An open letter to those protesting President Trump’s Executive Order on temporary immigration restrictions.

Signing the EO at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon?  Dumb.  Making it effective immediately, giving no chance to families already in the air? Very unfair, and dumb (could have made it effective Monday). Detaining or deporting people with Green Cards (which is a legally protected status) without probable cause?  If this is in fact happening (I’ve seen conflicting reports), it’s questionable why this needs to be done, even though Green Cards do not, in fact, guarantee re-entry. The huffing and puffing over inauguration attendance figures and the continuing twitter obsession? Childish. Concerns over some of the cabinet picks? Legit. Has much of the last twelve days looked like amateur hour at the White House? Absolutely.
Can everyone agree on these things?  Good.  That’s called intellectual honesty, and we need a whole lot more it on both sides of the aisle.
How many of you have actually read the EO on immigration? It’s readily available online.  You’re not commenting on this without having actually read it, are you? Are you relying on the mainstream news outlets to tell you what’s in it? The same news outlets who told you Hilary had a ten point lead two days before the election? The same news outlets who refused to tell you about the DNC rigging the primary and stealing the nomination from Bernie? The same news outlets who tried to convince you that the Podesta emails were somehow “fake” because wikileaks published them? Please stop doing that, and go read the actual order.
Okay. Now that you’ve read it, why did Trump call out seven Muslim-majority nations? Oh wait, he didn’t – the seven nations don’t appear in the EO. Where the seven countries come from is the law that the EO keeps referring back to. That law is the Terrorist Travel Protection Act of 2015, signed into law by President Obama. Obama is the one who identified the seven Muslim-majority countries with the greatest risk of harboring terrorists, and the law he signed outlined recommendations for dealing with the problem, including “extreme vetting”.  The text of that law is also readily available online, so I’m sure you read that too.
Are you promoting this as a #MuslimBan? The fact that the largest Muslim countries in the world are unaffected by this order makes your claim incredibly dishonest, doesn’t it?  That’s right, the vast majority of Muslims in the world are not subject to this order. What about the fact that many of the wealthiest Muslim countries, in the immediate geography of the crisis, which you would think would be the most desirable place for them to go, have taken ZERO refugees? HERE Shouldn’t we be outraged about that?
Also, why wasn’t there any outrage in 2011 when Obama banned Iraqi refugees for six months? Didn’t your news media report on that?

“The State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. 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.” ABC News, 11/20/13 HERE

So maybe you think all of this is illegal, or should be illegal, sort of like the just-fired interim Attorney General thought.  I mean, it’s just mean, and anyone who says otherwise is a bigoted xenophobic racist with no compassion.  Well, guess what? Not only is it not illegal, it is definitively codified law. Specifically, Subsection (f) of 8 U.S. Code § 1182:

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President HERE
“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…”

As an aside, for those who are claiming immigration is somehow a “right”, let’s talk about the rights of actual citizens.  What about Obama EXECUTING U.S. citizens, without a warrant, without being charged, without a trial, without being convicted, and without being sentenced. That sounds a tad unconstitutional, does it not?

“The administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged for the first time that it had killed four American citizens in drone strikes outside the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that its actions were justified by the danger to the United States. Mr. Obama approved providing new information to Congress and the public about the rules governing his attacks on Al Qaeda and its allies.” NYT 5/22/13 HERE

Muslim-American U.S. citizens, assassinated by Obama without any semblance of due process. Where was your humanitarian outrage back then?
Okay, back to immigration. As I said at the top, there is plenty of administration bungling here. It really wouldn’t hurt for Trump to apologize for the bungling and vow to do better.  But the temporary restrictions are vital to our security. Every sovereign nation has not only a right, but a duty, to secure and defend its borders and protect its citizens.  This is not a difficult concept, and is pretty much a core precept of what a sovereign nation is, and how a nation remains sovereign.
Now a final plea: Be informed and act on your beliefs. Exercise your right to peaceful protest. Fight for the change you want to see. But please stop with the hate. Stop the name calling. Stop the threats of violence. Stop claiming the moral high ground while proclaiming the rest of us deplorable. That is what got Trump elected. I promise to call him out on his nonsense if you promise to give him a chance. The rightness of an action has nothing to do with whether or not it was your guy who did it.
We just want some of that intellectual honesty.

5 thoughts on “An open letter to those protesting President Trump’s Executive Order on temporary immigration restrictions.”

  1. From your words to general acceptance of your offer. Unlikely but hey your offer was generous and fair. The progressives (and the money backers) are too narrow-minded and blind to see the writing on the wall. Instead of having to wait for revisionist historians to skew the truth, we get revisionist up-to-the-moment stories which ignore the truth. It is a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

  2. Not one Mahometan ought be allowed into America and those already here must be deported immediately if they say one Anti-American or Anti-Christian word.
    The men who wrote the preamble to the constitution were white men of British descent (The American Colonies were a British enthostate) and there is no way in hell they would have permitted their enemies to immigrate to America to either kill of subjugate them

  3. Until a person in the USA reads most of the Muslim Religions Book, especially the last pages and fully understands what it calls for, such as Muslim Peace, they should restrict themselves from supporting the Liberals and wanting unlimited immigration by Muslims.

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