Hello again! I've been hard at work on my latest article. This one is about Trump's travel bans, which as you may have heard were largely unblocked by the Supreme Court on June 26th. They will rule on the larger issues at stake in October, but the signs look good. I hope you enjoy the article, and I'll let you know when it appears locally and/or nationally!
Trump's Travel Ban Must Be Upheld
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy, Associate
Professor of History, SUNY Alfred, blogs at waddyisright.com
As
most Americans know all too well, since the media has covered the
so-called “Muslim ban” obsessively, if disingenuously, most of
the elements of President Trump's travel bans (issued in January and
in March) were blocked by left-leaning federal judges. On June 26th,
we learned that the Supreme Court unanimously swept aside most of
these injunctions. In addition, the Court signaled that it will
decide the underlying issues in October – although several justices
have already tipped their hand, indicating that they are very likely
to support the President's position. All this is outstandingly good
news, not only for President Trump, for conservatives, and for
national security, but also for the constitution itself, as I will
explain.
The
travel bans in essence block refugees, visitors, and immigrants from
six countries that the Trump administration believes are particularly
infested with terrorists who wish to do harm to the people of the
United States: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This
action is intended to be temporary, and it allows for exceptions.
Moreover, the President's authority over the admission of foreigners
into the U.S. is well-established, by precedent and by statute. U.S.
Code, Title 8, Section 1182, states: “Whenever
the President finds that the entry of any aliens...into the United
States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he
may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary,
suspend the entry of all aliens...or impose on the entry of aliens
any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” In short, the
President has very broad authority over immigration matters. So why,
then, would any federal judge even consider inteferring with the
travel bans?
The injunctions
issued by leftist judges rely on three primary assumptions: one, that
the travel bans are not justified by any definable threat; two, that
the remarks of President Trump and some members of his team indicate
that the real motivation for the bans is religious prejudice; and,
three, that the bans, in targeting people from the six countries
already named, discriminate on the basis of nationality. All of
these arguments have one thing in common: they are exceptionally
weak.
First, it is
absurd to suggest that federal judges, who do not have the requisite
security clearances and who do not receive intelligence briefings,
would be in a better position to judge matters of national security
than the President of the United States. In addition, the list of
six countries affected by the ban is a veritable terroristic rogue's
gallery. No one in his or her right mind could deny that refugees,
visitors, and immigrants from these countries are more likely to
represent a threat to Americans than people from, say, Australia or
Norway. Numerous recent terrorist attacks in Europe perpetrated by
migrants from the Middle East help to prove this point. Moreover, do
we really want unelected judges meddling in any policy, agency, or
law when they feel that their judgment is sounder than that of
elected officials? No! Such judicial overreach simply must not
stand.
Second, with
respect to the charge that the travel bans are essentially based on
religious prejudice, we must admit that Donald Trump, as a
Presidential candidate, made some foolish statements along these
lines. Nonetheless, he has also long since ceased to speak in those
terms, and he has explicitly stated that the travel bans do not
constitute “Muslim bans”. It is also abundantly obvious that, if
the intention of the bans is to prevent Muslims from coming into the
country, they are monstrously ineffective means of achieving that
objective, since the vast majority of Muslims live in countries
unaffected by the bans.
But the more
fundamental question that Americans ought to be asking is this: why
are only the most incendiary words ever spoken (or tweeted) by
President Trump ever accorded any weight by the mainstream media and
leftist judges? Why are his innumerable condemnations of
discrimination, by contrast, not taken seriously? Let us be honest:
President Trump says a lot of things, some of them intemperate and
unwise, and some of them mutually contradictory, and that is
certainly not to his credit, but it is grossly unfair to him to
assume that only the most egregious things that he says (and usually
only a twisted version thereof) represent his real thinking. What
would happen if the same “logic” was applied to the utterances of
liberals and Democrats? Presumably, the courts would disallow any
leftist who has ever said an unkind word about men, or whites, or
police officers, or Christians (i.e. virtually every leftist alive)
from ever executing policies, or voting on legislation, that could in
any way be perceived as prejudicial towards those groups. Government
would grind to a halt! Needless to say, however, such a nonsensical
standard would never be applied to liberals. It apparently only
applies to Beelzebub himself: President Trump. Ridiculous.
Lastly, with
respect to the baseless charge that the travel bans constitute
discrimination on the basis of nationality, the simple truth is that
every country on earth uses nationality as a partial test to
determine whether or not to permit entry to aliens. That is why
visas exist: they grant special permission to foreigners to enter a
country, when presumptively this permission would be denied, based
more often than not on the person's nationality. Thus, for instance,
a Canadian requires no visa to visit the U.S., but a Ukrainian, or an
Afghan, or a Congolese does, and rightly so. To deny President Trump
the authority to make such determinations in the interests of U.S.
national security would be extremely dangerous, since it might create
a new standard (and perhaps one secretly desired by liberals) that
would allow access to our country to virtually anyone, at any time,
and for any reason, since to deny them such entry would be
“discrimination”. The Supreme Court is right: this is flawed
reasoning.
In the end,
therefore, while Americans are welcome to debate the wisdom of
President Trump's travel bans, they are also obliged to accept the
fact that Donald Trump is the President, and thus he has broad
authority over immigration. The injunctions conjured up by activist
judges represent, in effect, an effort to negate the results of the
2016 Presidential election, and to wrest control over immigration
from the Executive Branch and place it in the hands of unelected (and
on national security matters uninformed) leftist judges. As
conservatives, but more so as Americans, we cannot allow this to
happen. The separation of powers lies at the heart of the U.S.
Constitution, and so it should remain.
