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PWS
02/04/17
Category: Foreign Policy
BREAKING: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: U.S. District Judge James L. Robart (W.D. WA) Issues Nationwide TRO Blocking Key Parts Of Trump’s EO On Visas & Refugees: State Of Washington v. Trump — Gov Will Appeal!
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/images/02/03/state.of.washington.v.trump.pdf
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This is the issue that never sleeps. A copy of Judge Robart’s Order is at the link. Judge Robart is a George W. Bush appointee.
Here’s more on the TRO and the USG’s reaction from CNN:
Haste makes waste.
PWS
02/04/17
BREAKING: Judge Brinkema (USDC, EDVA) Allows Virginia To Intervene In Challenge To Trump Visa Order — Slams Implementation — DOJ & DOS Differ (By A Mere 40,000) On Number Of Visas Revoked!
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-travel-ban-virginia-234609
Politico reports:
“Brinkema was also harshly critical of the review and implementation of Trump’s order. “It’s quite clear not all the thinking went into it that should have gone into it,” she said. “As a result, there was chaos.”
During the hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni said that more than 100,000 visas were canceled as a result of Trump’s order last Friday limiting travel by residents of seven majority-Muslim countries, the Associated Press reported.
However, a State Department official told POLITICO later that the total number of visas canceled was fewer than 60,000. Some of those people are currently in the U.S. Their legal status here is not affected, but their visas will not be valid for re-entry if they travel out of the country, officials said.
. . . .
“At the court hearing, Brinkema said the alarm caused by Trump’s order was widespread. She said no case she has ever handled produced the level of public concern she observed in this one.
“It’s obvious that this put hundreds of thousands of people into a state of great discomfort,” the judge said. “People are really upset.”
Brinkema, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, commended the government for its effort to resolve issues raised by Trump’s order, but said more needs to be done.
“I don’t think it’s far enough,” she said as she ruled to keep the case before her alive.
“There’s no question the president of the United States has almost—almost unfettered “ power over foreign policy and border issues, but “this is not ‘no limit,’” the judge said.
Brinkema said individuals and families had “relied” on decisions made to grant visas. She has not ruled on the merits of the case, but she suggested the government could not reverse course in specific immigration cases without a legitimate reason to do so.”
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Hey, 100,000? 60,000? 40,000 difference? — close enough for Government work. BTW, Judge Brinkema has handled a major terrorist prosecution. So, she actually knows what real terrorism and national security are all about.
Once again, “haste makes waste!”
PWS
02/03/17
HuffPost: 100,000 Visas Revoked Under Trump Order!
Elise Foley Reports on HuffPost:
“WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration provisionally revoked 100,000 visas as part of its ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, a government lawyer said in court on Friday.
The revelation caused shockwaves on Twitter, but the State Department actually confirmed earlier this week that it had provisionally revoked most visas held by people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
State Department officials said later Friday that fewer than 60,000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked as a result of the order. “To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015,” a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs told The Huffington Post.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy in numbers.”
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As I’ve noted before, to date lawyers have been the only real beneficiaries of the Trump immigration orders.
PWS
01/03/17
Newsweek: Bannon Wants “American Gulag” — Will Anyone Have The Guts To Stop Him?
http://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-fever-dream-american-gulag-551472
Jeff Stein writes in this week’s Newsweek:
“Imagine: Miles upon miles of new concrete jails stretching across the scrub-brush horizons of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, with millions of people incarcerated in orange jumpsuits and awaiting deportation.
Such is the fevered vision of a little-noticed segment of President Donald Trump’s sulfurous executive order on border security and immigration enforcement security. Section 5 of the January 25 order calls for the “immediate” construction of detention facilities and allocation of personnel and legal resources “to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico” and process them for deportation. But another, much overlooked, order signed the same day spells out, in ominous terms, who will go.
Trump promised a week after the November elections that he would expel or imprison some 2 million or 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions—a number that exists mainly in his imagination. (Only about 820,000 undocumented immigrants currently have a criminal record, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Many of those have traffic infractions and other misdemeanors.)
Still, the spectre of new, pop-up jails housing hundreds of thousands of people is as powerful a fright-dream for liberals as it is a triumph for the president’s “America first” Svengali, Steve Bannon. But, like the fuzzy Trump order dropping the gate on travelers from seven Muslim-majority states, the deportation measure presents so many fiscal and legal restraints that is also looks suspiciously like just another act of ideological showboating from the rumpled White House strategy chief.
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed to the writer Ronald Radosh at a party at his Capitol Hill townhouse in November 2013. “Lenin,” he said of the Russian revolutionary, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
The executive orders were “not issued as result of any recommendation or threat assessment made by DHS to the White House,” Department of Homeland Security officials conceded in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, according to a statement from Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill. They were all Bannon-style revolutionary theater.
. . . .
Expect DHS to start advertising for bids from private prison operators, a much-maligned industry that was collapsing in the latter years of the Obama administration. Two of the largest, GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic Inc., are already seeing windfalls from their second chance at life: Their stock prices have nearly doubled since the election.
All of which recalls another Leninist idea that Bannon may have forgotten: Prisons are universities for revolution.”
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Stein’s article confirms what many of us had suspected all along — these draconian and unnecessary measures were were “’not issued as result of any recommendation or threat assessment made by DHS to the White House.’” No, they were part of a pre-hatched anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim program cooked up by Bannon and others in the White House to “make good” on Trump’s campaign promises (regardless of whether the measures were necessary of sensible).
But they will be a boon for two important U.S. industries: the private prison industry and the legal industry, as both sides “lawyer up” for a long-term, avoidable, and wasteful fight. Who needs foreign enemies when the Administration is so determined to wage warfare against a large number of our own citizens and residents who disagree with his ill-considered and ill-timed policies?
Stein’s full article (well worth the read) is at the link.
PWS
02/03/17
NYT: Administration Will Allow Iraqi Interpreters To Enter After All — Pentagon Comes To The Rescue Of U.S. War Allies
“BAGHDAD — The Trump administration amended its visa ban on Thursday to allow emigration by the families of Iraqi interpreters who served the United States government and military forces deployed in their country.
The change, recommended by the Pentagon, eased some of the anger generated in Iraq by President Trump’s executive order imposing the ban, which has stoked anxiety and confusion around much of the world since it was issued last week.
The order temporarily blocked all Syrian refugees from entering the United States and suspended visas for applicants from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq. It applied to holders of so-called Special Immigrant Visas issued to interpreters who worked for the United States during its 2003-11 occupation, often at great personal risk, and to their families.
In a statement about the change sent to The New York Times, a United States Embassy official in Baghdad said, “The U.S. government has determined that it is in the national interest to allow Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa (S.I.V.) holders to continue to travel to the United States.” Iraqis who have received the visas, the statement said, may use them, and the “U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will continue to process and issue S.I.V.s to applicants who are otherwise qualified.”
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Wow! Why didn’t they just say that in the first place? Would have saved lots of trouble, heartache, and very bad publicity for the U.S. and the Administration. But, better late than never, I guess.
PWS
02/13/17
WSJ: Two Articles Show How “Trump Country” Depends On Foreign Trade And Immigration!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-country-might-suffer-more-in-a-trade-war-study-says-1485752403
Bob Davis writes in the WSJ on Jan. 30:
“WASHINGTON—Should the U.S. get embroiled in a trade war, communities that voted for Donald Trump are likely to take a bigger hit than those that voted for Hillary Clinton, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.
Brookings measured what it called the export intensity of urban areas around the country—meaning local goods and service exports as a percentage of local GDP in 2015—to get a picture of those places most dependent on access to the global economy. The most export-intensive places tended to be smaller cities in the Midwest and Southeast—solid Trump country—rather than the big metropolitan areas that went heavily for Mrs. Clinton.
“Trump communities are relatively more reliant on trade,” said Mark Muro, head of Brookings’s metropolitan policy program. “They are smaller communities with less flexibility” to adapt to a cutoff in trade.
“Disruption could be especially troubling for those places,” he said. Brookings said it traces exports back to the point where value is added via production, rather than where goods and services are shipped. The latter gives too much weight to big ports.
Columbus, Ind., a center of machine-making, is the most export-reliant city in the country, Brookings found. The GDP of the city of 46,000, which voted 2 to 1 for Mr. Trump, is 50.6% dependent on exports. Three other Indiana cities—Elkhart, Kokomo and Lafayette—are among the top 10 cities dependent on exports.
The work by Brookings researchers is in some ways the complement to the better-known work of economists David Autor,Gordon Hanson and David Dorn, who identified the localities most vulnerable to Chinese import competition.”
Will Connors writes in the Jan. 31 WSJ:
“An array of Republican and Democratic officials from across the Rust Belt and Midwest are united in concern about President Donald Trump’s clampdown on refugees and certain immigrants for one overriding reason: Their communities need more people.
Large Democratically-controlled “sanctuary cities” including Chicago, San Francisco and New York have been outspoken in resisting the administration’s ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, citing political and moral reasons.
But officials from a second tier of smaller cities, from Columbus, Ohio, to Troy, Mich., to Garden City, Kan., are highlighting the economic importance of welcoming refugees and immigrants to bolster declining populations and add manpower, skills and entrepreneurial know-how.
“I understand that the president is trying to protect the U.S. However, there are many good people that have located here that are escaping wars and political actions, and they’re just looking for a chance to raise their families in a safe environment,” said Janet Doll, a Republican city commissioner in Garden City, Kan. “The immigrants we have here are productive members of society. They have nice jobs and want to contribute to the quality of life in our community.”
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We haven’t even gotten around to the Trump Administration’s next initiative: an attack on legal immigration to the U.S., family members, workers, both temporary and permanent, and refugees, which was covered in one of my earlier blogs.
Perhaps, instead of stirring the pot for a fruitless “can’t win war” on a well-qualified conservative Supreme Court nominee (actually, along with taking Ivanka to be with the family of Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens at Dover AFB, one of the most reasonable things Trump has done since Jan 20) the Democrats should take the “high road.” Democrats might also want to do some thinking about how to “build bridges” with with some of these folks in “Trump Country” who are more likely to find economic disappointment, than economic success, in the Trump Administration’s blunderbuss assault on loyal allies, trading partners, and immigrants of all types who fuel the success of the real America (not just Washington, D.C. or “big cities”).
President Trump proved that he could win a comfortable (even if not the “landslide” he likes to claim) electoral victory with only 46.1% of the popular vote. That’s about 40% “Trump base” and a critical 6.1% who might have voted for Obama or Bernie Sanders in earlier elections, but pulled the lever for Trump this time around. If the Democrats don’t come up with a workable strategy to connect with and “peel off” at least some of those voters, Trump will likely be headed for a second term even if he never gets support from a majority of American voters. In that case, Democrats will long for the days when screwing around with an otherwise well-qualified conservative Supreme Court nominee was their biggest problem.
HuffPost: N. Rappaport Contests ACLU Exec. Director Romero’s Claim That Trump EO Is “A Muslim Ban Wrapped In A Paper-Thin National Security Rationale.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58922d69e4b0f009905272bc?timestamp=1485983968492
“The ACLU Executive Director, Anthony D. Romero, claims that President Donald Trump’s Executive Order suspending the admission of aliens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen for 90 days is “a Muslim ban wrapped in a paper-thin national security rationale.”
. . . .
President Trump’s Executive Order directs the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence to determine what information is needed from any country to decide whether one of its nationals who is seeking admission to the United States is who he claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.
The Executive Order also requires finding out which countries will be willing to provide the needed information. If the governments of the seven designated countries agree to provide this information, the ban will not be extended, but their nationals will have to pass through the new screening process to get a visa to come to the United States.
In the meantime, the Executive Order permits the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to waive this ban on a case-by-case basis when a waiver is in the national interest.
DHS already has applied this waiver to the entry of nationals from those countries who are lawful permanent residents returning from a trip abroad. He has stated that, “absent the receipt of significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.”
It certainly would have been better if President [Trump] had provided more guidance on such waivers and set up procedures for requesting them before issuing the Executive Order. He also could have delayed its effective date to prevent people from being caught by it in transit to the United States.
Nevertheless, it is apparent that it is not “a Muslim ban wrapped in a paper-thin national security rationale.”
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Read Nolan’s full article which develops his legal arguments further at the above link.
PWS
02/01/17
BREAKING: NYT: Tillerson New Secretary Of State!
The NYT reports:
“WASHINGTON — Rex W. Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday in a 56 to 43 vote to become the nation’s 69th secretary of state just as serious strains have emerged with important international allies.
The many votes against Mr. Tillerson’s confirmation made his selection among the most contentious for a secretary of state in recent history, and he takes his post just as many traditional American allies are questioning the policies of President Trump. In the past 50 years, the most contentious confirmations for secretary of state were those of Condoleezza Rice in 2005, who passed by a vote of 85 to 13, and Henry Kissinger in 1973, who was confirmed 78 to 7.
Mr. Trump is the most unapologetically nationalistic president of the modern era who has questioned the value of many of the alliances and multilateral institutions that the United States has nurtured since World War II to keep world order.”
How Mr. Tillerson’s translates Mr. Trump’s vow of “America First” into the kind of polite diplomatic parlance that will maintain vital alliances will be a significant test.”
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Among Secretary Tillerson’s most Important duties as Secretary of State will be supervising the visa issuance process under the Immigration and Nationality Act, dealing with the foreign policy implications of U.S. immigration and refugee policies, negotiating international treaties, and overseeing the preparation of the U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Conditions which are an important source of background information used in deciding many cases in Immigration Court and at the DHS Asylum Office as well as a tool used by refugee adjudicators in other nations that are signatories to the 1952 U.N. Refugee Convention.
Human Rights is also (or at least has been up until now) an important focus for the Secretary. And, the Administration’s inclination to turn its back on the African continent because there is “nothing in it for us” (after all, what’s the value of saving thousands of human lives compared to profit making business opportunities — America First — Humanity, why bother?) But, at some point, Secretary Tillerson is likely to discover that the Administration’s short-sighted dismissive attitude toward 1.3 billion of the earth’s inhabitants will come back to haunt him (and us).
PWS
02/01/17
WSJ: Tension Between Gen. Kelly & White House As DHS Secretary Resisted Effort To Appoint Kris Kobach As Deputy Secretary!
http://www.wsj.com/articles/homeland-security-chief-and-white-house-clash-1485823301
The WSJ reports:
“WASHINGTON—Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has clashed with the White House over staffing and other decisions in recent days, people familiar with the matter said, leaving the agency without a second-in-command as it tried to institute a new travel ban during a chaotic weekend at the nation’s airports.
When President Donald Trump selected Mr. Kelly, the pick won broad support from Republicans and Democrats in part because they believed the retired Marine general would be willing to speak up and challenge Mr. Trump.
That tension didn’t take long to materialize. Mr. Kelly hasn’t been able to name the deputy he wants at the agency, people familiar with the matter said, and he fought off attempts by the White House to put Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state known as a hard-liner on immigration, into the position.
Mr. Kelly was also frustrated at not knowing the details of the travel ban earlier, so he could prepare his agency to respond, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump signed the executive order that created the ban late Friday afternoon. Mr. Kelly was only informed of the details that day as he was traveling to Washington, even though he had pressed the White House for days to share with him the final language, the people said.”
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According to the article, President Trump has now decided to nominate Elaine Duke, a former Bush Administration official, to the #2 job at DHS. Have to wonder how long Kelly, a former Marine and a reputed “straight shooter” (in more ways than one) will last in “the circus.”
PWS
01/31/17
Lexis Nexis: “Trump’s Refugee Executive Order a ‘Priceless Recruiting Tool for ISIS’ – Former INS General Counsel David A. Martin”
Dan Kowalski at Lexis Nexis summarizes the most hard-hitting part of Professor Martin’s analysis of the Executive Order on Refugees and Visas:
“30 Jan. 2017 – Prof. David A. Martin (please read his full bio) has annotated President Trump’s 27 Jan. 2017 Executive Order. Among other things, Prof. Martin states, “The order is a priceless recruiting tool for ISIS and similar movements, because it so easily fits their narrative that the United States is the enemy of all Muslims. And it will discourage tips and information from American Muslim communities — information that in the past has proved highly valuable to the thwarting of terrorist acts. Accordingly, the Bush and Obama administrations both strived to avoid all measures that could be painted as broadly anti-Muslim. Much of that vital engagement with Muslim communities has been gravely undone by this order.””
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Go on over to Lexis Nexis at the link for further links to the complete analysis in Vox, Professor Martin’s spectacular biography, and a great picture of Professor Martin.
PWS
01/30/17
Is President Trump’s EO On Refugees and Visas Legal? Nolan Rappaport of The Hill Says The Statutory Authority Is Clear, If “Clumsily Executed” — Professor David Cole Of Georgetown Law Says It’s Unconstitutional!
Nolan points to section 212(f) of the INA:
“The president’s authority to declare such suspensions can been found in section 212(f) of the INA, the pertinent part of which reads as follows:
‘(f) Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.’
The 90-day suspension can be waived on a case-by-case basis.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has applied this waiver to the entry of lawful permanent residents. He has stated that, “absent the receipt of significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.
. . . .
A federal judge has granted an emergency stay request from the American Civil Liberties Union to bar the deportation of people with valid visas who landed in the U.S. after the EO was issued.
Frankly, I do not understand this judge’s order. The issuance of a visa does not guarantee an alien’s admission into the United States. In fact, this is explicitly stated on the State Department’s Frequently Asked Questions site About Visas – The Basics.
“After I have my visa, I will be able to enter the U.S., correct?
“A visa does not guarantee entry into the United States. A visa allows a foreign citizen to travel to the U.S. port-of-entry, and the Department of Homeland Security U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) immigration inspector authorizes or denies admission to the United States.”
Nevertheless, it is apparent that the EO will inconvenience many people who are coming here for legitimate purposes, and that is unfortunate.
On the other hand, it also is apparent that President Trump did not exceed his statutory authority over alien admissions with the directives in the EO, and that he issued it to protect the United States and its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States.
But was it the best way to accomplish that objective?”
Read Nolan’s full article in The Hill here:
David argues that the EO is clearly unconstitutional:
“According to the Supreme Court, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v. Valente, 456 US. 228, 244 (1982). But that command is apparently not clear enough for President Donald Trump. On Friday he signed an Executive Order on refugees that imposes a selective ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, and at the same time establishes preferential treatment for refugees seeking asylum who are identified with “minority religions” in their country of origin. In case there was any doubt about the latter provision’s intent, Trump told Christian Broadcast News that it was intended to give priority to “Christians” seeking asylum over “Muslims.”
In both respects, the Executive Order violates the “clearest command of the Establishment Clause.” First, as I developed in an earlier post, the Constitution bars the government from targeting Islam. One of the lowest of many low moments in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was his December 2015 call for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration. The proposal treated as presumptively suspect a religion practiced by about 1.6 billion people worldwide, nearly a quarter of the globe’s population. Trump soon retreated to talk of “extreme vetting,” but never gave up his focus on the religiohttp://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=891&action=edit#n of Islam. Friday’s executive orders are of a piece with his many anti-Muslim campaign promises.”
Read David’s full article in Just Security here:
We’ll See You in Court: Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause
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I see Nolan’s point. But, statutory authority doesn’t necessarily mean it’s constitutional.
On David’s constitutional question, Federal Courts have been willing to intervene at times to protect due process rights of individuals who are physically present in the United States, particularly those who have green cards. The Administration’s ill-thought-out, confusing, and initially heavy handed (or “clumsy” in Nolan’s words) implementation of the EO gave opponents a golden opportunity to score some early temporary victories in cases involving green card holders and others who had valid visas or refugee admission documents at the time the embarked for the United States.
But, beyond that, the EO falls at the intersection of immigration law, foreign policy, and national security, three subjects on which the Federal Courts traditionally have been reluctant to challenge the Executive’s authority. Courts have historically been reluctant to review the Executive’s exercise of authority beyond U.S. territory. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Executive’s authority to engage in “high seas interdiction” of Haitian migrants even though it appeared to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the U.N. Convention and Protocol on the Status of Refugees. Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155 (1993).
Up until 1965, the U.S. immigration laws blatantly discriminated on the basis of race and national origins. The Supreme Court never held any of those provisions unconstitutional. In fact, it was Congress, not the Supreme Court, which forced the 1965 changes to make the law more equitable.
And, leaving aside the legal and national security policy issues, the politics of this situation are far from clear. The initial NBC-4-DC poll (presumably from the DC Metro viewing area) showed 62% of respondents opposed the President’s order. By contrast, the initial Quinnipiac nationwide poll showed 48% to 42% support for the controversial Executive Order. Perhaps, President Trump is on stronger ground politically than the many nationwide protests and fierce reaction against his Executive Order would indicate.
PWS
01-30-17
BREAKING: DHS Secretary John Kelly Finds Readmission Of LPRs In The “National Interest” — Text Of Statement Below
STATEMENT BY SECRETARY JOHN KELLY ON THE ENTRY OF LAWFUL PERMANENT RESIDENTS INTO THE UNITED STATES
WASHINGTON – In applying the provisions of the president’s executive order, I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest.
Accordingly, absent the receipt of significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.
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According to Chuck Todd on “Meet The Press” this AM, the DHS opposed the inclusion of “green card holders” in the EO, but their objections apparently were ignored by the Trump WH staff who did the drafting (without much thought or consultation, it appears).
I must admit to hoping that Gen. Kelly at DHS and Gen. Mattis at DOD would be the “adults in the room” on some of these issues. The problem might be that they aren’t “in the room” when the decisions are made.
With guys like Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach and Stephen Miller, with well- established track records of poor judgement and divisiveness (and that’s putting it charitably) mis-advising Trump on immigration, it’s likely to be an uphill climb for anyone purporting to be the voice of reason and sound judgment. And, I’m certainly not trying to give Trump a pass here; he selected and empowered this team of spectacularly unqualified senior advisors.
PWS
01/29/17
Religion: Stephen Mattson In Sojourners: “American ‘Christianity’ Has Failed”
https://sojo.net/articles/american-christianity-has-failed
“Because while the gospels instruct followers of Christ to help the poor, oppressed, maligned, mistreated, sick, and those most in need of help, Christians in America have largely supported measures that have rejected refugees, refused aid to immigrants, cut social services to the poor, diminished help for the sick, fueled xenophobia, reinforced misogyny, ignored racism, stoked hatred, reinforced corruption, and largely increased inequality, prejudice, and fear.
. . . .
By these standards — and by the ultimate example that Jesus himself set for us by example — mainstream Christianity in America has failed. It looks nothing like Jesus.
But the reality is that following Jesus is extremely hard. It demands giving away your most prized possessions and abandoning your biggest fears. So while there might be political, economic, financial, and safety reasons for implementing policies that harm people and refuse them help, there are certainly no gospel reasons.
Nobody understood this better than the early church. Those first Christ followers who refused to bow to the emperor and go along with the policies of the Roman government. For them, they gave everything — to the point of being persecuted, arrested, tortured, and eventually martyred — for the purpose of serving Christ and serving others, the result of choosing to dedicate their lives to the truths of Jesus rather than the ideals of the ruling empire.
The question is, will American Christians ever learn to do the same?”
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PWS
01/28/17
Time: Administration Doubles Down On Refugee, Visa Bars — Trump Praises Implementation
http://time.com/4652644/white-house-defends-refugee-visa-order/
“Speaking to reporters Saturday, a senior administration official defended the secrecy and surprise surrounding the order’s implementation, arguing that by more fully informing the traveling public, air carriers and ports of entry about the order would have made it easy for those seeking to circumvent it to enter the U.S. Businesses, universities and aid organizations were reportedly left scrambling to rebook travel plans and provide assistance to those stranded overseas by the order.
“Everyone who needed to know was informed,” a the official said.
“This White House conveys its deepest appreciation to everyone involved in the implementation of this order, and that’s been formally conveyed to the managers of both State and Homeland Security,” the official said. The official added that the Trump administration had been working on the order and its implementation for “many weeks” during the transition process, including consultation with State Department and Homeland Security officials.
But even as the administration boasts of the order’s swift execution, there were key details left unfinished, including formalizing the exemptions rules and requirements for the waivers. The official noted that the State Department was also still in the process of defining what “in transit” means for the purpose of the order’s “undue hardship” exception for refugees who had been approved to enter the U.S. — for instance, a refugee temporarily residing in a third country en route to the U.S. The official added that the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection were in the process of finalizing that and other guidance to be released later Saturday.
According to the official, U.S. green card holders from one of the affected countries currently abroad will need to apply for a waiver before being allowed to return to the U.S. The precise process for obtaining the waiver was still being finalized Saturday by the State Department. Green card holders from those countries currently in the U.S. would be required to meet with a consular officer before departing the country, the official added.”
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Pretty incoherent statement from the Administration. We’re talking about folks who either were already living here with green cards or who had spent months, if not years, being screened abroad, to determine whether they were of “special humanitarian concern to the U.S.” or qualified for special visas that Congress provided for those who helped us during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Go figure.
I’m glad I’m not a refugee. I’m also happy not to have to implement or defend this program.
PWS
01/28/17