In the midst of Drumpf’s ban on (some) Muslims coming from (some) countries there has been quite a bit of back and forth over why these seven countries — none of whom has produced a terrorist who actually has attacked the U.S. — were selected versus Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.
This morning Sean Spicer claimed that the choice was made in order to be pro-active in preventing future attacks. Which perfectly explains why you take action against people in nations that never attacked you, now perhaps we should go out and arrest people who’ve never committed a crime because doing so is “pro-active” even if it does violation “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause.”
Previous the Trump regime has argued that their list of countries was generated by the Obama Administration and also Congress, both of which are half true. The whole and full truth is that the first person to put together this list of countries for the reason of blocking “refugee infiltrators” was actually Senator Ted Cruz.
Sen. Cruz Introduces the Terrorist Refugee Infiltration Prevention Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today introduced the Terrorist Refugee Infiltration Prevention Act of 2015, which will immediately bar refugees to the United States from any country, such as Iraq or Syria, that contains territory substantially controlled by a foreign terrorist organization. The bill sunsets after three years so that Congress can reevaluate the global situation and either let the bill expire or reauthorize it with necessary modifications in light of changed circumstances.
Upon introduction of the bill, Sen. Cruz stated, “After watching the horrific scenes play out in Paris, we have to take basic steps to protect ourselves from the growing threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This legislation will do just that.”
“As the American people are now painfully aware, ISIS has emerged as the new face of the radical terror that has bedeviled the West in recent decades. Unlike some regional jihadists, ISIS represents a direct and growing threat to our citizens, and increasingly to our homeland itself. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has clearly lacked focus on national security interests. I believe we must do everything we can to prevent even a very few jihadis from slipping into our nation and urge my colleagues to join me in this effort to protect the American people.”
The full text of Sen. Cruz’s legislation is available here.
Cruz’s legislation originally named Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen as the countries to be targeted, this eventually changed as this bill failed and was replaced by the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 — as sponsored by Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mi) — which was signed by President Obama and included Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria while the State department added Libya, Somalia and Yemen to the list later.
Miller’s bill didn’t ban refugees as the Cruz bill attempted to do, what it did was temporarily restrict the ability of people with current passports from 38 countries who can waive the need for a standard Visa before traveling to the U.S.. Under this law, there was a temporary requirement for them to get a normal Visa if they had travelled to one of the listed countries in the past 18 months, or held dual citizenship with one of those countries.
Cruz’s proposal was based on the unproven idea that simply because there were active terrorist organizations in combat in those nations that this means that those attempted to escape those terrorist included trojan horse refugee who themselves were really terrorists — and that based on this theory all refugees from those nations should be banned. That’s a bit like the idea that because one person in a bar might get drunk and drive everyone in the bar should be arrested which is basically nuts and essentially what Trump’s ban has done.
The final law added one additional layer of security — getting a visa — to the process but did not detain people for dozens of hours, separating children from their parents, deporting people with valid green cards against federal court orders.
The Trump regime has additionally argued, besides wrongly blaming Obama for the list of countries, that the “priority for minority religions” isn’t discriminatory and is needed because only 3% of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. have been Christians.
“Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.”
But there are reasons or that.
So what religion are the Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S.?
The vast majority are Sunni Muslims, who make up 2,128, or 93 percent, of the Syrian refugees in the U.S. The Sunnis are about 74 percent of the Syrian population, according to the CIA, but “they tend to support the rebels and oppose the Assad regime, and Syrian Sunnis have been subject to ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Alawite minority in recent months,” as the Washington Post reported on Oct. 18, 2012.
This explains why Sunni Muslims are disproportionately represented among Syrian refugees in the U.S., Andrew Tabler, a Middle East expert at the Washington Institute, told us in an email.
Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad’s regime is “made up of Alawites AND other minorities like Christians,” said Tabler, who wrote a 2011 book called “In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria.”
“The reason why is that most refugees are not displaced because of ISIS, but as a result of bombardments by the Assad regime,” Tabler told us, explaining the large percentage of Sunnis who have been admitted to the U.S. from Syria. “The regime has attempted (but failed) to shoot them into submission. Those fleeing the fighting who are not with the regime have to run to neighboring countries for protection and become refugees. And some of them eventually apply to come to the U.S. as refugees.”
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA military analyst in the Middle East who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, offered two other possible factors.
“In addition, much of the fighting has taken place in heavily Sunni areas (because most of the country is Sunni),” Pollack said. “Finally, much of the Sunni-controlled territory is controlled by ISIS, and nobody except absolute lunatics WANT to live under ISIS.”
There are several good reasons why the number of Christian refugees is fairly low, the Christians are allied with Assad, the Sunnis are being bombed by Assad and many of them are under threat of ISIS so they are the one primarily fleeing the country, not the Christians.
Putting a priority on Christians is really just putting a priority on those who are in support of the Assad regime, and also a violation of the Establishment clause.
Sean Spicer today proclaimed that the reaction to this ban has been completely overblown since it only affected 109 people who were temporarily detained, but the fact is that only 94 people have been killed by terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11. If inconveniencing 109 people is “no big deal”, then just 94 casualties really isn’t that much bigger a deal — comparatively — and doesn’t justify such draconian illegal and unconstitutional action.
Spicer is of course ignoring the fact that those 109 were only the persons who were in transit as the executive order was enacted, dozens more were taken off flights and blocked at overseas airports. So really were talking at least 200 people and that’s only for one day, if we extend that out 90 days were talking about thousands of approved refugees and at least 18,000 visa holding and green card possessing people with a legal right to enter the U.S. who are being illegally blocked from reuniting with their families and having their lives turned upside-down and sideways during this ban while at the same time there is literally no evidence, zero, that any of those people are terrorists and would harm a single American in any way, not the 94 who’ve died since 9-11 or those who died during it.