MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-01-30 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
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| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] In other news,
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Quoting Mancini, Sabin (DFS) (Sabin.Mancini-at-dfs.ny.gov):
> That's Obama's list of designated countries he used, for expediency
That's not even a _competent_ distortion of the facts. Seriously, it
would be nice of you could aim for a better class of obfuscation.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/sorry-mr-president-the-obama-administration-did-nothing-similar-to-your-immigration-ban/
Sorry, Mr. President: The Obama Administration Did Nothing Similar to
Your Immigration Ban
BY JON FINER
JANUARY 30, 2017 - 8:30 AM
[...]
In light of all that, and particular in light of the new White House’s
acknowledged aversion to facts, it may seem like a minor point that
President Donald Trump and his advisors, in seeking to justify and
normalize the executive order, have made a series of false or misleading
claims about steps taken five years earlier by the Barack Obama
administration. In case you missed it, a statement from the president
published Sunday afternoon read:
“My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned
visas for refugees from Iraq for six months. The seven countries named
in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by
the Obama administration as sources of terror.”
Leaving aside the unusual nature of team Trump looking to his
predecessors’ policies for cover, it seems worth pointing out this
statement obscures at least five enormous differences between the
executive order the White House issued on Friday and what the Obama
administration did.
1. Much narrower focus: The Obama administration conducted a review in
2011 of the vetting procedures applied to citizens of a single country
(Iraq) and then only to refugees and applicants for Special Immigrant
Visas (SIVs), created by Congress to help Iraqis (and later Afghans) who
supported the United States in those conflicts. [...]
2. Not a ban: Contrary to Trump’s Sunday statement and the repeated
claims of his defenders, the Obama administration did not “ban visas for
refugees from Iraq for six months.” For one thing, refugees don’t travel
on visas. More importantly, while the flow of Iraqi refugees slowed
significantly during the Obama administration’s review, refugees
continued to be admitted to the United States during that time, and
there was not a single month in which no Iraqis arrived here. [...]
3. Grounded in specific threat: The Obama administration’s 2011 review
came in response to specific threat information, including the arrest in
Kentucky of two Iraqi refugees, still the only terrorism-related arrests
out of about 130,000 Iraqi refugees and SIV holders admitted to the
United States. [...]
4. Orderly, organized process: The Obama administration’s review was
conducted over roughly a dozen deputies and principals committee
meetings, involving Cabinet and deputy Cabinet-level officials from all
of the relevant departments and agencies — including the State, Homeland
Security and Justice Departments — and the intelligence community.
[...]
5. Far stronger vetting today: Much has been made of Trump’s call for
“extreme vetting” for citizens of certain countries. The entire purpose
of the Obama administration’s 2011 review was to enhance the already
stringent vetting to which refugees and SIV applicants were subjected.
While many of the details are classified, those rigorous procedures,
which lead to waiting times of 18-24 months for many Iraqi and Syrian
refugees, remain in place today and are continually reviewed by
interagency officials.
So, no. Try to peddle that particular clumsy lie to someone who's not
paying attention. (Like maybe the alleged President, the wack job who
refuses to listen to anyone else, and spends all of his time tweeting
and obsessively watching cable news. If you can get his attention, he's
probably easy to manipulate.)
The most infuriating result of this trainwreck so far, aside from the
attempt to overturn the authority of the Judicial Branch, is the sudden
denial of entry to holders of Special Immigrant Visas.
You seem kind of oblivious, so I'll spell this out for you. When
certain Iraqis (and later Afghans) have put their lives on the line for
years working for the US military, such as working as interpreters
for our war effort, the Army in gratitude has gotten them those visas
so they can come over and continue working with the Army here, and not
get killed at home by anti-American forces. This is not just gratitude
at work but also basic common sense: If people who put their lives at
risk to work for us get abandoned, hardly anyone's going to risk doing
that in the future.
Two such men, interpreters for the US Army in Iraq who had already been
vetted and cleared for entry, are still being illegally detained at JFK
and being illegally denied access to their attorneys in defiance of a
Brooklyn Federal judge's court order. Worse, all future US Special
Immigrant Visas holders who are deemed to be 'from' [sic] any of the
seven countries are being summarily denied boarding rights to come to
the USA as arranged.
So, I guess official policy is now to shaft people who've risked their
lives for us. The more fools they, eh? Wow, they sure got conned.
But I'm sure that problem will go away quickly, as the word gets out
that we leave anyone who helps us to get killed. The problem will solve
itself.
I do agree with Discount Mussolini about the need for a big, beautiful
wall. Two of them, in fact, one around the Executive Mansion and the
other around the Capitol Building, each inscribed on the inward facing
side with the words 'You're fired' in 2500 point Comic Sans. Think of
it as urban renewal.
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