Didn’t most big attacks occur in liberal states/cities?
I don’t know, but have you seen what the price of butter is in Denmark these days!?!?
I heard it was similar to that of tea in China.
I think you are failing to fully comprehend the negative results for the rest of the world. We spend so damned much on our military it is almost obscene, and then, to add to the problem of trying to control such a large organization dedicated to killing people we don’t like, we put a madman in charge and let him try to prove his manhood by killing a bunch of civilians in Yemen, while picking fights with our allies all around…
In other words, if you think this is just OUR problem, you are crazier than the fools who voted the other fool into office, and who continue to support REpublicans who want to remove two regulations protecting our health and environment for every new one proposed.
Exactly as much as SA’s attempt to distract from the fact that the argument he made which actually did relate to the thread was manufactured poppycock.
Your linking to this story is a perfect example of why the Republican leadership is able to make political gains from the vague and unproven accusation that the Obama administration was not doing enough to investigate immigrants and refugees.
The story is a historical problem with granting citizenship to immigrants because the paper system from the 90s allows people to get citizenship under a new identity while their old identity/fingerprints are not in the computer system.
That’s a problem, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? We don’t have fingerprints on paper anymore. If this administration blocked all refugees and visa holders from these 7 countries based on this issue then I am sure they will be delighted to learn over the next 90 days that we use digital records now.
So far, your two links showed:
- The Obama administration was concerned with the Visa Waiver Program and the fact eligible people should be scrutinized for traveling to 7 countries that are strongly associated with war and anti-American terrorism. Makes sense to scrutinize this specific group of people since they are going to suspicious places but are not subject to normal Visa requirements. But we can agree - they are being vetted.
- A historical problem exists because people can take on new identities relatively easily when their first immigration records, especially their fingerprints, are still on paper. Some of these individuals are from questionable countries. God help us if the terrorists had the foresight to take advantage of this oversight. Here in reality, we know they didn’t. It’s a lot easier to influence some dumb young kid via Twitter and YouTube.
Don’t forget the typical 2 year process for a refugee to earn the visa to emigrate to this country, and the 2+year process for Syrian refugees to emigrate to this country. My mother-in-law couldn’t get a visa to come to the USA the first time she tried because she couldn’t sufficiently prove she would return. So even travelers from allied countries with citizen children in the US have to pass a relatively high bar to get a visa.
This accusation that Obama’s administration wasn’t doing enough was made without any evidence at all and I suspect that once this “issue” serves its purpose of furthering mistrust of government it’ll either never be heard about again or Trump will declare the problem is solved without anyone at the State Department being able to identify a single thing they do differently.
Oh, no we don’t think it’s your problem. But we do now that this is the kind of administration which might decide to enact policies such as “ban from entry anybody whose nationality has ever included terrorists”, and we would like that kind of thing to not catch us in mid-air while headed there.
That a policy like that would keep Americans out would be seen as a bonus by the people who believe that traveling abroad is un-American.
When looking at the whole poll, it is clear to me that a few questions were missed, questions like if we are supporting keeping away people that already have green cards or vetted refugees. It also does not ask if there is support to keep students that needed to go to military training in the USA to fight ISIS (particularly Iraqis).
What I get the impression is that the way the poll is reported is concentrating on what most indeed would approve, but the poll is not really about a Muslim ban (of course since the point of many conservatives here is to deny that it is a Muslim ban, one wonders then why they are depending on this poll that makes that point), but about the idea that we should prevent the indiscriminate entrance of people from specific countries. But the reporting/OP does omit some nuance that was **also **in the poll.
IMHO putting this together with the only result reported by the OP, shows me a more nuanced view, the result showed by the OP is pointing only to what most do think the question refers to: Many would agree that preventing the entrance of terrorists from those Muslim nations is a good thing. But at the same time the point is that most should still allow refuges to come, even from the conflicted Muslim nations. Clearly the originally reported result we get is because while people are indeed concerned about terrorists they also realize how stupid it is to apply a new policy with no exceptions.
As a former diplomat that resigned because he realized that pushing for the war in Iraq was wrong said:
This is precisely what we are seeing here. All politicians do this of course. It’s annoying when it’s inconsequential like Rand Paul’s filibuster over using drones to kill US citizens, financially harmful as in the case of GMO labeling laws, but this example is only topped by the Iraq War in my mind.
I explained this more thoroughly in the post to iiandyiiii that I lost yesterday, but here’s the short version. Several posters were questioning whether it’s a valid to be concerned about nationals from “countries of concern” as opposed to VWP nationals that visited “countries of concern”. Here are two examples:
My point in sharing the AP article was that the Obama-era DHS was particularly-worried about nationals from “countries of concern”, at least in some contexts (like this report from the DHS IG). It starts out with this:
We can imagine (and I think you conceded as much when you wrote “Some of these individuals are from questionable countries.”) that there are a fair number of immigrants who have mistakenly been granted citizenship from all sorts of countries. There are probably some Aussies, Brits, Canadians, and Germans, along with some Somalis or Syrians. But the Inspector General’s audit focused particularly on those from “countries of concern”. He wasn’t as worried about the Aussies as he was the Somalis. Is that a valid concern? Was he being unreasonable in focusing his audit on nationals from “countries of concern” rather than the broader pool of people mistakenly granted citizenship? I can’t find any record of anyone arguing against it at the time, or declaring it racist or unAmerican or hateful or bigoted. But when Trump focused his immigration EO on this same group (nationals from “countries of concern”) suddenly it’s racist and bigoted and unAmerican. It seems more than a bit hypocritical to me.
Now, like slash2k and CarnalK noted, there are probably lots of good reasons that perfectly good and decent people want to get out of Somalia and Syria. They’re shitty places to live. We can probably agree that the vast majority of immigrants from these places are just trying to escape their own little corner of hell on Earth and make a better life for themselves and their families. But is it “bigoted” or “unAmerican” to give people from these “countries of concern” a closer look than others? It didn’t give rise to those complaints when the DHS IG did it in 2015.
If that’s all it was, without all the stuff around it, then perhaps we could have a reasonable conversation about it. But Trump ran a campaign, calling for a Muslim ban. He and people in/around his administration have called it a ban. Giuliani stated, on TV, that this originated as a way to legally create a Muslim ban.
With all that taken into account, it’s not credible to me that this policy, and its advocates in the WH, intend for nothing more than to take “a closer look” at people who come from certain countries of concerns. It’s not reasonable to discuss the policy alone without considering all the rhetoric that lead up to it and still surround it. Taking all of that into account, I think it’s entirely reasonable to call it bigoted and unAmerican, as well as very foolish and dangerous for our national security.
We were looking at people coming through these countries with a higher level of scrutiny. If trump had felt that we needed to heighten the scrutiny further, then that’s a policy he could ad. I don’t know what steps you could add to the current system, but feel free to expand upon any ideas for how we could do better.
Now, we are not doing this. We are not taking a closer look. We already took a look, and a closer look, decided all was good.
Then we changed our minds, and stranded thousands of people at airports. We turned away people who had risked their lives and their families lives to assist our soldiers. We turned away people who had spent years applying for and being granted a visa, who had sold their homes and left everything behind to come live the american dream. We turned away permanent residents who were employees at US businesses returning from vacation, not only hurting them, but hurting our own businesses as well.
Taking a closer look isn’t bigoted or unamerican.
What we did was.
Cite? I didn’t think it was nearly that many.
To your broader point that the order was implemented in a fashion that caused some confusion / chaos / disruption / inconvenience / hardship for some people, I largely agree. (ETA: I would say the same was true of ObamaCare. Presidents - especially new ones - and government fuck stuff up like this with disheartening regularity.)
Oh Johnny, that will not work on him, in fact, as a conservative that is likely one of the worst things you could have said to get him to come around because there is a cosmic aversion to doing anything the rest of the world wants.
I know this all too well based on how much I listen to conservatives.
As for the poll, I entirely believe these numbers. There are a lot of people that would put the bricks in the wall themselves to construct fortress America where only the “natives” and anglosphere had any hope of traveling around and visiting without issue.
I’m concerned about unchecked muslim immigration as well, more than most people on this board, but a blanket ban is way too far and we already vet people fairly well. But the talk radio peanut gallery and conservative America? Just look at the posters, ther commentary suggests they have become little more than pustules of fear and a people under siege mode. It’s always the other that must be guarded against.
K9bfriender pretty much stated what I would state, but I really want to emphasize what the problem is here:
- Republicans and Trump are claiming there is an absence of scrutiny on these immigrants and refugees.
a.) Republicans do not offer up what is specifically absent from current processes.
b.) Republicans do not offer a solution to this unidentified set of deficiencies.
c.) Trump says he’ll ban the Muslims, just 'cause.
d.) Trump changes his mind and offers up extreme vetting and gets on board with the party line.
e.) So far extreme vetting is banning some Muslims.
f.) On an ongoing basis, thousands of people are undergoing varying levels of distress because they have no idea when they will be able to come to the USA for their job, family, etc.
What’s the benefit? The perception of doing something.
What’s the cost? Our national identity, the visa holders affected, individuals, families and companies are in distress with no end in sight – 90 days is just a number and not a promise of anything.
Let’s compare to Obamacare:
- Addresses several problems in health care everybody readily recognizes.
- The most difficult features are given years to be implemented (individual mandate).
- A small subset of the population is forced to pay more their healthcare or forced into insurance plans they do not prefer, but they still have health insurance and access to the best medical care in the world.
What’s the benefit? Improved healthcare for millions.
What’s the cost? Everyone has to give a little, some lose the health insurance they most desire, some small businesses have to provide health insurance when they did not have to recently.
What do Democrats want to do about the costs of Obamacare? Improve it.
What do Republicans want to do about the costs of Obamacare? Fuck Obamacare.
What do Democrats want to do about preventing terrorists from immigrating to the USA? Scrutinize and patch up holes in the system.
What do Republicans want to do about preventing terrorists from immigrating to the USA? Act like they are fixing something and Fuck Muslims (albeit a subset of Muslims).
Didn’t the 9/11 creeps do a lot of their plotting in Germany? Not trying to start any trouble, or anything, just sayin’, is all.
Well, yes, but you need to read post #188; in reality what the media and the OP omitted is that a lot of people are not really as you are painting them.
This is important because while a lot of conservatives are running with only one question in the poll (that IMHO came like that because it implied that terrorists should not be allowed in*), other questions show that overall most do consider the travel ban to be a foolish thing and that refugee/immigrants from even the conflicted nations should be allowed in.
Not a bad idea indeed, but the reporting missed a lot of nuance behind it. I think then that just looking at the question/percentages the OP only pointed at was as expected and/or useful as the phrase “my cat’s breath smells like cat food” goes.
My point in mentioning Obamacare wasn’t to sidetrack the thread into the pros and cons of Obamacare, but to offer up an example of another government program that had a rough initial rollout. I thought it was so self-evident that even partisan Democrats could concede that point.
There’s one difference, not mentioned above, that’s very much worth noting. Obamacare was endlessly debated and proceeded through congressional action, and changed (the Left would say “watered down”) to get through Congress, with plenty of time before implementation began. Trump’s action, on the other hand, would be equivalent to Obama signing an executive order that “there will be a Public Option, regardless, starting today.” I’d think that the conservatives who complained about executive action endlessly during the Obama era might concede the point that this isn’t “rough rollout”, this is “authoritarian executive overreach, that should be checked by Congress.” And that authoritarian overreach directly affected people’s lives in a chilling manner, without warning.
If you had to choose, would you take government inconveniencing people solving 50% of a problem that does exist or government inconveniencing people, lending moral support to white nationalists, creating propaganda for terrorist organizations and hurting our standing internationally in solving 100% of a problem that doesn’t?
So while I fully recognize Obamacare has had problems and isn’t the best way to solve the problem at hand, why don’t you just admit that the Obama administration was strictly vetting visitors and immigrants to our country and all this talk of extreme vetting is smoke in mirrors.