Trump issues new executive order on travel and immigration
Here’s the text of the new order. Note the title, “Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States.”
And note passages such as this one:
Executive Order 13769 [Trump’s previous EO on the subjet] did not provide a basis for discriminating for or against members of any particular religion. While that order allowed for prioritization of refugee claims from members of persecuted religious minority groups, that priority applied to refugees from every nation, including those in which Islam is a minority religion, and it applied to minority sects within a religion. That order was not motivated by animus toward any religion, but was instead intended to protect the ability of religious minorities — whoever they are and wherever they reside — to avail themselves of the USRAP in light of their particular challenges and circumstances.
Trump’s new order also includes “brief descriptions, taken in part from the Department of State’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 (June 2016), of some of the conditions in six of the previously designated countries that demonstrate why their nationals continue to present heightened risks to the security of the United States.”
The order then goes on to “temporarily pause” travel from six of the countries in the previous order, “subject to categorical exceptions and case-by-case waivers.” Iraq is excepted, and an explanation is given for that, including the following caveats:
…[T]he ongoing conflict has impacted the Iraqi government’s capacity to secure its borders and to identify fraudulent travel documents. Nevertheless, the close cooperative relationship between the United States and the democratically elected Iraqi government, the strong United States diplomatic presence in Iraq, the significant presence of United States forces in Iraq, and Iraq’s commitment to combat ISIS justify different treatment for Iraq. In particular, those Iraqi government forces that have fought to regain more than half of the territory previously dominated by ISIS have shown steadfast determination and earned enduring respect as they battle an armed group that is the common enemy of Iraq and the United States. In addition, since Executive Order 13769 was issued, the Iraqi government has expressly undertaken steps to enhance travel documentation, information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final orders of removal. Decisions about issuance of visas or granting admission to Iraqi nationals should be subjected to additional scrutiny to determine if applicants have connections with ISIS or other terrorist organizations, or otherwise pose a risk to either national security or public safety.
There’s much much more. Some of it has to do with enhanced vetting, including the extent of the cooperation of the countries involved. Another section has to do with the scope of the EO, and T’s are crossed and I’s dotted where they were not before. For example, the EO exempts “any lawful permanent resident of the United States,” and any “national [who] has previously established significant contacts with the United States but is outside the United States on the effective date of this order for work, study, or other lawful activity.”
There are many many more exempted categories listed, and then the EO goes on after this for quite some time. It’s a far more carefully-drafted document than its predecessor, and in my opinion is similar to one that might have been issued in the first place had Trump waited for Sessions to be in charge before releasing it.
And of course, none of this carefulness matters to some Democrats:
Democrats responded by calling Trump’s order a repeat version of the first attempt.
“Here we go again…Muslim Ban 2.0 #NoBanNoWall” tweeted Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives.
And then there’s the ACLU:
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, had this reaction:
“The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws. The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people.
“What’s more, the changes the Trump administration has made, and everything we’ve learned since the original ban rolled out, completely undermine the bogus national security justifications the president has tried to hide behind and only strengthen the case against his unconstitutional executive orders.”
Everything moving along pretty much as expected.
The AG here in the state of Washington says Trump ‘capitulated’ so using the earlier standard then that should be used as evidence before the court that this is all good now.
Right?
It seems to me that the appropriate response from President Trump’s administration to all those folks who deny that there is any reason for his EO’s on immigration and that he has any authority to issue them is to tell them to go fly a kite. If they have any genuine objections, let them prepare a case for impeachment or whatever other foolish legal step they may choose to take. As for the courts, ignore their rulings, just as President Obama (or his subordinates, to forestall the hair-splitters) did in a number of cases where Federal courts ruled that what was done was unconstitutional, e.g. the so-called recess appointments at NLRB. And yes, I understand that the second of those attacks the political fabric of the nation, but so does the Left’s efforts to prevent President Trump from doing what he was elected to do. As the situation gets worse, he (and we) will have to decide whether to submit to the rule of the Left, proven haters of both America and 70% (more or less) of all Americans or to fight them in the most effective way. Third, President Trump needs to clean out the agencies – whether IC or otherwise – of the stay-behind Democrat Party operatives. Fire them as they are identified and let them sue; if necessary, give them a desk, an title with no authority and a computer that is not connected to anything outside of the building they’re in, but get them out of the positions they now occupy. In addition, President Trump needs to have a meeting with Congressional GOP leaders for the purpose of planning the impeachment or indictment (depending on whether the people involved are in office or out) of those like Clapper who have violated the law by revealing classified information to the public via their propaganda arm in the media. Then he can get down to implementing his vision for the U.S. and the Left can go suck their thumbs and clutch their blankies.
Oh, I forgot the fundamental premise: the U.S. is not a parliamentary form of government. The U.S. President is head of state and head of government and can only be removed from office by impeachment, not by failing to please whatever hired groups of mercenaries are protesting about this week. Govern, President Trump, and be damned to your Leftist opponents. That’s what we voted for him to do.
The Left would have us judge people by the “color of their skin” a.k.a. [class] diversity, rather than by the content of their character (e.g. principled alignment).
There was no admission or concession, only respect for separation of powers necessitating an adjustment to conform with circumstances on a forward basis and judicial discretion.
That said, the vast majority of Muslims globally are not affected by the so-called “Muslim ban”, which implies there is no Muslim ban and that both the media and civil rights businesses, including the ACLU, are, at best, mischaracterizing the motive and impact, presumably in service of special and peculiar interests, foreign and domestic.
They will return to the exact same courts and get another stay. I would be shocked if they don’t.
“The only way to fix the Muslim ban is to not have a Muslim ban.” If 95% of the people in those countries are muslims, its not a muslim ban. It is a temporary halt on entry from those failed, hell hole, nations where there can be no real vetting as to the mindset of those seeking entry. And why are we expected according to the left and their Muslim storm troopers obliged to accept them?
Its not our problem, it is the problem of their failed states. Don’t like it where you are, fix it, we can not fix it for you, and we have no obligation to allow you entry. We are busy trying to fix it here.
parker,
it’s not just the mindset of those seeking entry. It’s also the real identity. CNN, BBC, and France 24 have never reported on the fake ID mills run by ISIS in the countries named. I read the other day about a guy arrested in Sweden (can’t remember what for) whose ID said he was 12. In reality, he was around 20. They don’t report on a guy in Germany who moved to about 6 different towns here and used a different ID ar each refugee center. Germany still doesn’t have the ability to take fingerprints at each of the refugee reception areas and compare them with a national fingerprint data base.
All people get from the international news is ” travel ban fpr muslim majority nations.” We get immigration lawyers who spout off and offended Muslims who are now afraid to live in America. Most people don’t even realize tat the six named countries have large enclaves of ISIS supporters and that as ISIS gets squeezed out of places like Mosul, their fighters will be heading to Libya to get new travel papers.
Meanwhile there is a brouhaha in Germany because Erdogan wants to send campaign officials here so that dual citizens will vote for him in the election about whether he can take over the whole parliamentary system in Turkey,
I really wish someone would put Amanpour and Kate Bolduan in niqabs, take away their drivers licences, and refuse to allow them to leave their houses without a male escort. If they want multiculturalsim, let them experience it.
Neo, I really appreciate your stuff. I just want you to know even when I’m not that into it, I’m paying attention. I check in daily regardless.
All this talk about the new executive order being a “Muslim ban” and “unconstitutional” is a big distraction, but inevitable in these very politically correct times.
The simple truth is that this is our country, a sovereign nation, and we are allowed to decide whom we admit, and whom we choose to exclude, for any reason whatsoever. Anything else means voluntarily giving up our sovereignty to non-citizens and foreign outsiders.
In light of the excerpts quoted in this post, the only appropriate reaction to the sort of criticism mentioned there is
“You obviously haven’t read a word of the new EO. Piss off.”
We need an Islam ban. There’s a reason why Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the Muslim world. Because Islam is basically Naziism with prayers five times a day.
It’s not a religion. It’s an ideology of violent conquest and oppression with a thin veneer of something resembling a religion. But it’s the only “religion” I know of in which it’s “prophet” actually has a teaching on al-Azl. What is that, you say? You’ll be sorry you asked. Let’s turn to Sahih Muslim, the second most authoritative collection of ahadith (reports, of Muhammad) in that Khuttub-al-Sittih, the six books, that comprise the bulk of what makes up the Sunnah of Muhammad.
Sahih Muslim – The Book of Marriage – (22) – Chapter: The ruling on coitus interrupts (‘Azl)
It is the only religion in the world I know of that, to put it in modern terms, has tenderly passed down instructions from the highest human authority in Islam over the generations so the Islamic State knows how to rape their Yazidi sex slaves. Isn’t it nice they can know it’s halal to practice al-Azl so they can rape them on the way to the slave market where they can sell them reasonably confident they’re not pregnant? That brings a higher price. Muhammad approved of the practice, though he told his rapist/soldiers that they couldn’t do anything to keep their rape victims from getting pregnant if Allah wanted them to be pregnant.
This is what Islam teaches. It’s in the Sunnah of Muhammad. The Sunnah is the “well trodden path” of Muhammad. All Muslims are commanded to model their lives on the example of Muhammad. And 85% or so of Muslims in get it from the Sunnah. Hence their name in English; Sunnis. Sunnis can not reject the ahadith; it’s apostasy for Sunnis to reject a reliable (sahih, or even the next lower grade, hasan) hadith. So no Sunni can say it’s wrong for IS to have sex slaves. That would be to blaspheme Allah as he ordained the practice as lawful in the Quran as well as their prophet as according to both the Sunni and Shia traditions he engaged in it (the Shia have their own, equivalent texts).
Charming how they put their rape instructions in the “Book of Marriage.” Although given that there is no such crime as marital rape in the Islamic world, that women are little more than property under Islamic law, it’s not like legal wives necessarily have it much differently.
Quran Surah 2 Al Baqarah verse 223:
Speaking of marriage, this is why child marriage can’t be eradicated in the Islamic world. First of all along with divinely ordained sex slavery it’s in the Quran. And like divinely ordained sex slavery, Muhammad engaged in it as well. Sahih al Bukhari is second only to the Quran in authority among the Sunni sacred texts.
Sahih al-Bukhari – Book of Wedlock, Marriage (Nikaah) – (39) Chapter: Giving one’s young children in marriage
Steve57:
Hereis my post on whether Islam is a religion. This post is also relevant.
Islam is a religion, a faith, a tradition, and an ideology. It is a moral philosophy, an axiomatic belief system, a cultural manifestation, and a perspective of reality.
Atheism is a faith, a tradition, and an ideology.
Pro-Choice is a religion, a faith, a tradition, and an ideology.
It’s when they conflate logical domains, deny individual dignity, and reject or debase intrinsic value, that they cause catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
neo-neocon, thanks for the links. If it is a religion, it is one only barely. There’s a reason why the first year of the Islamic calendar begins with Muhammad’s hijrah from Mecca to Medina in 622 a.d. It doesn’t begin with Muhammad’s birth in 570 nor when he began to receive revelation in 610 as we might expect with the founder of a religion . Why the hijrah? Because when Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina (then Yathrib) he acquired political and and military power.
Islam isn’t about a personal relationship with God. It really is about the ummah acquiring political and military power. The modern jihadist age really began in 1928. The rise in jihadism began nearly two decades before the state of Israel ever existed, and it had nothing to do with US foreign policy as we really had none and no presence there in 1928 so there go the usual scapegoats. What caused it? Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. Ataturk recognized (correctly) that the fusion of mosque and state had been the main reason for the Ottoman empire perpetually being the “sick man” of Europe and ultimately causing it’s loss in WWI. So he set out to create a modern secular state.
This infuriated other Muslims, such as Hasan al Banna in Egypt. Stripped of its military and political power Islam is not Islam. So he founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the original modern Islamic terrorist organization. One might think it’s not, but for most of it’s history it has been and still is classified as one in most Muslim countries. Hamas is simply its Gazan branch, so the MB isn’t against terrorism when it suits its purpose. Sayyid Qutb, one of the MB’s earliest members wrote several books, mostly in prision before he was executed for what we’d call terrorism charges, that are the “intellectual” basis behind the ideologies of groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. And, of course, the MB.
I tend to regard Islam as much less of a religion than you do because while the prophet supposedly died in 632, and Jerusalem fell to the Arabs in 637, and there were other early conquests as well, there’s no archeological, numismatic, or documentary evidince of anything called Islam. Which is strange if these conquests were prompted by religious zeal. The people who were conquered were educated, and wrote about these people. They called them Saracens, Ishmaelites, Hagarites, but never Muslims. They built Masjids, or Mosques, but Masjid simply means a place of prostration and the Arab pagans had called their temples the same thing since time immemorial. Interestingly the qibla or direction of prayer invariably was toward Petra, never Mecca, until 722ad. It wasn’t until 822ad until all the Masjids faced toward Mecca. If the traditional historical narrative was remotely true, that the qibla was standardized while the prophet we think was a 7th century Meccan was still alive, this is impossible.
The conquered didn’t begin to hear about somebody named Muhammad or a holy book named the Quran until about 690, when the first archeological and numismatic evidence began to appear. Islam appears to be the brainchild of the 5th Umayyad Caliph, Caliph abd-al-Malik ibn Marwan. The Byzantines had their Eastern Orthodox Christianity and the Persians had their Zoroastrianism and abd-al-Malik ibn Marwan decided he needed a religion to hold an empire together too. The process of creating Islam took generations and Muhammad (actually not a name but a title meaning the praised one, and there are pre-Islamic coins with the title but with a figure holding a cross) of the ahadith began to develop. A history was written and then cast back two centuries to the death of the mythic Muhammad.
All the evidence indicates the traditionally accepted historical narrative is not at all accurate, and it was a religion developed over time, very much for a purpose.
Separate the Politics of Islam from the Religion of Islam. If it is impossible, all the better.
So much friction for such an easy Executive Order, Trum. Or did all these Americans think being in DC and the White House would make it easy to win over the Leftist alliance and their Islamic Jihad allies… what naive mortals they would be then.
See nothing wrong with outright religious discrimination. If some crazy destructive cult declared itself a religion, does it mean we can not criticize it or suppress its spreading? Nazi could do that. Communists could do that. And Islam is no better than Nazi ideology in their aspiration of global military conquest and subjugation or killing all “infidels”.