of those seven nations from entering the U.S is ridiculous as is the notion the idea that waiving the visa requirement created a precedent to justify banning those people from coming to the United States.
What I wrote previously is valid, there is no evidence of any significant threat from people from those seven nations (now six) that justifies a ban, and it was in fact, nothing more than Trump keeping a campaign promise for his stupid and easily frightened supporters.
From what I've read about that aspect of this new executive order, it may be a law with no there there, a complete comedown just to save face and to allow Trump to now pretend that he is meeting his campaign promise as this new order allows exceptions for the reasons that the vast majority of people from those nations come to the United States (work, school, family.) The question here is, are the exceptions mandatory or are they at the discretion of the immigrant service people?
If they're mandatory, then that aspect of the law is pretty much de facto pointless.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/31/14444862/obama-refugee-ban-2011
The rest of your claims are equally dishonest or are at best half truths and aren't worth taking the time to debunk.
Also, only a snowflake takes offense at being called 'stupid', stupid.
By 'all people' from those seven nations, I was referring to all Muslims.
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