Trump created an Immigration Ban. I disagree as to whether it was a Muslim Ban or not simply because there’s room to doubt that and because I don’t think that’s the point of the debate. Also, I disagree with people who say it’s not a Muslim ban simply by saying there are other countries with more Muslim people, countries not on the list, like India. Seriously? India has a billion people and therefore any group is likely much larger than populations of most countries, and since India, INDIA, is not on the list, despite having 176 million Muslims, it must not be a Muslim Ban. Really? You’re messed up.
More importantly, the ban is an atrocious elimination of 134 million people from 7 countries until, as Trump says, we can find a better way to have the good without the bad.
So he proposes “extreme vetting.” What is it?
Well, he’s basically given no details, but my guess is you’d evaluate more deeply the relatives of a particular applicant, perhaps visit those people and study them. Perhaps he’ll adopt a guilty-before-proven-innocent concept in which you have to work harder to find innocence rather than assuming innocence and perhaps overlooking something based on that assumption. Perhaps he’ll seek to detain all immigrants once they arrive in order to start the next step of the investigation, which they could still fail, before they are officially free to leave detention. That may allow for investigators here to do their job in a hands-off interrogation in which the immigrants are grilled for hours during a limbo period during which they are in the U.S., have passed enough tests to enter, but haven’t been issued a visa.
Perhaps they wouldn’t have a visa when they get on the plane to the U.S. and would receive it upon arrival only after passing the final stateside test. If they fail, they wouldn’t get the visa, and without the visa, they’d have to be put back on a plane. To get around the constitutional issues that likely wouldn’t hold him up anyway since the Republican party would vote in his favor and since it’s clear new DHS chief John Kelly would just get fired if he disobeys even once, Trump might declare that any and all geographical areas used for this final step in the process aren’t technically America, in the same way an Embassy of a foreign country technically isn’t America. It would all be messed up, and I think the Constitution would still cover it because our laws follow us wherever we go and because it would be foreign land controlled by the U.S. and not any other country, but in a world where truth doesn’t matter, I guess Trump could do whatever he wants.
Extreme vetting could mean anything, and in some cases, it’s already extreme. For Syrians, it takes nearly 2 years to get a visa. That means you’d have to suffer atrocities, then apply, then wait. You couldn’t predict a war, then apply, then see that you were right, and by the time the war gets really bad, you’d miss most of the suffering because you’d be on a plane out of there. If that were the case, your application wouldn’t be to flee persecution or a war, which gets priority, despite how ironically long they have to wait, despite being on the top of the list of priorities.
In Iraq, it’s also tough in terms of how long you have to wait and the low percentage accepted. However, people from most of the countries on the ban don’t have to wait so long. Someone from Iran could be more extreme vetted, for sure, and I’m not sure that’s such a problem. You need to identify connections with the government, and if none, they can come in. However, I’m sure the guilty-before-prove-innocent process I suggested might be part of Trump’s ideology toward immigration would lead him or his ever-narrowing team of people in charge to determine that there’s evidence of a connection with the anti-U.S. Iranian government. After all, Trump just makes up facts out of thin air. Somalia may be easier because it’s very likely that someone in affiliation with al Shabaab would have an Internet history that easily proves it.
Now, which countries should be more extremely vetted?
Let’s put aside for a second the fact that you don’t vet a country but a person. You don’t vet a country for immigration. The country isn’t immigrating here. Each individual, separate from another, is immigrating here. There are families on one application, but my point is you don’t treat people from the same country all the same simply because of their country of origin.
So which countries? Well, it’s much more complicated than people think. For example, if China were to harbor terrorists, you couldn’t just ban immigration from China for 3 months. As much as I would LOVE that, it would be bad for America. Moreover, I’m actually not upset with the Chinese people, just the CCP. So, that would hurt the Chinese people AND the CCP, but the CCP wouldn’t care about the former because they hurt their own people hourly, seemingly almost for sport.
Other countries that are far more complex: Turkey, Pakistan, UAE. Turkey has a gigantic economy, political ties with the U.S., doesn’t really have a lot of risks apart from those originated from the eastern one-fifth of the country and might be covered by the ban because many of those people have a Turkish passport, and has military issues with Greece, who owes lots of money to Russia. That last one is probably not the biggest deal, but Turkey is a crossroads country and is very important. Anyone (looking at you Bloomberg News) who suggests Turkey should be banned or even more extremely vetted is really confused. More quickly, Pakistan: they have huge economic ties with China, weakening political ties with the U.S., and its citizens hate the U.S. UAE: Well, they’re helping us in Yemen, and rather than get into a discussion of which wars we should be in, I’ll just say that positive military ties shouldn’t be messed with when thinking about domestic policy.
Therefore, it’s more complex, and it’s important to approach this and other issues academically. We’re not going to stop Trump without votes. Protesting in the streets is like having fans at a game. If the fans don’t show up, I might have as much energy to fight. However, the players on the field are thinking strategically and intelligently after watching hours and hours of film for days or weeks in order to intelligently stop their opponent, and I think that’s what we should do. As I’ve said before, maybe we need to repurpose some bars to include study areas where people can talk about these issues in order to get analytical about it and make sure we can use facts and informed conclusions any time a Congressperson says “but” or “what if” in the face of our objections.
Prediction of the next country banned: Qatar. It’s considered the major financier of the terrorists. They have close military ties with the U.S., but Trump is focusing on ISIS first and foremost and there’s already been talk about pulling one of our air bases from there.
Regardless of what “extreme” means in Trump’s mind or whether he was just using that word for show (sadly possible but positive in that then he wouldn’t mean it as much), immigration from those 7 countries and beyond has become a lot scarier. Even applying has. You don’t know what’s going to happen, even after you’ve gotten off the plane. The truth is you’ve never been in the U.S. before you go through Customs, but it’s been pretty clear that, if you were told you checked all the right boxes before getting on the plane, you’d be fine getting through Customs. Moreover, airlines have ensured no one gets on planes without having proper documentation proving you checked the right boxes, and now, apparently that doesn’t even matter and, moreover, airlines don’t know what to do.
Even calling it “extreme” or just behaving half as bad as he does in general makes it worse for people thinking of coming here.
Extreme vetting may be less a change for some than we think, it may be reasonable in some small cases, and it’s probably unconstitutional depending on how it’s done but who cares because the majority of those sworn to uphold the Constitution, well, don’t uphold it.
The major issue here is not the vetting process or any particular issue. It’s bigger. Just ask Turnbull. Words matter, Donald. Trump hung up on Turnbull. Oh, and by the way, a million UK citizens think a visit between the Queen and Trump would essentially offend the Queen so much that the air around Her Highness would become polluted by Trump’s presence. I couldn’t agree more that Trump does not deserve royalty as much as the Queen does. The Queen should be respected, and I can guarantee that there’s no way to know what Trump will say to Her.
Therefore, the major issue that we’re posing against Trump is not what he does but that there are real consequences to what you look like. When no one likes you, it clearly causes a problem. Let me list them:
- Free trade agreements
- Military partnerships
- Economic partnerships
- Willingness to be politically interdependent
- Financial market ties
- Willingness to build each other’s economies
- Donating to each other’s crisis management, prevention, and recovery
In other words, protesting Trump is forward-thinking, and if Trump doesn’t start looking forward, he’s going to destroy all of the above and our future.