I started out this blog as a way to share breezy little essays about things of interest to me: The Archers, the wonders of Britain, Steinbeck’s superb use of structure to convey meaning, and even how not to raise your kids. Lately, I’ve been applying the principles that I taught to my erstwhile Critical Thinking classes to the various idiocies spouted off by the current regime, mostly because I find its total disregard of logic and intellectual honesty to be beyond outrageous. The voice I’ve been adopting in these latter essayettes has been pedantic sarcasm on steroids—as if I have been channeling a rabid Mr. Peabody—all in defense of sound reasoning and honest argumentation.
However, today I find that neither voice suffices to address today’s topic. Trump’s Executive Order on “Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”[1] is so grossly wrong on so many levels, that the only justifiable response to it is a fierce moral outrage. The New York Times provides a nice synopsis of the order:
President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries [Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen]. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-muslim-executive-order-trump.html?ribbon-ad-idx=11&src=trending&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Politics&action=swipe®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article
Frankly, documenting all of the many ways that Trump has offended even the most lax standards of decency is too heavy a load for this little bagatelle of a blog to carry. But let me run down a few.
First, the class of people targeted by Trump’s pernicious decree are amongst the most miserable of the miserable. A refugee does not choose to leave his or her home country: under Department of Homeland Security (presumably those who would know best who constitutes a threat to the nation), a refugee is “a person who has fled his or her country of origin because of past persecution or a fear of future persecution based upon race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group (https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/refugees/questions-answers-refugees ).” I think that the operative word to focus on here is “fled,” the past tense of “flee,” the first definition of which, appropriately enough for the purpose of this particular essayette, is “1. a : to run away, often from danger or evil : fly <The family fled from the war-torn zone.>b : to hurry toward a place of security <Refugees fled to a neighboring country.> (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flee).”[2] There is nothing voluntary about becoming a refugee. Indeed, the DHS regulations explicitly exclude those who have chosen to leave for economic or other reasons. It is compulsion, not desire, that induces the refugee to leave her native land. Targeting this vulnerable group of people, people who have had to leave behind all they knew and loved, is a despicable act of bullying—even coming from one of history’s all-time great despicable bullies. The fact that he chose to sign the order on Holocaust Remembrance Day is further proof (if any were needed) of Trump’s utter callousness to the suffering of others.
Second, Trump’s stated desire of ensuring “extreme vetting” of refugees in order to “protect the nation” is a straw man made of the shoddiest of materials. Refugees already undergo “extreme vetting”: the State Department undertakes an exhaustive review of each applicant’s claim for refugee status.[3] Typically, the process takes 18 to 24 months to complete,[4] hardly what you could sensibly call a lighthearted decision. How could this vetting possibly be more microscopic? What he calls “extreme vetting” is actually “exclusion.”
Further, Trump is creating a false equivalency between refugees and foreign terrorists. He asserts that refugees are somehow a threat to the country: if we take pity on the miserable, they will inevitably turn around and attack us. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth, according to Trump, it is to have an ungrateful refugee. Yet there is little to back up Trump’s bald assertion. A recent study strongly suggests that in Germany, which has welcomed over a million refugees from the Maghreb, there is “no clear link between refugees and most kinds of crime (http://www.dw.com/en/study-contradicts-efforts-to-link-migrants-to-crime/a-19390414 ).” Indeed, increased numbers in immigration are correlated to decreases in crime overall, not only in Germany (ibid), but even here in the good old U S of A (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0002716212438938).[5] If immigration in general is beneficial to the host nation, how much more so is welcoming refugees, the people who have the greatest motivation to be grateful to their port in the storm?
Additionally, Trump’s particular definition of “foreign terrorist” is so narrowly drawn that it is nothing more than a coded word for “Muslim.” This is made absolutely clear by the fact that exceptions will be considered for members of “religious minorities”—or, as they are commonly referred to, Christians.[6] Trump’s fear, hatred, and fundamental misunderstanding of Islam is well-documented: it is amongst the highest pitched of his many dog whistles.[7] He is blatantly and deliberately targeting members of a particular religion. Perhaps Trump has suffered from a spectacular case of amnesia, because he certainly seems to have forgotten that, just a little over a week before he signed this evil document, he took a pledge to “uphold and defend the Constitution”—including, presumably, the First[8] and the Fourteenth[9] Amendments.
But, purely for the sake of argument, let’s forget all the moral, logical, and constitutional objections that I have raised to the Executive Order. Let’s even forget the possibility that other countries might start taking a long, hard look at US citizens entering their country. Instead, let’s look at the Order’s stated purpose: the protection of the nation. If that were truly Trump’s aim, then it is hard to see how he could have missed the mark by any wider margin. First, one would expect that at least one of the seven countries named in the order to have had citizens involved in terrorist attacks against the United States. However, such is not the case.[10] Not only that, but the refugees who are fleeing those countries are, in fact, the victims of the very violence that Trump is purportedly seeking to curb.[11] In fact, many of the Iraqi refugees now banned from entering the U.S. have been targeted for retribution by ISIS because they aided the U.S. military.[12] How does forsaking the people who aided us in any way make us safer? And what motivation will they have to help us in the future? What position does Trump’s actions put American military and civilian personnel currently in Iraq? The illogic of Trump’s position is more than mind-boggling: it is soul destroying.
And finally, the greatest danger to the nation is the fact that this Order, based as it is in venality, bigotry, and idiocy, is a 24 karat gift to ISIS or any of its ilk. It is not generosity that inspires terrorism. To the contrary, it is the clear injustice of this document that will serve as a clarion call to would-be martyrs, threatening US citizens not only here, but abroad. By acting so foolishly in order to “protect” us, all Trump has done is to place us in even greater danger.
© 2017 D R Miller
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-muslim-executive-order-trump.html?_r=0
[2] How marvelously apt those example sentences are! Bravo, Merriam-Webster. Bravo.
[3] Q. What Kind Of Processing Can I Expect Under The United States Refugee Program?
A. The U.S. Department of State Resettlement Service Centers (RSCs) carry out most of the casework preparation for refugee eligibility interviews. The RSCs pre-screen applicants, help prepare the applications for USCIS, initiate background security checks, and arrange medical examinations for those refugees approved by USCIS.
Following USCIS approval, the processing entity also asks for the names and addresses of any relatives in the United States, for details on the person’s work history and job skills, and for any special educational or medical needs of the refugee and accompanying family members, in order to determine the best resettlement arrangements for the refugee.
The International Organization for Migration generally arranges transportation to the United States on a loan basis. Refugees are expected to repay the cost of their transportation once they are established in the United States. Individual refugees or their relatives may pay for transportation costs in advance. (https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/refugees/questions-answers-refugees )
[4] https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.htm
[5] However, there does appear to be one category of crime that has worryingly increased since the influx of refugees to Germany: crime against refugees.
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/28/trump-immigration-ban-syria-muslims-reaction-lawsuits
[7] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/11/donald-trump-islamophobia-president-161109065355945.html Indeed, Islamophobia is only one of the many traits Trump shares with Vladimir Putin (“In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin one of the Christian right’s favorite international figures (nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/why-the-christian-right-shares-trumps-affection-for-putin.html)”). Putin infamously consolidated his power in Russia through his war on majority- Muslim Chechnya—a war that he justified in response to a “terrorist” attack on a Moscow apartment building that most likely was plotted and carried out by Russian security agents (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-way/transcript/).
[8] “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript).”
[9] “Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv ).”
[10] As this Huffington Post article unequivocally declares in its title: There Have Been No Fatal Terror Attacks In The U.S. By Immigrants From The 7 Banned Muslim Countries ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/no-terror-attacks-muslim-ban-7-countries-trump_us_588b5a1fe4b0230ce61b4b93 ).
[11] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-muslim-ban-immigration-visas-refugees-syria-iraq-terrorism-isis-attacks-most-victims-a7550936.html
[12] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/iraq-kind-phone-call-tells-lot
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