Travel Ban or Nah?
Jun 12, 2017 12:03:42 GMT -6
Post by HalfBaked, Latest of Larrys on Jun 12, 2017 12:03:42 GMT -6
All right folks, here’s the thing that’s almost eternally on my mind whenever discussions of politics come up: Executive Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” or less formally/more infamously, the Trump Travel Ban.
In case you’ve lived under a rock for the last two years and only just surfaced for air, back when Donald Trump was still a slim possibility (and if you’re unclear on what I mean there, stop reading and get back under the rock for the next three years or so), he called for an immediate pause on travel from Muslim-majority nations to the United States. A week after his inauguration, he signed the above thingy and suspended entry to the U.S. for people coming from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
One point of interest to me is that 13769 invoked the September 11th attacks, the majority of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and others were from the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Egypt.
After a month and a half of chaos and controversy (during which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the ban), President Trump signed Executive Order 13780. Same title, similar rules, except it removed Iraq from the list.
Iraq, for the sake of context, was taken off because the first ban blocked, among others, interpreters who fought alongside U.S. troops over the course of the Second Gulf War in exchange for help and the eventual chance to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, this second ban was also blocked by the judiciary.
Why talk about this at all? Well, it’s actually back in the news again. Invoking the recent London attacks, Trump took to Twitter and restated his position that the United States needs his travel ban and needs it now for the sake of national security. Supporters of the ban in America often invoke things like Pulse and San Bernardino, while references talking about events abroad include Paris and Brussels. I’ve also seen reference to Germany recently closing its borders to refugees, though that stems from having a lot as it is, and some favor the Austrian and Hungarian responses that include things like water cannons and razor wire.
So, here’s my question to you fine folks. If you’re an American, are you in favor of the travel ban, particularly in light of the recent attacks?
If you’re not from the U.S., what do you think of it? Would you be in favor of a similar law being passed in your country?
Then, while we’re at it, why not have a larger conversation here about political correctness and what it means, or the refugee crisis at large and how that affects global politics?
Since I’m the one bringing this up, I may as well say my own stances on this one.
Once Donald Trump announced that he was calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, I was even more against the idea of him being president than I had been to that point. If I hadn’t needed to write a paper the weekend it happened, I’d have participated in the protest at the airport 30 minutes from my house after the ban had been signed. I’m a second-generation American on one side of the family (whereas the other evidently fought in the Revolution), so I’ve always been a bit of sucker for Emma Lazarus. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve only gotten worse about that, in part because I’m tired of people asking where I’m from and being unsatisfied when I give the name of my hometown or home state (or, better still, telling me to go back to “my country”).
I think that I’m getting more aggressive in my anti-travel ban and pro-immigration rhetoric over time demonstrates, in my mind, an important point—when you try to convince people that they don’t belong somewhere, it pisses them off. Or in the other words, when there are incidents of “homegrown terrorism” such as Pulse (Omar Mateen was an American citizen) or San Bernardino (though his wife was not, Syed Farook was born in U.S.), how exactly does a travel ban not exacerbate the problem of people feeling that they’re being discriminated against and being treated as second-class citizens? I can’t help seeing a connection there.
I’m happy to discuss this with anyone of any stance, so by all means, let’s see if we can address this civilly. So, if you’re in agreement or vehemently against everything I just said in my op-ed bit, by all means, fire away. You can even call me a snowflake if you like, since Twitter has made me impervious to that particular insult.
In case you’ve lived under a rock for the last two years and only just surfaced for air, back when Donald Trump was still a slim possibility (and if you’re unclear on what I mean there, stop reading and get back under the rock for the next three years or so), he called for an immediate pause on travel from Muslim-majority nations to the United States. A week after his inauguration, he signed the above thingy and suspended entry to the U.S. for people coming from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
One point of interest to me is that 13769 invoked the September 11th attacks, the majority of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and others were from the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Egypt.
After a month and a half of chaos and controversy (during which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the ban), President Trump signed Executive Order 13780. Same title, similar rules, except it removed Iraq from the list.
Iraq, for the sake of context, was taken off because the first ban blocked, among others, interpreters who fought alongside U.S. troops over the course of the Second Gulf War in exchange for help and the eventual chance to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, this second ban was also blocked by the judiciary.
Why talk about this at all? Well, it’s actually back in the news again. Invoking the recent London attacks, Trump took to Twitter and restated his position that the United States needs his travel ban and needs it now for the sake of national security. Supporters of the ban in America often invoke things like Pulse and San Bernardino, while references talking about events abroad include Paris and Brussels. I’ve also seen reference to Germany recently closing its borders to refugees, though that stems from having a lot as it is, and some favor the Austrian and Hungarian responses that include things like water cannons and razor wire.
So, here’s my question to you fine folks. If you’re an American, are you in favor of the travel ban, particularly in light of the recent attacks?
If you’re not from the U.S., what do you think of it? Would you be in favor of a similar law being passed in your country?
Then, while we’re at it, why not have a larger conversation here about political correctness and what it means, or the refugee crisis at large and how that affects global politics?
----------
Since I’m the one bringing this up, I may as well say my own stances on this one.
Once Donald Trump announced that he was calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, I was even more against the idea of him being president than I had been to that point. If I hadn’t needed to write a paper the weekend it happened, I’d have participated in the protest at the airport 30 minutes from my house after the ban had been signed. I’m a second-generation American on one side of the family (whereas the other evidently fought in the Revolution), so I’ve always been a bit of sucker for Emma Lazarus. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve only gotten worse about that, in part because I’m tired of people asking where I’m from and being unsatisfied when I give the name of my hometown or home state (or, better still, telling me to go back to “my country”).
I think that I’m getting more aggressive in my anti-travel ban and pro-immigration rhetoric over time demonstrates, in my mind, an important point—when you try to convince people that they don’t belong somewhere, it pisses them off. Or in the other words, when there are incidents of “homegrown terrorism” such as Pulse (Omar Mateen was an American citizen) or San Bernardino (though his wife was not, Syed Farook was born in U.S.), how exactly does a travel ban not exacerbate the problem of people feeling that they’re being discriminated against and being treated as second-class citizens? I can’t help seeing a connection there.
I’m happy to discuss this with anyone of any stance, so by all means, let’s see if we can address this civilly. So, if you’re in agreement or vehemently against everything I just said in my op-ed bit, by all means, fire away. You can even call me a snowflake if you like, since Twitter has made me impervious to that particular insult.
