I never established goalposts in the first place. You are the one that established the goal that a Muslim ban must stop all attacks to be worthwhile(which concedes too much anyway).
I simply researched the big mass casualty events(9/11, WTC bombing, Boston MArathon bombing), and found that they were all caused by immigrants from locations where there was a lot of radicalism.
Of course you know, that with everything else Trump says he’s just fucking with us. From this particular article in the HuffPo, his promise to ban all Muslims from entering the country is Just a suggestion. And he’s already on record as saying the ban wouldn’t apply to any of his friends. I mean, he know’s them, right. They’re perfectly okay. That’s right. Some of his best friends are… whatever.
You ignored the OKC bombing, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords, the 2012 attack against the Sikh temple, the church shooting committed by Dylann Roof and every attack ever done by anti-abortionists and the KKK. Far more terrorist attacks are committed by US-born Christians then by foreign muslims.
You went to worrying about random immigrants becoming radicalized committing small events to organized mass attacks.
You were supporting bans that would do no good. You even admitted that large numbers would not be subject.
Now, we’ve has a number of years of immigration/refugees from the Middle East. show where our current policies have allowed the mass casualty events by trained operatives that you claim will happen.
Refugee stats since 2007.
Notice how many from the Middle East.
The Tsarnaev parents and younger son were living in Russia before immigrating to the U.S. (the older boy was left with relatives in Kyrgyzstan for a couple of years, but he was also born in Russia). The Russian Federation is not majority-Muslim; most Russian nationals who profess any religious belief are Orthodox Christians. Would Trump’s ban include all Russians?
They were from Chechnya. That’s a red flag.
No, the boys were born in Russia.
In fact, a Rolling Stone article on the Tsarnaev family claims that other Chechen families in the Boston area didn’t consider them to be real Chechens because they had never lived in Chechnya at all (and the boys’ mother was an Avar, not Chechen).
Saying, “ooh, your genealogy shows that some or all of your ancestors came from a majority-Muslim nation” expands the scope of Trump’s ban rather dramatically. How many generations do you have to be removed from that nation for the ban no longer to apply?
For example, would somebody who was born in a non-Muslim nation, but whose grandparents were Syrian or Iranian, be banned? Great-grandparents?
What if they claimed the grandparents were Assyrian Christian or Sephardic Jews?
The U.S. prohibits several classes of people from coming into the U.S. for reasons such as health issues and criminal record:
https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-2006.html#0-0-0-202
Why do you think banning Muslims is that much more difficult than these other issues?
Because the U.S. Constitution doesn’t say, “Congress shall make no law respecting vaccinations against mumps.” There is a constitutional clause about religion, however.
Also, the laws banning people are dealing with people who have, individually, done something illegal (such as committed a serious crime) or failed to do something required (such as be vaccinated). The law you quote deals with individuals, not entire groups, whereas the Trump ban would apply to all people who belong to a particular religion, or come from a country where that religion is dominant, or who have recent ancestry in a country where that religion is dominant, or meet whatever other criteria he adds in a futile attempt to detect the bogeyman.
Bring back the head tax, update it to require a certain amount of $ that’s beyond the reach of the average person. Give embassy’s and consuls the ability to waive it as needed.
String out the family re-unification through red tape and paperwork and deportation in lieu of parole for felony level offenses, for non citizens.
Deep level background checks for all, between landed and green card status individuals.
Declan
How would any of these actually accomplish Trump’s ban, however?
For example, if the U.S. government has a policy that involves waiving the head tax for members of favored religions, or stringing out family reunification only for people from Muslim-majority countries, we’re right back at legal challenges on First Amendment grounds. If we never waive the policy, though, then lots of Christians and Hindus get excluded. Deep background checks happen under current law, and certainly don’t screen out everybody who ever attended a mosque, so what would be different under your plan?
Please see post #56. We’ve banned entire groups before who haven’t done anything illegal.
Just to make my own position clear: I think Trump’s proposal is impractical, unenforceble, will not produce the desired result and contrary to the ideals that make this country great. But I don’t think it’s unconstitutional.
Yes, but we’ve never banned entire groups based on religion, and religion is specifically included in the First Amendment; Asian ancestry isn’t.
At the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act (which didn’t actually ban all Chinese–it applied only to laborers and miners–but did reduce legal immigration to a fraction of its former number), non-white immigrants were not eligible to become citizens anyway. Racial restrictions on naturalization were not finally eliminated until after World War II (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952), and the jurisprudence on, e.g., the equal protection clause has changed greatly since the mid-19th century. The Constitution in the 19th century didn’t forbid government-mandated racial discimination (cf. Plessy v. Ferguson), but by the mid-20th century the SCOTUS had an entirely different interpretation.
And the rest of us would be like “Yum, pork chops!”
Also not only are most of the terrorist attacks in this country caused by fervent radical Christians, the people that the terrorist Muslims are killing most of are…other Muslims. We see only a fraction of the violence in the West.
We’re getting into Constitutional Law and out of my depth, but I think when the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law …” it’s implied that they mean laws that affect citizens and residents of the United States – because Congress has no authority over anyone else.
Of course it does. It has authority to keep people out of the country. It has authority to regulate the behavior of visitors, who are legally at least NOT considered residents.
If a law said that a group could enter the country but couldn’t practice their religion, then that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment.
If the law said that a group couldn’t enter the country – then that’s just border security. That group isn’t covered by the First Amendment, because they never set foot in the country. They’re not residents, visitors, citizens…they’re just someone on the other side of the border. Otherwise, any citizen of Outer Slobovia who buys a plane ticket to America is now covered by the Bill of Rights.
However, we’re talking about a law/policy here that says a citizen or legal resident of the United States can sponsor their relatives for immigrant visas, UNLESS their relatives are Muslim. Declan, in post #91 above, suggested we “[s]tring out the family re-unification through red tape and paperwork” for Muslims. The family already here being prevented from reunifying would seem to have constitutional standing to challenge the law, as would potential employers or other visa sponsors.
Moreover, the consular officers charged with approving or denying visa applications are all U.S. citizens, and compelling them to enforce religious discrimination would open up another avenue for legal attack.