What’s up with President Trump’s Executive order banning visa and admission for individuals from predominantly Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen)
President Trump Executive order created so much confusion and Ciaos in the major airports in USA and other countries. Thousands of people who either arrived in USA and who are in transits were directly affected by this “Muslim” travel ban. It is heart breaking to hear stories of people who went to pick up their father, mother, children, and friends but were told that they were either sent to their country or detained at the airport. It would potentially affect 90,000 visas from these 7 countries in a year.
From the point of an immigration attorney, Trump’s executive order and its implementation is illegal, discriminatory, and dangerous for our country.
- Is it constitutional?
The legal basis for Trump’s order is shaky. INA 212(a)(6)(f) authorizes the president to suspend entries of any aliens into the United States.
However, a section of INA 1965 act states “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence." It seems clear to me that Trump order violates three of Non-discrimination clauses-nationality, place of birth or place of residence.
As to thousands of people who came with visas (immigrant or non-immigrant) and arrived in the USA, Trump’s order violates due process and equal protection clause of 14th amendment, which is applicable to anyone (legal or illegal) in the United States. What it boils down to is 1) that Government cannot take away their visa (license for entry) without providing a hearing and ship them away 2) they should not be treated unequally among those who are similarly situated---like other people from Germany or France with their visas.
Trump’s order seems to violate the 1st amendment: “establishment clause” Even though the executive order does not explicitly say, “Muslim ban”, Mr. Trump stated and showed preferential treatment for Christians over Muslims and strongly favored Christianity and disfavored religion of Islam, thus violating establishment clause.
It is very telling that the acting attorney General, Ms. Yates did not want to defend the lawsuits against “Trump’s order in a court and was fired for refusing to defend its legality in the federal court.
- It is discriminatory on its face. It is a thinly veiled effort to ban and scapegoat Muslims. It will not make America safer. Banning people based solely on the country they are from is ineffective and overreaching. We should focus our attention on people for whom we have actual grounds for concern or suspicion. We should not sweep the whole countries with a broad brush.
This order and policies behind this order seems to be based on a combination of an unfounded fear, debunked information, and xenophobic pressures. The Executive Order will harm US families. These families are waiting for their husbands, wives, children, mothers, and fathers to complete the already-lengthy immigration process. It means that intending immigrants and their US families must remain abroad longer, often in dangerous situations. A 90-day suspension of visas will balloon processing times and disrupt the operation of U.S. businesses that rely on such applicants. Some industries will be particularly impacted, such as the medical industry. Company like Google, Facebook, and other IT companies’ business are disrupted and business will suffer because they did not employees that were contracted to come.
- Its intended aim is to make USA safer, but it is counterproductive, it will make our county less safe.
A suspension of visa and immigration benefits based solely on national origin will create a strain on diplomatic relations with those countries. It will create further challenges when cooperation with these countries which is necessary to perform security screening on these individuals.
Furthermore, Trump’s Muslim ban is the most attractive and popular propaganda for terrorist group like ISIS. It will boost their jihad theme that our county is at war with the religion of Islam. It will radicalize a small percentage of Muslim in our country. We just need to remember all terrorist attacks since 9-11 were all carried out by home grown radicalized Muslims who were the Citizens of the United States.