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The Trump administration released Monday a revised version of its immigration Executive Order to address the concerns raised in an appeals court decision, but those criticisms were always fundamentally irrational and not based in the text of the Order.
President Donald Trump’s original Executive Order (EO), Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, was challenged by two states in a U.S. District Court. The District Court preliminarily ruled in the states’ favor and temporarily ordered the government to stop enforcing the EO.
The government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and moved for an emergency stay to reinstate the EO pending the outcome of its appeal. The Circuit Court was not convinced that the government was likely to prevail on the merits of its appeal, so it denied the government’s motion for a stay.
If Trump had appealed the Circuit Court’s decision to the Supreme Court, he would have been a shoo-in to win. He opted instead to replace the EO with a revised version that, although it responds to the Circuit Court’s decision, is still battered by virtually the same criticism.
Read more at http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...the-way-to-the
Published originally on The Hill.
About the author.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. He also has been a policy advisor for the DHS Office of Information Sharing and Collaboration under a contract with TKC Communications, and he has been in private practice as an immigration lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson.
www.uvm.edu/~hag/histreview/vol6/lund.html
These findings eventually led to the notorious 1924 "national origins" Johnson Reed Immigration Act which heavily favored immigration from the mainly Protestant "Nordic" countries of Northern Europe, while almost entirely excluding immigrants from the rest of Europe and most other areas of the world.
To the best of my knowledge, nowhere in that law were the words "Jewish" or "Catholic" mentioned.
Instead, the immigration quotas for the countries where most of Europe's Jews and Catholics were living at that time were cut almost to the vanishing point.
No historian or immigration analyst would seriously dispute that the intent of that law was to keep Jews and Catholics out of America based on religion, as well as ethnicity.
The motivation behind Trump's original and revised executive orders banning entry to the US from six (originally seven) countries which just "happen" to be 99 percent Muslim (or close to it) is no different, even though the word "Muslim" does not appear in Trump's EO's any more than "Jewish" or "Catholic" appeared in the 1924 law, which was to be the foundation of America's policy for the next 40 years, and which both AG Jeff Sessions and senior presidential advisor Stephen Bannon's Breitbart News have been showing their support for very recently.
A century ago, America's politicians were evidently more open and honest about the reasons for banning immigrants from particular countries because of their religion than is the case today.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
"To be sure, many demagogues in our past - including elected officials, have paved their way to power on fear. Race was a favorite target, but also religion...country of origin, and many more. The purpose of these campaigns of fear was to divide America, not to solve our problems.
And that is just what is happening now. If we were better to calibrate out fears to our challenges, we would also be talking about the threat of homegrown extremists such as Nazi-inspired White Nationalists...Russian interference in our election, and so on.
Dan Rather continues:
"And when you add the fear-mongering Mr. Trump has done around immigration...it is clear what is going on. Mr. Trump is palying to his base, with lies and half truths that only seek to further his political ends."
https://www.facebook.com/theDanRathe...58192562480716
85 years ago, many people warned against the danger of another would be tryant, who has come to power on the basis of hatred, fear and lies directed against a certain religious/ethnic group of people known as the Jews, just as trump is doing now with regard to Mexican, Msslim and by extension all non-European immigrants.
85 years ago, the world ignored the warnings about that particular political Leader at its peril.
Let America not repeat that same mistake today.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...resident-trump
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law