Tweet
© Getty
Justin Trudeau tweeted this message to people “fleeing persecution, terror & war,” which appears to have been a reaction to Trump’s order.
Trudeau tweet.jpg
This tweet illustrates the need to be careful about what one says on a social media website. With a few key strokes on his computer, the Canadian prime minister insulted the president of the United States by implying that his travel ban order, which included a suspension of refugee admissions, was based on religious discrimination.
Also, it gave false hope to desperate, displaced people. People fleeing terror and war are not necessarily “refugees.” They aren’t going to be given refuge on that basis in Canada.
People fleeing persecution may be refugees, but only if their persecution is based on race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group.
According to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 65.6 million people have been displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution, but only 34 percent of them are refugees.
Read more at http://thehill.com/opinion/immigrati...-welcome-dream
Published originally on The Hill.
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.
Nolan Rappaport
If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Tomas Paine or Benjamin Franklin had had such an attitude, there would be no United States of America today.
If Theodore Herz, Chaim Weizman and many other Jewish leaders had remained silent on issues affecting the Jewish people, there would never have been a State of Israel.
I am of course not comparing myself with any of the above individuals.
More specific to the immigration context, the historic 1965 immigration reform law, which ended 40 years of the bigoted, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian, and anti-other non-"Nordic" immigration policies of the 1924 Immigration Act (which Stephen Bannon, Jeff Sessions and other past and present Trump immigration advisers still have had kind words for - and which Trump himself indirectly praised in an August 31, 2016 immigration address as a presidential candidate) did not come about all by itself.
It took many years of speaking out against the pre-1965 immigration system, which added to the Holocaust death toll and which Adolf Hitler praised in Mein Kampf, before it was finally abolished.
Does Nolan think that the critics of that racially bigoted, anti-Semitic 1924 immigration law were speaking out to no purpose and should have kept silent?
I very much doubt it.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
If I didn't believe that the opinions of individuals can matter, I wouldn't be writing an op-ed every week for The Hill. In fact, I think the idea for the notorious Travel Ban came from one of my articles. "If he is elected to the presidency, Donald Trump will have statutory authority to suspend the entry of all Muslim aliens," (April 20, 2016), http://www.ilw.com/articles/2016,0420-Rappaport.pdf
"I predict that he would develop a criterion for the proclamation that would be similar to the one recently established by the overwhelmingly bipartisan Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015,7 which was enacted to prevent terrorists from using the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Nationals who enter under the VWP are not subjected to the scrutiny of the visa application process. The Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act prohibits travelers who are in one of the following categories from using the VWP:
• Nationals of VWP countries who have been present in Iraq, Syria, or countries listed under specified designation lists at any time on or after March 1, 2011 (with limited government/military exceptions); and
• Nationals of VWP countries who are also nationals of Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Sudan."
I mention that a ban might be found unconstitutional if it were based on religious, but it never occurred to me that anyone would think a ban based on that criterion might be called religious discrimination.
Nolan Rappaport