The Awful Truth
Given the intense controversy raging around The Trump Administration's recent decision to ban entry to the US from seven Muslim majority countries, it makes sense to explore it and separate facts from hysteria.
Like many others, I find myself trapped in the same Facebook induced news echo chamber of outrage against this violation of human civil rights. I gravitate towards liberal, progressive news sources like The Guardian US and The Washington Post. However, since moving here, I've tried to break out of the echo chamber and get a broader spread of what's really going on here in America by reading Fox News, The National Review and a few other choice outlets. While they're not quite Breitbart, they have helped me understand the broader picture of what's actually going on here.
First let's get the facts straight. Trump's Executive Order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. This is 20,000 a year less than the 70,000 ceiling that was at the end of the Obama administration. According to The National Review, this means America will admit refugees at close to the average rate of the 15 years before Obama’s dramatic expansion in 2008. Although the graph below would suggest that this new figure is the lowest it has ever been and well below the average. The National Review cite this graph in their article, so perhaps they are also catching a bad case of the 'alternative facts' bug too.
The 120 day ban certainly is extreme and the inclusion (initially at least) of Green Card holders was downright ludicrous. It's also worth noting that what he has done is illegal and in direct contradiction of The Geneva Convention.
Including Iran on the list also seems particularly misguided. I was lucky enough to visit Iran last year and there is no ally that America could use more in the region than Iran. Especially given that every Iranian I met seemed to have a cousin in America and there is absolutely no evidence that their government is funding Islamic terrorism. In fact, they have also been fighting ISIS at their borders and have been the victims of attacks themselves. In any case, the awful truth is that Trump's move is backed by the American public to an alarming degree.
According to a recent poll by Rasmussen, 57% of Likely US Voters favor a temporary ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen (33% opp). Similarly, 56% favor a temporary block on visas prohibiting residents of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen (32% opp). Obama’s 2014 executive amnesty for people in the country illegally was similarly unpopular, with an NBC poll showing that 48 percent disapproved of his approach, and only 38 percent supported it. Polling also shows most Americans favour walking away from the Trans Pacific Partnership and stopping the Syrian refugee programme. Sadly the same also goes for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The majority of American people who support the flushing civil liberties and the core principles of the American Constitution down the toilet are not bad people. They are, unfortunately naïve, afraid and easily manipulated by a government that is spreading fear in order to perpetrate a hateful and oppressive agenda.
These people are not necessarily anti-immigration, they are just needlessly afraid of the wrong immigrants coming in. The right wing press is all too happy to play along given the high ratings from news that pertains to a terror threat on American soil. Perhaps if people were more aware of the statistics below, they would reconsider their opinions.
Trump, according to almost every favorability poll, is currently one of the least popular presidents in history, but his current policies are not. This is the awful truth. That’s why Republicans gained so much ground over the past eight years, earning decisive off-year election victories. Understandably, job creation and safety are the two principal concern of Americans and the Democrats simply didn't realise just how important these were to a majority of them.
It's also worth noting that the decision by the Trump Administration is by no means unprecedented. After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the 1870s, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which targeted a single ethnic group by specifically limiting further Chinese immigration.
In 1932 President Hoover and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression as immigration went from 236,000 in 1929 to 23,000 in 1933. This was accompanied by voluntary repatriation to Europe and Mexico, and forced repatriation and deportation of between 500,000 and 2 million Mexican Americans, mostly citizens, in the Mexican Repatriation. Total immigration in the decade of 1931 to 1940 was 528,000 averaging less than 53,000 a year.
Several pieces of legislation signed into law in 1996 marked a turn towards harsher policies for both legal and illegal immigrants. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) vastly increased the categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and imposed mandatory detention for certain types of deportation cases. As a result, well over 2 million individuals have been deported since 1996.
In short, the history of America has also been the history of immigration restriction and subsequent relaxation. History shows us that the tide will turn again. We will not forget all of the wonderful things America has given the world and the many immigrants who made them. Without them we would be bereft of Jeans, cash machines, Google, hot dogs, processed cheese, basketball, telephones, bicycles, hairdryers, radios and automatic cars... to list but a few. And there will be more. America has a ceaseless ability to reinvent itself and I'm almost certain that it will (in the right way).
We can only hope that people in America are no longer misled by their new government and the media into believing in a threat that barely exists. There are many more threats in America that pose much greater risks to lives than Islamic terrorism. Muslims are simply the current scapegoat and a lightning rod for fear in the same way that Italians, Japanese, Irish, Chinese and Mexican people have been labelled as past (and sometimes current) threats to the wellbeing of the American people.
I believe that sanity will prevail here. But we need to stand up and continue to fight for it as long as we have the ability to do so. Fear is a more ready and potent emotion than compassion. In a post-truth world we also need to treasure and promote facts. The truth will ultimately lead the way towards a better, stronger and more open America.