President Trump signed an executive order yesterday that would ban all Syrian refugees and almost all refugees from all countries from entering the United States for six months, while cutting the overall annual limit for refugees in half and banning for at least 90 days all immigration from seven majority Muslim countries. It implies that this ban could continue indefinitely for certain countries. These policies will not improve national security and will undermine America’s efforts to combat Islamic extremism and terrorism around the world.
1) The order violates the law. Under the Immigration Act of 1965, the president may not refuse to give visas to immigrants coming to live in the United States permanently due to their nationality. The provision is unequivocal in stating that no person may “be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” While this does not apply to temporary visitors or refugees, I have previously explained in detail why the president cannot legally enforce this order against immigrants who are sponsored by employers or family members in the United States.
2) Refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries are not a serious threat to Americans. The order would ban all people entering the United States from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen, and yet no terrorist from these places has carried out a lethal attack in the United States. Indeed, no Libyans or Syrians have even been convicted for planning such an attack. Moreover, the likelihood of being killed by any refugee from any country is just 1 in 3.64 billion a year. This discrimination is arbitrary and cannot be rationally justified based on a assessment of the risk. It is worth remembering that German Jews were turned away on a similar pretense that they could be Nazi spies—only to be killed in death camps.
3) The order aids the Islamic State. ISIS has said that it wishes to “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves,” forcing Western Muslims to “either apostatize… or [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens.” They want this overreaction. The only thing keeping ISIS from imploding are its new recruits which makes winning the propaganda war critical. Accepting refugees deprives ISIS of human resources. The Caliphate’s main source of income is the people it extorts. One refugee told the Times. “ISIS would not let us leave. They said, ‘You are going to the infidels.’” What could be more important than making the “infidels” more popular than ISIS?
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/five-reasons-congress-should-repeal-trumps-immigrant-refugee-ban
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