By Ben Domenech
Monday, January 30, 2017
The refugee crisis and its consequences represent a
string of failures on the part of multiple actors. There is the failure of
European political leaders to think through the consequences of the importation
of millions of people, particularly those hampered by language barriers and
largely dependent on social services. There is the failure of global leaders in
multiple nations to live up to promises made in the region and to be a force
for stability, not unrest. There is the failure of America’s systems of
government, both when it came to the red line and the authorization of military
force and when it came to processing refugees. And there is the failure of the
media when it came to presenting the policy choices and their pros and cons
fairly and honestly without turning to race-baiting and suggestions of bigotry
as the only motivation for wanting security.
During the 2016 campaign, there were few topics that sparked
more fury than the issue of a proposed halt to letting refugees into the
country from potential terrorist hotbeds overseas. In December of 2015, I
debated Michelle Goldberg on the topic on MSNBC, and pointed out that what
Americans who demanded such a ban were really saying was not inherently racist
or even unreasonable.
From the transcript:
I think you can have an American
citizen who`s not Islamophobic. You can have a significant degree of distrust
for the government to be able to tell good Muslims from bad. We saw in 2011
with the Iraqi refugee program, you know, they had a dozen people who came
through who ended up planning IEDs… If you have that view, you don`t trust the
government. I don`t trust the government to protect us. I don’t trust them to
tell the good refugees from the bad refugees. I don’t trust them on this count.
At the time, Goldberg’s response was that: “I suppose
that you could make an argument that somebody could want to shut America’s
borders to Muslims for reasons beyond Islamophobia. But the idea that – this
policy is the essence of Islamophobia.”
Except it isn’t. A definition of Islamophobic policy
would be a ban on all Muslims entering the country, or a ban on all refugees
entering the country, or a ban on all entries from majority Muslim nations.
That is not what the Trump administration did here, nor is it what he promised
on the trail. It is, however, how the media is largely treating this – by
describing it as an outright Muslim ban, a mischaracterization that feeds the
idea this is purely motivated by dumb Islamophobia and ignores the fact that
yes, there have been quite a few
attempted terrorist attacks from foreign-born figures since 2001.
In 2011, the Obama administration quietly paused
processing of refugees from Iraq. It wasn’t out of a sense of Islamophobia – it
was because they discovered that in 2009, they had let in potentially dozens of
dangerous terrorists who had previously constructed IEDs targeting American
troops. Here’s the ABC
report, which you may notice doesn’t come until another two years
later. They found the fingerprints of
one refugee on a phone wired to unexploded IEDs meant to kill. The processing
delay cut the number of Iraqis accepted into the United States in half, and in
that six months, “One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated
before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration
delays, two U.S. officials said.”
Trump’s executive order calls for a 120 day pause in the
admission of refugees, then caps the number of refugee admissions at 50,000 – a
total that is right in line with the average of the Bush and Obama
administrations, with Obama’s 2016 expansion being the one exception. It also calls for a 90 day pause from 7
countries defined as countries of concern by the Obama administration, countries
that – with the exception of Iran – have governments that barely function. The
point is to deliver on the promise he made during the campaign: to pump the
brakes until the administration is confident it has fixed the problems that let
potentially dangerous individuals through.
Yet that’s not going to be the reaction when the CNN
headline blares: “Trump bans 134,000,000 from the U.S.” Democrats are
protesting this approach as fundamentally un-American. “This executive order was mean-spirited and un-American,”
[Chuck Schumer] said, flanked by refugees at a news conference in New York.
“Look at these faces! Are they any kind of threat to America? No, they’re the
promise of America.” And they are not alone – Republicans too are chastising
Trump over this. The Koch network condemned the order. Rep. Justin Amash said
it was “Not lawful to ban immigrants on basis of nationality”, which is just
inconsistent entirely with the legal history on this question. Tim Kaine said
it was ‘not a coincidence’ that the Trump travel ban and a Holocaust statement
omitting Jews came on the same day. Not
to be outdone, Andrew Cuomo announced that he is Muslim, Jewish, gay, and a
woman asserting control over her own body.
For his part, Trump gives no sign of backing down. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as
the media is falsely reporting,” Trump said in the statement. “This is not
about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are
over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not
affected by this order.” The president reiterated that the country would resume
issuing visas to all countries “once we are sure we have reviewed and
implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days.”
The real problem for Trump is not in his policy – which
whenever he had engaged in it would prompt this type of fierce response – but
its implementation. This was obvious in the inconsistency with which the order
was applied to green card holders. While my own non-lawyer reading is that the
order seems clear on this point, lower level officials clearly thought
otherwise. On the one hand, the White House was claiming they won’t be barred.
And DHS secretary John Kelly says it’s “in the national interest” to let lawful
permanent residents (such as green card holders) into the US. But to the degree
that was inconsistent with the implementation of the policy, travelers who were
law-abiding and not subject to the order suffered. That should never have
happened.
Here is the interpretation of David French, attorney and
no Trump fan.
The plain language of the order
doesn’t apply to legal permanent residents of the U.S., and green-card holders
have been through round after round of vetting and security checks. The
administration should intervene, immediately, to stop misapplication. If,
however, the Trump administration continues to apply the order to legal
permanent residents, it should indeed be condemned.
This is an example of why executive orders are
themselves, while perhaps satisfying to Trump – go to a place, sign the paper,
smile for the cameras – are not a good way to make policy. Clarity becomes all
the more important when a president does something unilaterally, and the lack
of a definitive explanation here likely resulted in the detention of people who
did not need to be detained. What’s more, the rush to get a federal stay of the
order by its opponents created even more confusion as to which portions of the
stay applied to which people. This lack of clarity is itself a failure, of a
type that we are likely to see repeated by an administration led by a man who
seems to love exploiting chaos.
So where do things stand? Democrats in the Senate in
particular may try to gin up legislation to roll back this order, but that will
require allies. For Trump’s part, expect him to publicly at least take the
attitude that he is doubling down on security, even as behind the scenes,
General Kelly and others work to more clearly define this new policy. And for
the part of the media, expect a vast over-interpretation of this event as changing
the way Americans perceive issues of security and the refugee issue.
There are some Americans inspired when they see sights
like a “No Borders” sign waved in protest. There are others who voted for Trump
precisely because they believe it’s not anti-Mexican or anti-Islamic to want a
border in the first place. “Louise Ingram, a 69-year-old retiree from Troy,
Alabama, said she forgave the new administration a few ‘glitches,’ such as
widespread confusion over treatment of green card holders, as it moved to
protect U.S. citizens from attacks. ‘I’m not opposed to immigrants,’ she said.
‘I just want to make sure they are safe to come in.'” And she is not wrong to
want that.
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