The order halts the admission of Syrian refugees indefinitely; suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days; reduces 2017 refugee admissions by 60,000; and halts the issuance of visas from countries that the United States deems as having inadequate security screening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a response to fear about Syrian refugees committing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil,\u201d said Alex Nowrasteh, of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has not been a terrorist attack committed by a refugee on U.S. soil since the late 1970s,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Just 20 refugees since 1975 have been convicted of attempting or carrying out a terror attack on U.S. soil.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/President-Trump-254x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd none of those people who committed those attacks are Syrians \u2013 not one,\u201d Nowrasteh said. \u201cWhatever effect or intent this executive order has, it\u2019s not going to do much at all for national security,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Nowrasteh notes that no refugee attack has killed Americans since the 1970s, which saw three U.S. fatalities.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour annual chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee on U.S. soil is 1 in 3.6 billion a year,\u201d Nowrasteh said. \u201cThat is how safe the refugee program is in terms of terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the draft executive order: \u201cHundreds of foreign born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after claiming asylum; after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas; or through the U.S. refugee resettlement program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Data shows that the threat is not as great as Trump suggests, however, particularly in terms of terror attacks committed on U.S. soil from the seven proposed visa ban countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been 17 convictions or attempted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from people in these countries, but none of them have been successful and many of them were decades ago,\u201d Nowrasteh said.<\/p>\n
Moreover, none of the 9\/11 hijackers hailed from the targeted countries. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, two came from the United Arab Emirates, along with one each from Egypt and Lebanon.<\/p>\n
President Trump talked a lot about extreme vetting during his campaign. The draft executive order proposes barring people who could pose a risk of becoming a terrorist in the future, which Nowrasteh says deviates from already existing and rigorous vetting measures.<\/p>\n
But how immigration officials will determine who poses such a risk is not made clear in the executive order, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really opens up the flood gates for sort of arbitrary denials of visas based on the feelings of border agents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nowrasteh indicated that a policy on extreme vetting still needs to be written, clarified, expanded and exactly defined \u2013 otherwise it will be impossible to run a law-based immigration system.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, immigration lawyers are scrambling to understand what impact the executive order will have.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the problems with executive actions like this that are really not well thought out is that it is difficult to determine who it would apply to,\u201d said Virginia-based Hassan Ahmad with the HMA law firm in a phone interview. Thousands of Customs and Border Patrol and immigration officials will need to implement\u00a0such policies immediately after the executive order is signed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really, really hard to know what the law tells you to expect but also what actually may happen in the field,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cAnd so it\u2019s difficult to provide any sort of accurate advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmad, who has practiced immigration law for 15 years, has been getting messages in the middle of the night this week from anxious clients who are losing sleep. He said he is encouraging any immigrants in the United States who are not naturalized to utilize the existing law to the maximum possible extent while they can.<\/p>\n
At the time executive order was signed, the attorney noted, any number of people cleared for admission \u201cthrough the entire lengthy and complex vetting process\u201d could have already been en route to the United States.<\/p>\n
A freeze on refugee admissions could leave these refugees stranded at U.S. airports.<\/p>\n
If they are not turned away, they could be required to claim asylum again, and go through a credible-fear interview at the airport. Ahmad said this could allow refugees to enter the country and wait out the moratorium, but there are still a lot of unknowns.<\/p>\n
For Ahmad, the flurry of immigration executive orders this week has been \u201cextremely troublesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I can remember a single week where I saw this much rollback, this much regression in our immigration policy,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t remember it ever being this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the space of four days under the Trump administration, we\u2019ve seen a rollback and an absolute abuse \u2013 a power grab \u2013 of executive power that really is unprecedented,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, federal law is on President Donald Trump\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president does have pretty much carte blanche authority to stop or to prevent entry of any class of aliens he deems to be injurious to the safety or national security of the United States,\u201d Ahmad said of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.<\/p>\n
Ahmad notes that the law does have a limiting provision that would protect permanent residents and green card holders, but that there is no prohibition on barring entry based on national origin for tourists, students, journalists, diplomats, religious workers and H1B visa holders.<\/p>\n
President George W. Bush set the precedent for barring refugees and visas to certain groups when he halted the refugee-resettlement program for several months after the 9\/11 attacks. President Jimmy Carter likewise banned Iranian immigration after the Iranian hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
Ahmad notes that it is also legal to deny entry to the U.S. based on political opinion or ideology or political affiliation.<\/p>\n
Calling the draft executive order \u201cagenda-driven,\u201d Ahmad said that political undertones are apparent in the seven countries targeted by the draft executive order.<\/p>\n
While the draft executive order does not name Islam or Muslims specifically, Ahmad says some of its directives parrot \u201cthe same Islamophobic rhetoric that seemed to define the Trump campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
The draft executive order says the U.S. \u201cshould not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including \u2018honor\u2019 killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice other religions) or those who would oppress members of one race, one gender or sexual orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crazy thing is that persecution is already a ground of inadmissibility,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need a new law or executive order or any sort of policy \u2013 the law already denies people entry based on those ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) \u2013 1\/27\/17 – Capping off a whirlwind first week of executive action, President Donald signed an order Friday to dramatically reduce refugee admissions and ban visas for travelers from \u201chigh-risk,\u201d Muslim-majority countries. \u201cWe don\u2019t want them here,\u201d Trump said of radical Islamic terrorists. \u201cWe only want to admit those into our country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17901"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17903,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17901\/revisions\/17903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}