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Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order

197 points by ENOTTY 10y ago

Oletros 10y ago
It is astonishing that people with an already legal card to work in the US and living there are banned from entering the country.
deleted 10y ago
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NTDF9 10y ago
Two questions: 1. What is the difference between elected dictatorship and democracy? 2. Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? This president and how elections are held in this country are a joke. So much for democratic process and respect for the office.
- a_humean 10y ago
  1) If I had to guess you are conflating two things when you say democracy. When people say 'democracy' in western countries they are usually referring to a particular form of democracy: liberal representative democracy, or also occasionally refereed to as constitutional democracy. Its quite possible to have illiberal democracies with some contemporary illiberal democracies being Egypt, Russia, Philippines, and increasingly Turkey. Democracy, in either its representative or direct form doesn't guarantee liberal values such as due process, freedom of the press, and formal or informal political oppositions. A population can keep willing electing a dictator and that dictator could even be popular, but that political system would not be a 'democracy' as you might normally recognise; it will espouse none of the liberal values that places like the UK and the US typically expect.
  - x0137294744532 10y ago
    Democracy is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body. If basic human rights aren't guaranteed by the government, citizens may not be able to exercise their power. Other actors may therefore rule and govern. As such, authoritarian regimes that denies such rights to its citizens can't be called democracies.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  >What is the difference between elected dictatorship and democracy? In countries where elected dictators rule you can vote for anyone you want, as long as its the dictator. >Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? This president and how elections are held in this country are a joke. So much for democratic process and respect for the office. This statement only holds water if you'd feel that same way if your preferred candidate won.
  - NTDF9 10y ago
    >> This statement only holds water if you'd feel that same way if your preferred candidate won. The fact that a bumbling idiot (apologies for my language)can become the leader of a country, fill the white house with 'swamp' leaders and within ONE WEEK sign so many executive orders and actions: - without studying the history of why things are the way they are - without appropriate counsel of stakeholders - without any repercussions for such actions (no checks and balances provided by democratic systems) I think my statement holds water regardless of who got elected president.
    - komerdoor 10y ago
      Obama also signed many executive orders in his first week. He set the precedent. >> - without studying the history of why things are the way they are In this case. Studying history about immigration from certain countries? >> - without appropriate counsel of stakeholders Who decides what is appropriate? >> - without any repercussions for such actions (no checks and balances provided by democratic systems) Chosen for by the US democratic system and exactly done as promised.
  - mickronome 10y ago
    The definition of what constitutes a democracy reaches far beyond 'majority rule' and having a voting process. I'm not going to go into detail here as there are multiple easily found primary sources on the subject.
- pfortuny 10y ago
  Executive orders are quite limited in their scope although they may be very harmful. They are not laws and can certainly be illegal and hence repelled.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > They are not laws and can certainly be illegal Turns out, that the specific Immigration Trump order is illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Well, but how is it not democratic? Didn't Trump say many times he'd do exactly this, and he won? Arguably executive orders should not exist, nor should a powerful President. The Swiss system of a rapidly rotating presidency and strong "state rights" seems preferable to me. But the USA has strong elected Presidents and I never saw any American seriously challenge that setup, I hear more talk of states seceding than I see talk of changing the constitution to limit the power of the POTUS. So I don't see your point. The people were given a (fairly crappy) choice, made it, now their preferences are being implemented. That's democracy. Don't get me wrong. I think locking people who live in America out of the country because they happened to be on vacation at the time is outrageous, stunningly stupid. But maybe if prior generations of politicians had been more responsive to anti-Muslim sentiment things wouldn't have got so extreme now.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - JshWright 10y ago
    This was not the preference of "the people". It was the preference of the the (narrow) preference of the voters in a handful of states important in the Electoral College process.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      Wow... Apparently I shouldn't post before coffee. That second sentence went completely off the rails there.
  - jbmorgado 10y ago
    "Well, but how is it not democratic?" It's quite simple, it's not democratic in the sense that the majority of the population voted for another candidate, but in the end Trump got elected. Final ballot count: Hilary: 65,844,610 votes Trump: 62,979,636 votes Now, I understand these are the electoral rules in the USA and I'm not saying Trump won unfairly, but he certainly didn't win democratically since the majority of voters didn't want him there.
- joefreeman 10y ago
  The Dictator's Handbook is a great book if you're interested in the difference between autocracies and democracies. Also, CGP Grey's 'The Rules for Rulers' video is a good intro if you only have 20 mins -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
- maxerickson 10y ago
  2. Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? The people screaming that before this will mostly be proud of this action. The number of refugees the US had taken from Syria was already pathetic. Stopping taking any is straight up evil.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  The people who actually supported Trump are likely pleased with how things are going. He's doing exactly the sorts of things he said he would do. In the US, the President does have a pretty crazy amount of power, and recent Presidents have all expanded that power, with Congress's and the Supreme Court's assent most of the time. So now we get a President with no respect for the office or anything, which is exactly how he campaigned, and he's going to abuse that power as much as he can. It's truly frightening. As for democracy, this election actually wasn't an example of it. Millions more voters voted against Trump. The US Presidential election system is obviously broken. It was obviously a ridiculous system before the elections of 2000 and 2016 proved that it was. Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. These things are by design. They were built to be safeguards against democracy run amok. But now the GOP has figured out how to make those safeguards work against the country. It's going to get ugly. It could happen really fast. I'm genuinely scared about the future of the US and the world.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > These things are by design. And this is why, I'm of the opinion that the design needs to be changed.
  - shard972 10y ago
    > Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. How is the senate undemocratic? Isn't it the same as pretty much every other western democracy? I know it pretty much mirrors what we have in Australia except that we have a lot less states.
    - dekhn 10y ago
      The Senate isn't inherently undemocratic, but it's not population-representative. It gives an effective psuedocount of 2 to each state, regardless of its population. For states with very little population (think Wyoming compared to California) it gives them a distinct additional voting strength that is not population proportional representative.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tristanj 10y ago
Assuming the executive order holds up, In the best case they will be allowed to reenter the U.S. after 90 days. The executive order suspends immigrant and nonimmigrant entry for only 90 days for people from specific countries not on a Diplomatic, NATO, UN, or International Organization staff visa.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  Of course, the 90 days is there to give them time to come up with a more permanent policy, which will as likely as not be worse. If any terror attacks happen in that period, they will turn the screws even harder.
- audeyisaacs 10y ago
  I suspect existing visa/GC holders will be allowed back in quickly once Tillerson is confirmed(better than 90 days). Not that that would mitigate how phenomenally short sighted and stupid the EO was.
- gotchange 10y ago
  This suspension could be renewed very easily and even extended to other countries. There's a report on NYT [0] which fielded questions to Iranian officials and politicians looking for their reaction to this EO and they made it very clear that they won't share any sensitive info about their citizens with the US admin rendering them to be the most likely candidate to be permanently banned from entering the US esp. when taking into account that they top the list of those seven countries in terms of visa holders in 2015. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/middleeast/trump-visa-muslim-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/middleeast/trump-vi...
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > This suspension could be renewed very easily and even extended to other countries Well, it seems that the current execute order is illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...
ploggingdev 10y ago
It's surprising that countries such as Canada, Australia and EU nations are not making any attempt to lure tech companies and students from countries affected by the executive orders. The US is literally leaving some of the best students, researchers and highly qualified employees out in the cold.
- grey-area 10y ago
  In the long term, if this madness persists, of course they will. Companies and skilled individuals are transnational now, and if you try to shut them in or make travel impossible, they'll just leave and set up somewhere else, or never come and found new companies in the first place. I think Trump and his supporters are playing by an outdated rule book and think they can turn the clock back on globalisation and force companies and people to stay within their borders however uncomfortable he makes it. There is a very similar dynamic going on with Brexit in the UK, but this will take years or decades to play out.
  - blibble 10y ago
    > There is a very similar dynamic going on with Brexit in the UK the situation in the UK is very different, the political class are still entrenched and not going anywhere, whereas the US seems to be having a clean sweep Theresa May's position that the UK is still open to globalism and wants to sign as many free trade agreements, and reduce barriers to trade as far as possible as the UK leaves the EU.
    - grey-area 10y ago
      On the contrary, I think the situation in the UK is very similar - nationalism and patriotism are being exploited to sell people a story of immigrants taking their jobs, lowering wages and causing crime. It's an old story but entirely false. Almost all the tech leaders in the US today are immigrants - e.g. Musk, Ellison, Brin, Yang, Bell, Omidyar. Even Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant. As to Trump being a clean sweep, there's nothing clean about his cabinet or advisors - he has one of the most traditional, male, rich, white cabinets in recent history and even includes family in his inner circle and in meetings. I don't think it's clean in any sense, neither new nor free of corruption.
dcip6s 10y ago
For any Americans reading this, how does it feel right now to have Trump as your leader give what he's enacted in the last week?
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  Horrible. I'm American, but I don't live there. This stuff makes me worry about family back 'home' - and whether I'll be able to get back out again. Do I risk not seeing my spouse or do I hold out on visiting family? My spouse, who is not American, refuses to go back with me if I do. Edit: Some things I thought of after I hit send: I realize this may be unfounded, but things are so... unsure ... right now that I don't trust the government at all. In addition, I'm relying on news and it looks pretty dire. This looks like the sort of policies that American's used to laugh at.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again. It is sad that many illegal immigrants will be deported, but if we provide a path to citizenship, it sends a message to others thinking about coming illegally that if you come and wait long enough, you'll gain citizenship. That's a dangerous message in my opinion.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again." Or, you know, we'll just import whatever it is for 2 cents more instead of paying people to do it. Unless you start to make it artificially expensive to do that through tariffs. In which case, you are essentially trying to prop up the entire economy on a house of cards. Which is what got us into a mess in the first place. You can't build a sustainable economy on pretending things aren't actually cheap and that people aren't willing to get paid next to nothing to do them. It's the same thinking that, for example has us building m1 abrams tanks that we toss in the desert, never to be used again, because "these people need jobs", despite the military not actually wanting to build them anymore and desperately trying to get congress to let them cancel it. In the best case, this kind of silliness lasts until things get automated. In most cases, this kind of silliness lasts a lot shorter time period than that because your economy is not competitive with others who aren't pretending (IE China, et al). So unless step 2 of this master plan is "somehow completely isolate ourselves from the rest of the world while making tons of money, ..."
notpc 10y ago
Great. It's about time that our immigration policy served our own self interests again. Taking people from the Middle East is a security nightmare and a cultural disaster. I don't want my country to be like France or the UK with burkas and honor killings everywhere. Or massive populations that are sympathetic with terrorists. Immigration is about serving Anerica's interests, not the interests of those who would come here.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Well, you'll reap what you sow. The whole reason Trump is doing all these things by EO is because he urgently needs a crisis during which he can be the strongman. Given that the USA is in fine shape (despite fearmongering to the contrary) his first order of battle is to provide said crisis. Putin could not have picked a better guy to lead his 'divide and conquer' strategy, give it a few weeks, months or years and then come back to read your comment here and try not to feel very foolish. I wish you best of luck with the aftermath of all this, one thing is for sure: America will not be any 'greater' than it was before Trump became president and mostly likely will be a lot less great. America's enemies will be that much stronger by having diminished their main foe. If I'd be living in Ukraine, Lithuania or Latvia I'd be quite worried about what happens next.
  - notpc 10y ago
    I'm sure it's the Europeans who feel very foolish right now, having taken in millions of refugees who don't share their values. Not gonna happen here folks. You're the one who will be shocked when Trump wins in a landslide in 2020.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Yes, god forbid we'd have some humanity. And I didn't notice America picking up its share of the refugees from countries where America wages war before this EO so I'm not really sure what you're getting at. The previous world war caused millions of people to be uprooted from their homes and to depend on the charity and hospitality of places that did not 'share their values' and yet it worked out fine in the long run.
geomark 10y ago
Are there any noises about coming capital controls on foreign remittances? Seems like a logical next step to enforce the lock-out of foreigners and lock-in of assets.
- gotchange 10y ago
  Would this actually be legal? I think that there are international agreements and treaties that ban such draconian and vindictive measures.
  - geomark 10y ago
    I don't know the legalities of it. But the government hasn't been bothered by legalities in many things for quite some time.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    So then the first step just has to be to withdraw from those treaties (or abrogate them if they are feeling spunky).
sasanrose 10y ago
I seriously doubt the intention of people behind this order has anything to do with security and safety of US citizens. In fact from my point of view, looking at the list of the countries which are banned you can see they could not care less about US citizens. For instance, for crying out load, 15 out of 19 hijackers involved in 9/11 were Saudi citizens. But why Saudi Arabia is not in the list? This is just a game of politics.
- XorNot 10y ago
  No country on that list has had a national commit an act of terror on US soil since 1975 or so. Nor do any of them have Trump brand hotels in them.
  - yokisan 10y ago
    > No country on that list has had a national commit an act of terror on US soil since 1975 or so. See? It's working already!
    - haikuginger 10y ago
      He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
- dghf 10y ago
  And the other four were from Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE, also not on the list. Yet the EO starts by using the September 11 attacks as an example of the consequences of not vetting foreign nationals thoroughly.
- gotchange 10y ago
  I am not a Trump fan. On the contrary, I'm more one of his biggest opponents of him and ALL what he stands for but the list of countries banned from entering the US and referenced in the text in his EO -- 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12)--[0] is compiled by the SoS before him coming in office. He's just riding on the coattails of former admins to expand the scope of the restrictions and sanctions imposed by them. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1187 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1187
gotchange 10y ago
I don't think that this EO is applied to holders of valid green cards in the US but definitely people on visas like H1B are definitely to be affected but I think that a company of the size of Google could make some arrangements as a quick remedial to situation by transferring some to other countries where they have operations to work from there till they figure out how to handle this situation going forward.
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  Applies to all aliens, which includes GC holders: According to NY Daily News: "Within hours of President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration from Muslim countries, green card and visa holders were already being blocked from getting on flights to the U.S." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-order-blocks-green-card-visa-holders-airports-article-1.2957910 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-order-blocks-...
  - gotchange 10y ago
    I have read the full text of the EO and I couldn't find any reference to this applied to GC holders. Can you please point me to the paragraph or item in the EO where it mentions this?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure that entry using a Green Card is an "Immigration Benefit".
      - gotchange 10y ago
        Yeah issuing/renewing a GC constitutes an "Immigration Benefit" but denying the entry of a GC holder should not be covered by this EO. DISCLAIMER: Not a lawyer or even paralegal. Take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt.
        maxerickson 10y ago
hartator 10y ago
Don't forget the initial executive order was signed by Obama. Banning dual nationals from these countries to use the Visa Waiver Program.
- Jabbles 10y ago
  Could you explain in more detail please?
  - hartator 10y ago
    Ref: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-transportation/2015/12/house-takes-on-visa-waiver-revamp-with-obamas-backing-honeymoonins-over-time-for-more-transpo-work-aviation-shipping-standards-make-for-tricky-climate-talks-211619 http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-transportation/201...
  - simonbyrne 10y ago
    I believe the parent was referring to [1], which blocked dual nationals of the aforementioned countries from using the visa waiver program if they were eligible under a different nationality (e.g. a dual UK-Iranian national could not enter using the VWP on their UK passport). However it was an act of congress, not an executive order, though it was supported and signed by the former president. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/iranian-americans-visa-regulations-waiver-programme-us-immigration https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/iranian-amer...
- mikeash 10y ago
  Requiring people to get a visa is rather different from banning people who already have one.
_callcc 10y ago
We should not be banning our Kurdish comrades!

197 points by ENOTTY 10y ago

It is astonishing that people with an already legal card to work in the US and living there are banned from entering the country.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

NTDF9 10y ago

Two questions: 1. What is the difference between elected dictatorship and democracy? 2. Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? This president and how elections are held in this country are a joke. So much for democratic process and respect for the office.

a_humean 10y ago
1) If I had to guess you are conflating two things when you say democracy. When people say 'democracy' in western countries they are usually referring to a particular form of democracy: liberal representative democracy, or also occasionally refereed to as constitutional democracy. Its quite possible to have illiberal democracies with some contemporary illiberal democracies being Egypt, Russia, Philippines, and increasingly Turkey. Democracy, in either its representative or direct form doesn't guarantee liberal values such as due process, freedom of the press, and formal or informal political oppositions. A population can keep willing electing a dictator and that dictator could even be popular, but that political system would not be a 'democracy' as you might normally recognise; it will espouse none of the liberal values that places like the UK and the US typically expect.
- x0137294744532 10y ago
  Democracy is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body. If basic human rights aren't guaranteed by the government, citizens may not be able to exercise their power. Other actors may therefore rule and govern. As such, authoritarian regimes that denies such rights to its citizens can't be called democracies.
cmdrfred 10y ago
>What is the difference between elected dictatorship and democracy? In countries where elected dictators rule you can vote for anyone you want, as long as its the dictator. >Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? This president and how elections are held in this country are a joke. So much for democratic process and respect for the office. This statement only holds water if you'd feel that same way if your preferred candidate won.
- NTDF9 10y ago
  >> This statement only holds water if you'd feel that same way if your preferred candidate won. The fact that a bumbling idiot (apologies for my language)can become the leader of a country, fill the white house with 'swamp' leaders and within ONE WEEK sign so many executive orders and actions: - without studying the history of why things are the way they are - without appropriate counsel of stakeholders - without any repercussions for such actions (no checks and balances provided by democratic systems) I think my statement holds water regardless of who got elected president.
  - komerdoor 10y ago
    Obama also signed many executive orders in his first week. He set the precedent. >> - without studying the history of why things are the way they are In this case. Studying history about immigration from certain countries? >> - without appropriate counsel of stakeholders Who decides what is appropriate? >> - without any repercussions for such actions (no checks and balances provided by democratic systems) Chosen for by the US democratic system and exactly done as promised.
- mickronome 10y ago
  The definition of what constitutes a democracy reaches far beyond 'majority rule' and having a voting process. I'm not going to go into detail here as there are multiple easily found primary sources on the subject.
pfortuny 10y ago
Executive orders are quite limited in their scope although they may be very harmful. They are not laws and can certainly be illegal and hence repelled.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > They are not laws and can certainly be illegal Turns out, that the specific Immigration Trump order is illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zigzigzag 10y ago
Well, but how is it not democratic? Didn't Trump say many times he'd do exactly this, and he won? Arguably executive orders should not exist, nor should a powerful President. The Swiss system of a rapidly rotating presidency and strong "state rights" seems preferable to me. But the USA has strong elected Presidents and I never saw any American seriously challenge that setup, I hear more talk of states seceding than I see talk of changing the constitution to limit the power of the POTUS. So I don't see your point. The people were given a (fairly crappy) choice, made it, now their preferences are being implemented. That's democracy. Don't get me wrong. I think locking people who live in America out of the country because they happened to be on vacation at the time is outrageous, stunningly stupid. But maybe if prior generations of politicians had been more responsive to anti-Muslim sentiment things wouldn't have got so extreme now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- JshWright 10y ago
  This was not the preference of "the people". It was the preference of the the (narrow) preference of the voters in a handful of states important in the Electoral College process.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    Wow... Apparently I shouldn't post before coffee. That second sentence went completely off the rails there.
- jbmorgado 10y ago
  "Well, but how is it not democratic?" It's quite simple, it's not democratic in the sense that the majority of the population voted for another candidate, but in the end Trump got elected. Final ballot count: Hilary: 65,844,610 votes Trump: 62,979,636 votes Now, I understand these are the electoral rules in the USA and I'm not saying Trump won unfairly, but he certainly didn't win democratically since the majority of voters didn't want him there.
joefreeman 10y ago
The Dictator's Handbook is a great book if you're interested in the difference between autocracies and democracies. Also, CGP Grey's 'The Rules for Rulers' video is a good intro if you only have 20 mins -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
maxerickson 10y ago
2. Will Americans stop screaming 'Murica', 'We are number 1' from now? The people screaming that before this will mostly be proud of this action. The number of refugees the US had taken from Syria was already pathetic. Stopping taking any is straight up evil.
skywhopper 10y ago
The people who actually supported Trump are likely pleased with how things are going. He's doing exactly the sorts of things he said he would do. In the US, the President does have a pretty crazy amount of power, and recent Presidents have all expanded that power, with Congress's and the Supreme Court's assent most of the time. So now we get a President with no respect for the office or anything, which is exactly how he campaigned, and he's going to abuse that power as much as he can. It's truly frightening. As for democracy, this election actually wasn't an example of it. Millions more voters voted against Trump. The US Presidential election system is obviously broken. It was obviously a ridiculous system before the elections of 2000 and 2016 proved that it was. Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. These things are by design. They were built to be safeguards against democracy run amok. But now the GOP has figured out how to make those safeguards work against the country. It's going to get ugly. It could happen really fast. I'm genuinely scared about the future of the US and the world.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > These things are by design. And this is why, I'm of the opinion that the design needs to be changed.
- shard972 10y ago
  > Believe me, most Americans agree with you that our elections have become a joke. Congressional districts have been redesigned in the past 10 years to give Republicans a huge unnatural advantage in the House of Representatives. And the US Constitution itself gave us the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College. How is the senate undemocratic? Isn't it the same as pretty much every other western democracy? I know it pretty much mirrors what we have in Australia except that we have a lot less states.
  - dekhn 10y ago
    The Senate isn't inherently undemocratic, but it's not population-representative. It gives an effective psuedocount of 2 to each state, regardless of its population. For states with very little population (think Wyoming compared to California) it gives them a distinct additional voting strength that is not population proportional representative.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

tristanj 10y ago

Assuming the executive order holds up, In the best case they will be allowed to reenter the U.S. after 90 days. The executive order suspends immigrant and nonimmigrant entry for only 90 days for people from specific countries not on a Diplomatic, NATO, UN, or International Organization staff visa.

skywhopper 10y ago
Of course, the 90 days is there to give them time to come up with a more permanent policy, which will as likely as not be worse. If any terror attacks happen in that period, they will turn the screws even harder.
audeyisaacs 10y ago
I suspect existing visa/GC holders will be allowed back in quickly once Tillerson is confirmed(better than 90 days). Not that that would mitigate how phenomenally short sighted and stupid the EO was.
gotchange 10y ago
This suspension could be renewed very easily and even extended to other countries. There's a report on NYT [0] which fielded questions to Iranian officials and politicians looking for their reaction to this EO and they made it very clear that they won't share any sensitive info about their citizens with the US admin rendering them to be the most likely candidate to be permanently banned from entering the US esp. when taking into account that they top the list of those seven countries in terms of visa holders in 2015. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/middleeast/trump-visa-muslim-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/middleeast/trump-vi...
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > This suspension could be renewed very easily and even extended to other countries Well, it seems that the current execute order is illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...

ploggingdev 10y ago

It's surprising that countries such as Canada, Australia and EU nations are not making any attempt to lure tech companies and students from countries affected by the executive orders. The US is literally leaving some of the best students, researchers and highly qualified employees out in the cold.

grey-area 10y ago
In the long term, if this madness persists, of course they will. Companies and skilled individuals are transnational now, and if you try to shut them in or make travel impossible, they'll just leave and set up somewhere else, or never come and found new companies in the first place. I think Trump and his supporters are playing by an outdated rule book and think they can turn the clock back on globalisation and force companies and people to stay within their borders however uncomfortable he makes it. There is a very similar dynamic going on with Brexit in the UK, but this will take years or decades to play out.
- blibble 10y ago
  > There is a very similar dynamic going on with Brexit in the UK the situation in the UK is very different, the political class are still entrenched and not going anywhere, whereas the US seems to be having a clean sweep Theresa May's position that the UK is still open to globalism and wants to sign as many free trade agreements, and reduce barriers to trade as far as possible as the UK leaves the EU.
  - grey-area 10y ago
    On the contrary, I think the situation in the UK is very similar - nationalism and patriotism are being exploited to sell people a story of immigrants taking their jobs, lowering wages and causing crime. It's an old story but entirely false. Almost all the tech leaders in the US today are immigrants - e.g. Musk, Ellison, Brin, Yang, Bell, Omidyar. Even Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant. As to Trump being a clean sweep, there's nothing clean about his cabinet or advisors - he has one of the most traditional, male, rich, white cabinets in recent history and even includes family in his inner circle and in meetings. I don't think it's clean in any sense, neither new nor free of corruption.

dcip6s 10y ago

For any Americans reading this, how does it feel right now to have Trump as your leader give what he's enacted in the last week?

Broken_Hippo 10y ago
Horrible. I'm American, but I don't live there. This stuff makes me worry about family back 'home' - and whether I'll be able to get back out again. Do I risk not seeing my spouse or do I hold out on visiting family? My spouse, who is not American, refuses to go back with me if I do. Edit: Some things I thought of after I hit send: I realize this may be unfounded, but things are so... unsure ... right now that I don't trust the government at all. In addition, I'm relying on news and it looks pretty dire. This looks like the sort of policies that American's used to laugh at.
dukeluke 10y ago
Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again. It is sad that many illegal immigrants will be deported, but if we provide a path to citizenship, it sends a message to others thinking about coming illegally that if you come and wait long enough, you'll gain citizenship. That's a dangerous message in my opinion.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again." Or, you know, we'll just import whatever it is for 2 cents more instead of paying people to do it. Unless you start to make it artificially expensive to do that through tariffs. In which case, you are essentially trying to prop up the entire economy on a house of cards. Which is what got us into a mess in the first place. You can't build a sustainable economy on pretending things aren't actually cheap and that people aren't willing to get paid next to nothing to do them. It's the same thinking that, for example has us building m1 abrams tanks that we toss in the desert, never to be used again, because "these people need jobs", despite the military not actually wanting to build them anymore and desperately trying to get congress to let them cancel it. In the best case, this kind of silliness lasts until things get automated. In most cases, this kind of silliness lasts a lot shorter time period than that because your economy is not competitive with others who aren't pretending (IE China, et al). So unless step 2 of this master plan is "somehow completely isolate ourselves from the rest of the world while making tons of money, ..."

notpc 10y ago

Great. It's about time that our immigration policy served our own self interests again. Taking people from the Middle East is a security nightmare and a cultural disaster. I don't want my country to be like France or the UK with burkas and honor killings everywhere. Or massive populations that are sympathetic with terrorists. Immigration is about serving Anerica's interests, not the interests of those who would come here.

jacquesm 10y ago
Well, you'll reap what you sow. The whole reason Trump is doing all these things by EO is because he urgently needs a crisis during which he can be the strongman. Given that the USA is in fine shape (despite fearmongering to the contrary) his first order of battle is to provide said crisis. Putin could not have picked a better guy to lead his 'divide and conquer' strategy, give it a few weeks, months or years and then come back to read your comment here and try not to feel very foolish. I wish you best of luck with the aftermath of all this, one thing is for sure: America will not be any 'greater' than it was before Trump became president and mostly likely will be a lot less great. America's enemies will be that much stronger by having diminished their main foe. If I'd be living in Ukraine, Lithuania or Latvia I'd be quite worried about what happens next.
- notpc 10y ago
  I'm sure it's the Europeans who feel very foolish right now, having taken in millions of refugees who don't share their values. Not gonna happen here folks. You're the one who will be shocked when Trump wins in a landslide in 2020.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Yes, god forbid we'd have some humanity. And I didn't notice America picking up its share of the refugees from countries where America wages war before this EO so I'm not really sure what you're getting at. The previous world war caused millions of people to be uprooted from their homes and to depend on the charity and hospitality of places that did not 'share their values' and yet it worked out fine in the long run.

geomark 10y ago

Are there any noises about coming capital controls on foreign remittances? Seems like a logical next step to enforce the lock-out of foreigners and lock-in of assets.

gotchange 10y ago
Would this actually be legal? I think that there are international agreements and treaties that ban such draconian and vindictive measures.
- geomark 10y ago
  I don't know the legalities of it. But the government hasn't been bothered by legalities in many things for quite some time.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  So then the first step just has to be to withdraw from those treaties (or abrogate them if they are feeling spunky).

sasanrose 10y ago

I seriously doubt the intention of people behind this order has anything to do with security and safety of US citizens. In fact from my point of view, looking at the list of the countries which are banned you can see they could not care less about US citizens. For instance, for crying out load, 15 out of 19 hijackers involved in 9/11 were Saudi citizens. But why Saudi Arabia is not in the list? This is just a game of politics.

XorNot 10y ago
No country on that list has had a national commit an act of terror on US soil since 1975 or so. Nor do any of them have Trump brand hotels in them.
- yokisan 10y ago
  > No country on that list has had a national commit an act of terror on US soil since 1975 or so. See? It's working already!
  - haikuginger 10y ago
    He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
dghf 10y ago
And the other four were from Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE, also not on the list. Yet the EO starts by using the September 11 attacks as an example of the consequences of not vetting foreign nationals thoroughly.
gotchange 10y ago
I am not a Trump fan. On the contrary, I'm more one of his biggest opponents of him and ALL what he stands for but the list of countries banned from entering the US and referenced in the text in his EO -- 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12)--[0] is compiled by the SoS before him coming in office. He's just riding on the coattails of former admins to expand the scope of the restrictions and sanctions imposed by them. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1187 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1187

gotchange 10y ago

I don't think that this EO is applied to holders of valid green cards in the US but definitely people on visas like H1B are definitely to be affected but I think that a company of the size of Google could make some arrangements as a quick remedial to situation by transferring some to other countries where they have operations to work from there till they figure out how to handle this situation going forward.

TuringNYC 10y ago
Applies to all aliens, which includes GC holders: According to NY Daily News: "Within hours of President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration from Muslim countries, green card and visa holders were already being blocked from getting on flights to the U.S." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-order-blocks-green-card-visa-holders-airports-article-1.2957910 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-order-blocks-...
- gotchange 10y ago
  I have read the full text of the EO and I couldn't find any reference to this applied to GC holders. Can you please point me to the paragraph or item in the EO where it mentions this?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that entry using a Green Card is an "Immigration Benefit".
    - gotchange 10y ago
      Yeah issuing/renewing a GC constitutes an "Immigration Benefit" but denying the entry of a GC holder should not be covered by this EO. DISCLAIMER: Not a lawyer or even paralegal. Take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt.
      - maxerickson 10y ago

hartator 10y ago

Don't forget the initial executive order was signed by Obama. Banning dual nationals from these countries to use the Visa Waiver Program.

Jabbles 10y ago
Could you explain in more detail please?
- hartator 10y ago
  Ref: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-transportation/2015/12/house-takes-on-visa-waiver-revamp-with-obamas-backing-honeymoonins-over-time-for-more-transpo-work-aviation-shipping-standards-make-for-tricky-climate-talks-211619 http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-transportation/201...
- simonbyrne 10y ago
  I believe the parent was referring to [1], which blocked dual nationals of the aforementioned countries from using the visa waiver program if they were eligible under a different nationality (e.g. a dual UK-Iranian national could not enter using the VWP on their UK passport). However it was an act of congress, not an executive order, though it was supported and signed by the former president. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/iranian-americans-visa-regulations-waiver-programme-us-immigration https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/iranian-amer...
mikeash 10y ago
Requiring people to get a visa is rather different from banning people who already have one.

_callcc 10y ago

We should not be banning our Kurdish comrades!