In Trump’s Executive Order, Foundation For A Muslim Ban Has Been Set
January 28, 2017
“Donald Trump is plunging the lives of first and second generation Americans into disarray and uncertainty.”
(ANALYSIS) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively lays a strong foundation for instituting a ban against Muslims, as he pledged to do during his presidential campaign.
The executive order asserts hundreds of foreign-born individuals convicted or implicated in “terrorist-related crimes” since the September 11 attacks, which is a gross exaggeration.
As in-depth coverage by the New America Foundation showed, “The large majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States have been American citizens or legal residents. Moreover, while a range of citizenship statuses are represented, every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident.”
“In addition, about a quarter of the extremists are converts, further confirming that the challenge cannot be reduced to one of immigration,” according to the think tank.
Nevertheless, Trump provided a victory for toxic xenophobic and Islamophobic forces in the United States and issued an executive order that suspends entry into the country of any immigrants or non-immigrants of particular concern.
The countries are not named in the issued executive order, but the draft included Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. These are Muslim-majority countries, many of which the U.S. has played a role in destabilizing or perpetuating warfare that has created refugee crises.
Syrian refugees are explicitly banned, even though they do not present an existential terrorism threat to the U.S. at all.
It instructs security agencies of the U.S. government to put together a list and add additional countries. This means the list adopted a few months from now may expand at any time.
The order calls for security agencies to develop a “uniform screening” program that would include “a process to evaluate the applicant’s likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicants’ ability to make contributions to the national interest.”
