Trump’s Freeze
on Immigrants and Refugees Plays Into the Hands of
Islamic Terror Recruiters
LA Times Editorial
January 27, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "LA
Times"
-
President Trump is expected to sign orders Friday to
temporarily freeze immigration from seven Muslim nations
and halt refugee resettlements from everywhere — a
classic example of a solution in search of problem, and
just the kind of symbolic act that gives weight to
radical Islamists when they argue that the U.S. is an
enemy of their faith.
Trump’s
campaign for president was built on a foundation of fear
and resentment, and that dark cloud hangs over these
putative attempts to bolster national security. Based on
a draft version of the executive order, it seems that
Trump will impose a 30-day suspension of visas for
people from seven predominately Muslim countries — Iran,
Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — while the
government reviews and presumably tightens its
visa-vetting protocols. He also will direct security
officials to determine within 30 days what information
they need to evaluate potential visitors, and list the
countries around the world that don’t provide
it. Countries that don’t correct the error of their ways
within 60 days of that report — including the seven
affected by the ban — will have their
citizens barred until they comply.
Worse, Trump
apparently plans to suspend U.S. acceptance of all
refugees — people fleeing war or oppression for whom
returning home is not an option — for 120 days as the
government reviews and revises its screening procedures,
and he is expected to slash the number of refugees the
U.S. would accept through October 2017 from 110,000 (set
by President Obama last September) to 50,000. Trump also
will prioritize the resettlement of refugees seeking
asylum on grounds of religious persecution, officially
valuing people oppressed because of their religion over
those targeted for political dissent, sexual orientation
or other reasons.
And Trump
wants plans drawn for “safe areas” for Syrians within
Syria or nearby nations, which could help the
administration at a later point if it wants to institute
a longer-term ban on Syrian refugees. But the draft
order offers no details on how the safe zones would be
secured, or the legal basis for the U.S. establishing
control of territory in a sovereign (if war-torn)
state.
Such efforts to
restrict access to the U.S. by people fleeing war-torn
parts of the world would be misguided and inhumane. The
Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank,
reported in 2015 that in the 14 years after the 9/11
terror attacks, 784,000 refugees resettled in the U.S.
Yet during that time only three resettled refugees were
convicted on terror-related charges — two of them
for plotting against an overseas target and the third
for hatching “plans that were barely credible,”
according to the report. The vast majority of refugees
allowed into the U.S. are first vetted by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, whose screeners
then recommend placements in third countries. When the
U.S. gets a referral, it conducts its own security
screening before offering resettlement, a process that
routinely takes one to two years.
What’s more,
a study by the New America Foundation shows that 80% of
the terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11 have
been carried out by American citizens (although some of
those perpetrators were naturalized citizens).
It is not
surprising that some Americans are worried by the
hostility directed at them from a small, radicalized
segment of the Islamic world. But such fears should not
be channeled into a broad, discriminatory retrenchment
that is at odds with the best of our humanitarian
principles — especially if that retrenchment would
likely do little to protect us.
The U.S. became
a wealthy world power in large part through immigration.
And it’s openness has provided a lifeline to the
oppressed of the world — the U.S. has formally resettled
more refugees than any other country (though at the
moment it is not bearing its fair share of the burden of
resettling the tens of millions of migrants currently
fleeing war zones). Trump’s actions are not only
inhumane, they are a betrayal of what the United States
stands for.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House.
Expecting Trump action, U.S.
suspends refugee resettlement interviews:
The decision effectively amounts to a pause in future
refugee admissions, given that the interviews are a
crucial step in an often years-long process. |
