6 ms·

Revised executive order bans travelers from six countries from getting new visas

66 points by Garbage 10y ago

tabeth 10y ago
I don't see the point of these orders. Muslim immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives. [1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w13229.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w13229.pdf [2] https://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-crime-what-research-says https://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-crime-what-research-sa...
- howeyc 10y ago
  These kinds of reactions (the order) are rarely based on logic and sound reasoning.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- simplehuman 10y ago
  Pointing out facts is like bringing a toothpick to a sword fight.
  - unixhero 10y ago
    As you know. Trump has has ended reality; words have no meaning now, and numbers doesn't have meaning either.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2017/03/crony-beliefs.html http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2017/03/crony-beliefs.html
- gambiting 10y ago
  The point is to have someone to point to and blame them for issues. It doesn't matter that the data doesn't actually prove anything here. He's just rallying people behind that idea that America is under attack and everyone should be on alert and ready to accept whatever the government does in order to protect "freedom".
- nerdponx 10y ago
  1) It occupies the news cycle while other freedoms are eroded quietly. 2) Eventually people will be tired of outrage in general, at which point the executive branch can do whatever it wants.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Politics, fear-mongering, "terrorism", promises to his supporters during the campaign.
- t3soro 10y ago
  We don't want more Muslims. Do you understand? Ca suffit.
- defen 10y ago
  > Muslim immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives. That's a non-sequitur, as this order isn't targeted at "Muslim immigrants". Furthermore, the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure. That means that a simple comparison between the two can be misleading. Please note I'm merely pointing out a flaw in your argument, and not taking a side on whether the order is a good or bad idea.
  - Daddy_cat 10y ago
    > as this order isn't targeted at "Muslim immigrants" Not sure whether you're acting naive to prove a point, but the countries represented aren't majority Muslim by accident - they were picked for a specific reason. Not to mention, Trump himself alluded to a "Muslim Ban" with a similar structure before, as did multiple aides. He's run on a platform of xenophobia. It's not a stretch whatsoever to make that point - everyone understands why the poster is labelling it that way. The implication that the person that posted is injecting ideology into that comment is ironic, since willfully choosing to ignore the political context of the ban is just as bad. > the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure Yes, all language does. >not taking a side on whether the order is a good or bad idea You're taking a side by turning a blind eye to the ideological ramifications and context of the ban. "I'm just playing devil's advocate" is always problematic because it purports that injecting something dangerous like this into the conversation "doesn't count".
    - defen 10y ago
      > Not sure whether you're acting naive to prove a point, but the countries represented aren't majority Muslim by accident - they were picked for a specific reason. My point was that there are 50 Muslim-majority countries. So if you want to argue against the ban, argue that visitors / immigrants from those countries commit less crime than "natives", rather than arguing that Muslim immigrants in general commit less crime than natives. >> the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure > Yes, all language does. The point here being that different "native" demographic groups commit crimes at different rates; and I'm guessing it's likely that different "Muslim" immigration groups commit crimes at different rates. e.g. approximately 1% of Chechen immigrants to the USA are terrorist bombers.
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  Currently racism/religion-ism has a greater emotional impact than environment, clean water etc... This gives the media and people a bone to chew on, and something to be satisfied about with each revision, feeling like they are accomplishing something while the Trump administration is gutting the US environmental framework with little opposition.
  - kjcharles 10y ago
    It's not a zero-sum game. By all means raise attention to the environmental issues but being against this does not mean there's no attention being paid to other issues.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  Trump promised in his campaign that he would ban Muslim immigration, because radical Islamic terror. Someone apparently got through to Trump that a Muslim ban wouldn't pass constitutional muster, so the ban was "tailored" as an emergency ban for the purposes of terrorism. If you look at the mass casualty incidents since 9/11, only at best ~50% of them were instigated by immigrants, let alone Muslim immigrants. A leaked DHS report apparently concludes that even most of those immigrants who did commit terrorism were radicalized post-entry, although this should have been the reasonable assumption of anyone who cast a cursory glance at the evidence. The exclusion of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Pakistan, and now Iraq, as well as the inclusion of Iran on the list (Iran's support of terrorism is pretty much limited to proxies whose targets are limited to Middle Eastern governments (including Israel) and have no inclination to carry out attacks in the US or Europe) indicate that the set of targets is chosen less for which countries are liable to produce terrorists and more for which countries the US government doesn't like. As I've pointed out in the past, the number of terrorists who might be stopped by a travel ban like this is probably 0 and maybe as high as 2. The number of people for whom this would be the tipping point in their radicalization is probably between 0 and 10. This may create more terrorism than it catches.
  - nojvek 10y ago
    I just hope students who have come for a legit purpose of studying don't get caught up in the mess. But I've been really giving thought to what I can do as an average citizen to make the slightest change in public policy.
    - jcranmer 10y ago
      They already have. That's why so many universities were outspoken about the ban, and many states filed amici briefs on behalf of the state universities.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      In 2002 many of my classmates from Middle Eastern countries were not able to return after going home for the summer. This is going to create a similar issue for many students.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Make this claim about a place like France with a strait face (Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime). Yes, in the US and Canada immigrants, refugees and Muslims generally assimilate well. Because we have limits and take the best of these groups. But this claim is a bad debate tactic since Muslims commit crimes at a higher rate in many other countries. Now of course part of this is due to rebellious youth who can't integrate into a fairly closed culture, but countries which have taken in large amounts of Muslim immigrants quickly haven't always fared so well...
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    > Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime Substitute "black" for Muslim and this is the basis of a great deal of racist beliefs and policies in the US. The important question isn't who is in prison, and who is committing crimes, but why. Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. Something in the society at large is leading to either higher rates of conviction for the same crimes (the case in the US, harsher punishments for black offenders than whites for the same crimes), or an economic situation that leaves criminal activity as the only apparent or more economically beneficial choice for members of these groups.
    - Mikeb85 10y ago
      And I covered this in my post (last paragraph). It doesn't matter though - witness the rise of ultra-right populism in continental Europe, Brexit and Trump. And crime IS mostly an economic phenomenon, poor expected outcomes in life lead to high crime rates. But there is a link to high migration rates as well (if the economy can't absorb the new workforce quick enough, it leads to problems). The problem is, the moral dilemma ceases to matter when a majority of the population (you can call them dumb, racist, whatever, but they're part of society) votes in someone to 'solve' the problem. There is a point where feelings and morality don't matter as much as practicality.
    - SamReidHughes 10y ago
      > Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. How do you know this? It might. I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality. Also as has been well-discussed here, crime rate differences are still present in non-economic crimes and your attempts to explain the situation fall flat. It's a story you're making up, badly, and to talk about this stuff with that kind of certainty is a bad look. The truth is, we don't know.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  Reason and facts hold no sway over xenophobic ideology. It's purpose is to rally power around the persecution of a scapegoat, just like an archaic religion.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- synicalx 10y ago
  Care to explain the massive increase in crime in Germany then? [1] https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7470/germany-migrants-crime https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7470/germany-migrants-cri...
thepumpkin1979 10y ago
Couldn't find any reference to the name of the countries in this article, although NYT mentions "Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen". https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/travel-ban-muslim-trump.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/travel-ban-mu...
- United857 10y ago
  Basically all the previous countries except Iraq. The Pentagon raised concerns that the previous ban on Iraq hindered many Iraqi citizens (translators etc) who were actually helping the US.
  - misingnoglic 10y ago
    I guess the Pentagon gets what the pentagon wants, meanwhile tons of Iranian students won't be able to continue their research in the USA...
andy_ppp 10y ago
I was under the impression that executive power was only expected to be used when gridlock occurs in The Senate and/or Congress? Is he just allowed to keep issuing more orders every day forever or rather shouldn't the states be very concerned by this centralised power grab? I'm equally concerned by Obama or Bush using these powers, it's not just about Trump.
- eximius 10y ago
  Yes and yes. It is expected that everyone would be concerned and he would be removed from power. But it has become accepted enough that there is not enough outrage to do so only because of abuse of executive orders.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    The law does grant the President wide latitude over immigration matters, so the executive branch is totally within its legal rights to issue orders of this variety. Politically it's another question. Advocates on immigration reform have pointed out for years that the immigration laws are both impractical and unjust, and there's majority agreement about this. but every effort at reform has been stymied by a nativist minority that is opposed to any immigration, which bloc was successfully (albeit unexpectedly) marshaled into a winning majority under the US' rather arcane Electoral College system. As we now see, the political impetus is to a highly militaristic central state, abandoning as many administrative functions as possible and dropping those into the laps of the several states where they will either be burdensome or ignored.
- empath75 10y ago
  The reason that Bush, Obama and Trump get away with it is that congress has been paralyzed for going on 15 years now. They could put a stop to it anytime they want by actually doing their jobs and legislating.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  No, the President can't act just because of gridlock, they have to have a clear authority for each action they take. In the case of immigration, quite a lot of power rests with the president, so the president making changes to immigration policy is nothing unusual.
robbiemitchell 10y ago
Related: "We'll see you in court, 2.0" written by David Cole of the ACLU. You might also be interested in Cole's paper from 2003: "Are Foreign Nationals Entitled to the Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens?" http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1302&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
jlebrech 10y ago
I'm kinda disappoint that the ban is based on country and not whether the individual has negative views towards the Kafir or the USA.
- empath75 10y ago
  According to the leaked dhs report, immigrants don't tend to get radicalized until they've been in the us for years, or their children do. So screening or vetting wouldn't make a significant difference.
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    agreed, they usually come from a secular muslim country and are radicalised when they start going to mosque. maybe creating secular activities for them other than mosque would help them.
    - riyadparvez 10y ago
      I agree. To add more to your point, it would be more worthwhile if the authority and the Muslim community make sure there's no hate preacher in the mosques. As an ex-Muslim living in North America, I find it absolutely ridiculous that some hate preachers, who have been banned in their own countries, are traveling in the Western countries and spreading hatred.
- zhengyi13 10y ago
  As a practical exercise, try coming up with a system that could determine individual views as you suggest, that: 1) isn't trivially avoidable ("are you now, or have you ever been, a Militant Islamist?"), and 2) doesn't rely on extending the surveillance state further.
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    maybe they need teaching about the Quran in a patriotic way.
  - 10y ago
cryoshon 10y ago
cue the trumpettes lining up to babble about how it's necessary. even if you think this policy is necessary, this is still a shitty policy because it doesn't go far enough to satisfy its stated aims in addition to being morally repugnant. you shouldn't support this policy because of how flawed it is. there are plenty of countries that are incubators of islamic terrorism that aren't on the ban. if the goal is to prevent islamic terrorists from abroad committing terror acts here, that's still entirely possible. osama bin laden wouldn't be caught by this ban or the previous one because he was a saudi. think about that for a minute. and now the border patrol / tsa will be even more inspired to make life hell for the law abiding people who are coming here or returning here from abroad from countries not mentioned on the ban. this is killing the usa's tourism industry. this is preventing highly educated people from abroad from coming here to let us make use of their talents. this is an embarrassment. anyways, i challenge any supporters of this policy to defend it here in public. you won't last long.
- VLM 10y ago
  Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit, in other words why is the desire of the elected president believed by some to rank lower than the desire of any random non-citizen human visitor? It seems an incredibly peculiar ranking. Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? Why is the USA one of the countries that is not allowed to have any border controls? Is that, pragmatically, successful? Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? If this regulation or law needs to be repealed because it can be "proven" wrong (where proving amounts to yelling really intimidatingly loud) then why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML or the IRS or a bazillion other laws and regulations which are both more likely to be nonsense and hurting more people?
  - jcranmer 10y ago
metalliqaz 10y ago
Has anyone asked the White House why Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not on that list?
- riyadparvez 10y ago
  This is the question we all should ask. Saudi Arabia is known as terrorism exporter. Why is US administration (both Republicans and Democrats) so reluctant to go after SA?
  - littletimmy 10y ago
    We all know the answer. Saudi Arabia is the chief stabilizer of oil price (and therefore the petrodollar) in the world. Therefore, Saudi Arabia can export all the Wahabism it wants.
ocschwar 10y ago
Well, that is an improvement, as it means our border guards won't get the chance to disgrace the nation by mistreating travelers.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dghughes 10y ago
Does it really matter anymore? US border guards seem to be refusing to let in anyone that fits in the category: brown, accent or Muslim. All three of those you may as well not even try which I say is the no so subtle message. Even today a story on CBC news a woman born in Canada, speaks English denied entry told she needed an immigrant visa not just a visa which is weird an immigrant visa. Her two white friends passed through with no trouble. http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/montreal/canadian-denied-entry-us-immigrant-visa-1.4011202 http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/montreal/canadian-denied-...
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  And the story literally says she was first stopped in December. US border guards have always been assholes, I got detained recently because the border guards are, to put it mildly, idiots (they thought visiting family in the US for the weekend was strange). Remember at one point Canadians used to be able to visit without a passport; that ended long ago. I mean, my solution is to avoid the US whenever possible (never take layovers there, avoid travelling there unless someone really, really wants me to visit), but it is rather annoying to be treated like shit by a country where we're supposed to be able to enter without problems. I've never experienced the same issues travelling to the EU.
  - dghughes 10y ago
    Yes stopped because of a "random check" as stated in the article. She was told to fill out a form her fingerprints were taken then told there was a computer problem and she couldn't enter the US. They came back the next day and were allowed in. But then the latest crossing attempt the border guards asked her why she was stopped in December?! It was the border guards who did it. It's like in grade school a bully grabs your hand and pushes it into your face asking "Why are you hitting yourself?!"
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
More people in the USA die from chocking on improperly chewed food than they do from terrorists. This is getting ridiculous!!!
wheelerwj 10y ago
Say what you will, but Trump is a master manipulator. Session's on Thursday, wiretapping on Saturday, new ban on Monday all being reported on by fake news. We couldn't keep up with this even if we tried. We'd need individual and autonomous teams dedicated to triaging and resolve each of these issues. Who even knows whats really going on in the background.
pasbesoin 10y ago
Here's a concern I don't hear expressed much in all the reporting: The enormous expense in all this. The expense of changes without demonstrable nor explained benefit. The expense of all the CBP officers spending all this time and energy screening and rejecting entrants who manifest NO demonstrable security risk nor connections to persons and organizations of real concern. People ARE talking about Trump spending millions every weekend to go down to Florida. Itself, as I see it, an egocentric, inconsiderate act of self-indulgence. All the more so in the face of his campaign rhetoric. I guess I could also mention the outsided security expenditures for Trump Tower. And here we have the Administration and CBP spending enormous amounts of time and money on a policy that as yet has no direct, rational explanation. It may and probably does have explanation in domestic and international political posturing and manouvering -- one of debatable merit. Effect and merit that SHOULD be better identified, reported, analyzed, and discussed. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COST OF ALL THIS???!!! Once again, "the Right" complains while vastly increasing what they complain about. We'll end up needing another Obama to hopefully clean this up -- or, as to some extent in his case, simply to balance the books. P.S. Today's reporting features a natural Canadian citizen (born and raised there) of Asian heritage that gives her darker skin, being stopped by CBP at the start of a day trip to Vermont, interviewed, and ultimately turned back and told she will have to apply for a visa. Ok, I'm for cost-effective government. What was the bill for this? I'm not particularly in favor of paying for this entirely ineffective action -- on the face of it, entirely unnecessary. Is THIS why I have to give up my ACA health insurance policy? (No subsidy for me, by the way; just, FINALLY, a mandate that allows this older, independent worker to purchase a health insurance policy. Along with laws, such as "no pre-existing conditions", that level the playing field for me vis a vis corporate workers with employer-provided insurance.) I'm following the money, and it smells.

66 points by Garbage 10y ago

I don't see the point of these orders. Muslim immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives. [1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w13229.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w13229.pdf [2] https://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-crime-what-research-says https://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-crime-what-research-sa...

howeyc 10y ago
These kinds of reactions (the order) are rarely based on logic and sound reasoning.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
simplehuman 10y ago
Pointing out facts is like bringing a toothpick to a sword fight.
- unixhero 10y ago
  As you know. Trump has has ended reality; words have no meaning now, and numbers doesn't have meaning either.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2017/03/crony-beliefs.html http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2017/03/crony-beliefs.html
gambiting 10y ago
The point is to have someone to point to and blame them for issues. It doesn't matter that the data doesn't actually prove anything here. He's just rallying people behind that idea that America is under attack and everyone should be on alert and ready to accept whatever the government does in order to protect "freedom".
nerdponx 10y ago
1) It occupies the news cycle while other freedoms are eroded quietly. 2) Eventually people will be tired of outrage in general, at which point the executive branch can do whatever it wants.
Jtsummers 10y ago
Politics, fear-mongering, "terrorism", promises to his supporters during the campaign.
t3soro 10y ago
We don't want more Muslims. Do you understand? Ca suffit.
defen 10y ago
> Muslim immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives. That's a non-sequitur, as this order isn't targeted at "Muslim immigrants". Furthermore, the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure. That means that a simple comparison between the two can be misleading. Please note I'm merely pointing out a flaw in your argument, and not taking a side on whether the order is a good or bad idea.
- Daddy_cat 10y ago
  > as this order isn't targeted at "Muslim immigrants" Not sure whether you're acting naive to prove a point, but the countries represented aren't majority Muslim by accident - they were picked for a specific reason. Not to mention, Trump himself alluded to a "Muslim Ban" with a similar structure before, as did multiple aides. He's run on a platform of xenophobia. It's not a stretch whatsoever to make that point - everyone understands why the poster is labelling it that way. The implication that the person that posted is injecting ideology into that comment is ironic, since willfully choosing to ignore the political context of the ban is just as bad. > the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure Yes, all language does. >not taking a side on whether the order is a good or bad idea You're taking a side by turning a blind eye to the ideological ramifications and context of the ban. "I'm just playing devil's advocate" is always problematic because it purports that injecting something dangerous like this into the conversation "doesn't count".
  - defen 10y ago
    > Not sure whether you're acting naive to prove a point, but the countries represented aren't majority Muslim by accident - they were picked for a specific reason. My point was that there are 50 Muslim-majority countries. So if you want to argue against the ban, argue that visitors / immigrants from those countries commit less crime than "natives", rather than arguing that Muslim immigrants in general commit less crime than natives. >> the categories "Muslim immigrants" and "natives" both contain substructure > Yes, all language does. The point here being that different "native" demographic groups commit crimes at different rates; and I'm guessing it's likely that different "Muslim" immigration groups commit crimes at different rates. e.g. approximately 1% of Chechen immigrants to the USA are terrorist bombers.
dorfsmay 10y ago
Currently racism/religion-ism has a greater emotional impact than environment, clean water etc... This gives the media and people a bone to chew on, and something to be satisfied about with each revision, feeling like they are accomplishing something while the Trump administration is gutting the US environmental framework with little opposition.
- kjcharles 10y ago
  It's not a zero-sum game. By all means raise attention to the environmental issues but being against this does not mean there's no attention being paid to other issues.
jcranmer 10y ago
Trump promised in his campaign that he would ban Muslim immigration, because radical Islamic terror. Someone apparently got through to Trump that a Muslim ban wouldn't pass constitutional muster, so the ban was "tailored" as an emergency ban for the purposes of terrorism. If you look at the mass casualty incidents since 9/11, only at best ~50% of them were instigated by immigrants, let alone Muslim immigrants. A leaked DHS report apparently concludes that even most of those immigrants who did commit terrorism were radicalized post-entry, although this should have been the reasonable assumption of anyone who cast a cursory glance at the evidence. The exclusion of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Pakistan, and now Iraq, as well as the inclusion of Iran on the list (Iran's support of terrorism is pretty much limited to proxies whose targets are limited to Middle Eastern governments (including Israel) and have no inclination to carry out attacks in the US or Europe) indicate that the set of targets is chosen less for which countries are liable to produce terrorists and more for which countries the US government doesn't like. As I've pointed out in the past, the number of terrorists who might be stopped by a travel ban like this is probably 0 and maybe as high as 2. The number of people for whom this would be the tipping point in their radicalization is probably between 0 and 10. This may create more terrorism than it catches.
- nojvek 10y ago
  I just hope students who have come for a legit purpose of studying don't get caught up in the mess. But I've been really giving thought to what I can do as an average citizen to make the slightest change in public policy.
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    They already have. That's why so many universities were outspoken about the ban, and many states filed amici briefs on behalf of the state universities.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    In 2002 many of my classmates from Middle Eastern countries were not able to return after going home for the summer. This is going to create a similar issue for many students.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Mikeb85 10y ago
Make this claim about a place like France with a strait face (Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime). Yes, in the US and Canada immigrants, refugees and Muslims generally assimilate well. Because we have limits and take the best of these groups. But this claim is a bad debate tactic since Muslims commit crimes at a higher rate in many other countries. Now of course part of this is due to rebellious youth who can't integrate into a fairly closed culture, but countries which have taken in large amounts of Muslim immigrants quickly haven't always fared so well...
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  > Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime Substitute "black" for Muslim and this is the basis of a great deal of racist beliefs and policies in the US. The important question isn't who is in prison, and who is committing crimes, but why. Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. Something in the society at large is leading to either higher rates of conviction for the same crimes (the case in the US, harsher punishments for black offenders than whites for the same crimes), or an economic situation that leaves criminal activity as the only apparent or more economically beneficial choice for members of these groups.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    And I covered this in my post (last paragraph). It doesn't matter though - witness the rise of ultra-right populism in continental Europe, Brexit and Trump. And crime IS mostly an economic phenomenon, poor expected outcomes in life lead to high crime rates. But there is a link to high migration rates as well (if the economy can't absorb the new workforce quick enough, it leads to problems). The problem is, the moral dilemma ceases to matter when a majority of the population (you can call them dumb, racist, whatever, but they're part of society) votes in someone to 'solve' the problem. There is a point where feelings and morality don't matter as much as practicality.
  - SamReidHughes 10y ago
    > Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. How do you know this? It might. I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality. Also as has been well-discussed here, crime rate differences are still present in non-economic crimes and your attempts to explain the situation fall flat. It's a story you're making up, badly, and to talk about this stuff with that kind of certainty is a bad look. The truth is, we don't know.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
Reason and facts hold no sway over xenophobic ideology. It's purpose is to rally power around the persecution of a scapegoat, just like an archaic religion.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
synicalx 10y ago
Care to explain the massive increase in crime in Germany then? [1] https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7470/germany-migrants-crime https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7470/germany-migrants-cri...

thepumpkin1979 10y ago

Couldn't find any reference to the name of the countries in this article, although NYT mentions "Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen". https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/travel-ban-muslim-trump.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/travel-ban-mu...

United857 10y ago
Basically all the previous countries except Iraq. The Pentagon raised concerns that the previous ban on Iraq hindered many Iraqi citizens (translators etc) who were actually helping the US.
- misingnoglic 10y ago
  I guess the Pentagon gets what the pentagon wants, meanwhile tons of Iranian students won't be able to continue their research in the USA...

andy_ppp 10y ago

I was under the impression that executive power was only expected to be used when gridlock occurs in The Senate and/or Congress? Is he just allowed to keep issuing more orders every day forever or rather shouldn't the states be very concerned by this centralised power grab? I'm equally concerned by Obama or Bush using these powers, it's not just about Trump.

eximius 10y ago
Yes and yes. It is expected that everyone would be concerned and he would be removed from power. But it has become accepted enough that there is not enough outrage to do so only because of abuse of executive orders.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  The law does grant the President wide latitude over immigration matters, so the executive branch is totally within its legal rights to issue orders of this variety. Politically it's another question. Advocates on immigration reform have pointed out for years that the immigration laws are both impractical and unjust, and there's majority agreement about this. but every effort at reform has been stymied by a nativist minority that is opposed to any immigration, which bloc was successfully (albeit unexpectedly) marshaled into a winning majority under the US' rather arcane Electoral College system. As we now see, the political impetus is to a highly militaristic central state, abandoning as many administrative functions as possible and dropping those into the laps of the several states where they will either be burdensome or ignored.
empath75 10y ago
The reason that Bush, Obama and Trump get away with it is that congress has been paralyzed for going on 15 years now. They could put a stop to it anytime they want by actually doing their jobs and legislating.
maxerickson 10y ago
No, the President can't act just because of gridlock, they have to have a clear authority for each action they take. In the case of immigration, quite a lot of power rests with the president, so the president making changes to immigration policy is nothing unusual.

robbiemitchell 10y ago

Related: "We'll see you in court, 2.0" written by David Cole of the ACLU. You might also be interested in Cole's paper from 2003: "Are Foreign Nationals Entitled to the Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens?" http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1302&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

jlebrech 10y ago

I'm kinda disappoint that the ban is based on country and not whether the individual has negative views towards the Kafir or the USA.

empath75 10y ago
According to the leaked dhs report, immigrants don't tend to get radicalized until they've been in the us for years, or their children do. So screening or vetting wouldn't make a significant difference.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  agreed, they usually come from a secular muslim country and are radicalised when they start going to mosque. maybe creating secular activities for them other than mosque would help them.
  - riyadparvez 10y ago
    I agree. To add more to your point, it would be more worthwhile if the authority and the Muslim community make sure there's no hate preacher in the mosques. As an ex-Muslim living in North America, I find it absolutely ridiculous that some hate preachers, who have been banned in their own countries, are traveling in the Western countries and spreading hatred.
zhengyi13 10y ago
As a practical exercise, try coming up with a system that could determine individual views as you suggest, that: 1) isn't trivially avoidable ("are you now, or have you ever been, a Militant Islamist?"), and 2) doesn't rely on extending the surveillance state further.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  maybe they need teaching about the Quran in a patriotic way.
- 10y ago

cryoshon 10y ago

cue the trumpettes lining up to babble about how it's necessary. even if you think this policy is necessary, this is still a shitty policy because it doesn't go far enough to satisfy its stated aims in addition to being morally repugnant. you shouldn't support this policy because of how flawed it is. there are plenty of countries that are incubators of islamic terrorism that aren't on the ban. if the goal is to prevent islamic terrorists from abroad committing terror acts here, that's still entirely possible. osama bin laden wouldn't be caught by this ban or the previous one because he was a saudi. think about that for a minute. and now the border patrol / tsa will be even more inspired to make life hell for the law abiding people who are coming here or returning here from abroad from countries not mentioned on the ban. this is killing the usa's tourism industry. this is preventing highly educated people from abroad from coming here to let us make use of their talents. this is an embarrassment. anyways, i challenge any supporters of this policy to defend it here in public. you won't last long.

VLM 10y ago
Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit, in other words why is the desire of the elected president believed by some to rank lower than the desire of any random non-citizen human visitor? It seems an incredibly peculiar ranking. Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? Why is the USA one of the countries that is not allowed to have any border controls? Is that, pragmatically, successful? Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? If this regulation or law needs to be repealed because it can be "proven" wrong (where proving amounts to yelling really intimidatingly loud) then why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML or the IRS or a bazillion other laws and regulations which are both more likely to be nonsense and hurting more people?
- jcranmer 10y ago

metalliqaz 10y ago

Has anyone asked the White House why Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not on that list?

riyadparvez 10y ago
This is the question we all should ask. Saudi Arabia is known as terrorism exporter. Why is US administration (both Republicans and Democrats) so reluctant to go after SA?
- littletimmy 10y ago
  We all know the answer. Saudi Arabia is the chief stabilizer of oil price (and therefore the petrodollar) in the world. Therefore, Saudi Arabia can export all the Wahabism it wants.

ocschwar 10y ago

Well, that is an improvement, as it means our border guards won't get the chance to disgrace the nation by mistreating travelers.

deleted 10y ago

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dghughes 10y ago

Does it really matter anymore? US border guards seem to be refusing to let in anyone that fits in the category: brown, accent or Muslim. All three of those you may as well not even try which I say is the no so subtle message. Even today a story on CBC news a woman born in Canada, speaks English denied entry told she needed an immigrant visa not just a visa which is weird an immigrant visa. Her two white friends passed through with no trouble. http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/montreal/canadian-denied-entry-us-immigrant-visa-1.4011202 http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/montreal/canadian-denied-...

Mikeb85 10y ago
And the story literally says she was first stopped in December. US border guards have always been assholes, I got detained recently because the border guards are, to put it mildly, idiots (they thought visiting family in the US for the weekend was strange). Remember at one point Canadians used to be able to visit without a passport; that ended long ago. I mean, my solution is to avoid the US whenever possible (never take layovers there, avoid travelling there unless someone really, really wants me to visit), but it is rather annoying to be treated like shit by a country where we're supposed to be able to enter without problems. I've never experienced the same issues travelling to the EU.
- dghughes 10y ago
  Yes stopped because of a "random check" as stated in the article. She was told to fill out a form her fingerprints were taken then told there was a computer problem and she couldn't enter the US. They came back the next day and were allowed in. But then the latest crossing attempt the border guards asked her why she was stopped in December?! It was the border guards who did it. It's like in grade school a bully grabs your hand and pushes it into your face asking "Why are you hitting yourself?!"

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

More people in the USA die from chocking on improperly chewed food than they do from terrorists. This is getting ridiculous!!!

wheelerwj 10y ago

Say what you will, but Trump is a master manipulator. Session's on Thursday, wiretapping on Saturday, new ban on Monday all being reported on by fake news. We couldn't keep up with this even if we tried. We'd need individual and autonomous teams dedicated to triaging and resolve each of these issues. Who even knows whats really going on in the background.

pasbesoin 10y ago

Here's a concern I don't hear expressed much in all the reporting: The enormous expense in all this. The expense of changes without demonstrable nor explained benefit. The expense of all the CBP officers spending all this time and energy screening and rejecting entrants who manifest NO demonstrable security risk nor connections to persons and organizations of real concern. People ARE talking about Trump spending millions every weekend to go down to Florida. Itself, as I see it, an egocentric, inconsiderate act of self-indulgence. All the more so in the face of his campaign rhetoric. I guess I could also mention the outsided security expenditures for Trump Tower. And here we have the Administration and CBP spending enormous amounts of time and money on a policy that as yet has no direct, rational explanation. It may and probably does have explanation in domestic and international political posturing and manouvering -- one of debatable merit. Effect and merit that SHOULD be better identified, reported, analyzed, and discussed. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COST OF ALL THIS???!!! Once again, "the Right" complains while vastly increasing what they complain about. We'll end up needing another Obama to hopefully clean this up -- or, as to some extent in his case, simply to balance the books. P.S. Today's reporting features a natural Canadian citizen (born and raised there) of Asian heritage that gives her darker skin, being stopped by CBP at the start of a day trip to Vermont, interviewed, and ultimately turned back and told she will have to apply for a visa. Ok, I'm for cost-effective government. What was the bill for this? I'm not particularly in favor of paying for this entirely ineffective action -- on the face of it, entirely unnecessary. Is THIS why I have to give up my ACA health insurance policy? (No subsidy for me, by the way; just, FINALLY, a mandate that allows this older, independent worker to purchase a health insurance policy. Along with laws, such as "no pre-existing conditions", that level the playing field for me vis a vis corporate workers with employer-provided insurance.) I'm following the money, and it smells.