President Donald Trump’s immigration Executive Order directs federal officials to set new immigration rules that will identify and exclude people who support the use of violence, and also hints at the exclusion of people who embrace orthodox Islam’s “violent extremism.”
Senior officials “shall implement a program, as part of the process for [immigration] adjudications, to identify individuals who seek to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis, who support terrorism, violent extremism, acts of violence toward any group or class of people within the United States, or who present a risk of causing harm subsequent to their entry,” said Section 5 of the new Executive Order, which likely will reverse President Barack Obama’s open-door policies to foreign migrants.
The anti-extremist language in the new March 6 Executive Order is narrower and more legalistic than the pro-American language in the judge-blocked Jan. 27 Executive Order, which said:
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Allied left-wing and Islamic advocates, including Democratic activist Khizr Khan, complained that Trump’s “hostile attitudes” language was intended to exclude immigrants with Islamic beliefs.
The language bolsters the often-ignored language in the current N-400 citizenship application document, which asks applicants if they have “EVER advocated (either directly or indirectly) the overthrow of any government by force or violence? Have you EVER persecuted (either directly or indirectly) any person because of race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion?”
The new memo also directs officials to collect and share information about immigrants and refugees who commit crimes, including the terror and anti-women crimes associated with people from Islamic-majority countries. Section 11 of the new order declares officials should collect information about:
(i) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on terrorism-related activity, affiliation with or provision of material support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other national-security-related reasons;
(ii) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United States and who have engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the United States;
(iii) information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women, including so-called “honor killings,” in the United States by foreign nationals.
(iv) any other information relevant to public safety and security as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General, including information on the immigration status of foreign nationals charged with major offenses.
The new Executive Order says it does not “discriminate” against any particular religion, which is likely meant to rebut progressive claims that opposition to Islam’s combined religious and political ideology is similar to legal curbs on the practice of Christianity and other religions which do accept the separation of church from state.
Executive Order 13769 did not provide a basis for discriminating for or against members of any particular religion. While that order allowed for prioritization of refugee claims from members of persecuted religious minority groups, that priority applied to refugees from every nation, including those in which Islam is a minority religion, and it applied to minority sects within a religion. That order was not motivated by animus toward any religion, but was instead intended to protect the ability of religious minorities — whoever they are and wherever they reside — to avail themselves of the USRAP in light of their particular challenges and circumstances.
The Executive order directs agency heads to quickly establish the new entry rules, saying:
The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of the program described in subsection (a) of this section within 60 days of the effective date of this order, a second report within 100 days of the effective date of this order, and a third report within 200 days of the effective date of this order.
The president also directs the agencies to toughen routine screening of legal visitors, such as tourists or business executives. “In the first 20 days, [the Department of Homeland Security] will perform a global, country-by-country review of the identity and security information that each country provides to the U.S. Government to support U.S. visa and other immigration benefit determinations. Countries will then have 50 days to comply with requests from the U.S. Government to update or improve the quality of the information they provide.”
Trump’s immigration and visitor rules will likely be very different from former President Obama’s open-door policies. Obama described his globalist policy in a Nov. 2014 speech to Democratic supporters in Chicago:
Sometimes we get attached to our particular tribe, our particular race, our particular religion, and then we start treating other folks differently. And that, sometimes, has been a bottleneck to how we think about immigration. If you look at the history of immigration in this country, each successive wave, there have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks’ — even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.
Obama made the same diversity-first claim in September 2015:
When I hear folks talking as if somehow these [foreign] kids are different than my kids or less worthy in the eyes of God, that somehow that they are less worthy of our respect and consideration and care, I think that’s un-American. I don’t believe that, I think it is wrong and I think we should do better, because that’s how America was made.
Obama’s outside policy is expressed more crudely by the alliance of Islamic and left-wing groups which are protesting Trump’s pro-America immigration policies.
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