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Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday.
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So, on Friday afternoon, U.S. President Donald Trump
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signed an Executive Order that reshapes U.S. immigration law,
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and there's been a lot of confusion about it, even within the Government,
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about who's affected by this law and precisely what it means.
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So I thought today I'd take a closer look at what the Executive Order actually says.
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So first, the order bans, for a period of 90 days, all "immigrant and non immigrant"
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entry into the United States from all citizens of seven nations --
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Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
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These seven nations seem to have been chosen
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because they were cited in 2015 and 2016 laws
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signed by President Obama that required residents of those countries
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to get a visa to visit the United States.
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But the Executive Order states that they can't enter the United States even with a visa,
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although there are a few exceptions for diplomats.
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So what does this mean? Well, for an Iranian professor at Yale,
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it means that if she leaves the U.S. she won't be allowed to re-enter it,
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even though she's a well-known opponent of the Iranian regime.
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And for a doctor who is abroad battling a polio outbreak,
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it meant being denied entry into the U.S. despite his visa to be here.
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Now, I know those probably sound like particular examples of hard-luck stories,
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but because people from those countries already needed visas
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with specific reasons to visit the United States,
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like visiting family, or studying, or working in a specialized field,
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almost all the stories are hard-luck stories.
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The Executive Order initially also seemed to apply to legal, permanent residents of the United States
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who aren't citizens -- so called "green card" holders,
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although the language in the order is extremely hard to parse, like, even to those within the government.
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I mean, at one point on Sunday, Tump's chief of staff said the order "does not apply" to green card holders,
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and then later, in the very same interview, said "of course it does" apply to green card holders.
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But after much confusion and emergency lawsuits, it now appears that permanent residents
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will not be subject to the ban.
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It's also unclear from the language in the order whether it applies to dual citizens.
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Like, if you're a Canadian citizen who was born in Somalia as Canada's Immigration Minister is,
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there's still some confusion as to whether you can enter the U.S.
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Now, critics of this part of the Executive Order,
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and I should acknowledge that I am among them,
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argue that it is really poorly targeted.
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I mean, no foreign nationals from any of those seven countries
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has killed even a single American in a terrorist attack. Ever.
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In general, terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11 has been exceedingly rare.
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Like, in the past decade, American civilians
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are literally more likely to die by lightning strike than terrorism.
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And notably, most of the attacks that do happen in the U.S.
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are carried out by American citizens or permanent residents,
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and those attacks wouldn't be prevented by the order.
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Now, the counterargument is that there may be threats from these seven countries we don't know about,
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but it's really hard to prove a negative,
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like, it's hard for me to prove that I'm not a terrorist
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because, how can you be sure I'm not?
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Just for the record, in case Big Brother is watching -- I'm not.
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"In case Big Brother..." de-- Big Brother is definitely watching.
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Anyway, all of this is why concerns about the ban don't really fall along traditional left-right lines
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like, the very conservative Cato Institute, for instance, said
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there is "little national security benefit to Trump's executive order on immigration."
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And many, although by no means all, Republican Congress people and Senators agree.
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John McCain and Lindsey Graham, for instance, released a statement saying that
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the ban may be remembered as a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.
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And then there is the second part of the Executive Order,
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which affects admission of refugees into the United States.
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So back in 2011, the Obama administration dramatically slowed the process of refugee applications
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from Iraq for 6 months, an off-sided precedent for what Trump announced on Friday
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but this is very different.
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Trump is suspending all refugee admission to the United States from all countries for 120 days,
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and suspending all refugee resettlement from Syria indefinitely.
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This appears to include people who've already been vetted, approved and received visas,
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which is also very different from what happened in 2011
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Side-note -- you may have heard that there is no vetting of Syrian refugees coming into the United States,
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that is simply not true.
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As discussed in this video, the process includes a huge variety of background checks and interviews,
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and often takes more than two years.
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The Executive Order also prioritizes (quote)
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"refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution."
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which Trump has said will mean prioritizing Christian refugees when the program restarts
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although that's not actually stated in the order and it's not clear it would be legal.
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For context though, last year the US accepted about 39,000 Muslim refugees,
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about 37,500 Christian ones, and also 8,500 people of other or no faith.
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But just to be absolutely clear, Muslim refugees who have been vetted and approved for admission
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to the United States cannot currently get in, but neither can Christian or Buddhist refugees
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for at least 120 days, nor can interpreters who served with the American Armed Forces in Iraq,
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because no refugees are being allowed into the United States.
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And this blanket ban also seems to me very poorly targeted.
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For one thing, it lumps all refugees together, whether they're from Syria, or South Sudan, or Burma
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Like, most refugees resettled in the United States in 2015 were not Syrian, they were Burmese.
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But also, many Syrian refugees are victims of ISIS who can speak first hand about its horrors
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and that is a moderating force, not a radicalizing one.
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Imagining Syrians monolithically is as dangerously simplistic as imagining that
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ending refugee resettlement will solve the US's security challenges.
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I share John McCain's feeling that ultimately this kind of blanket ban will do more to help terrorist recruitment
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than improve our security.
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Now, Trump counters that it will make us more safe, and he certainly has access to top-secret information
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that I don't have access to;
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but given that these policies wouldn't've prevented a single US terror fatality from the last 40 years,
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it's hard to see exactly how we're safer.
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There are also other issues of legal confusion in the order, for instance, the order states (quote)
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"The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution."
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But as many Law professors have pointed out -- that's kind of ludicrous.
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I mean, according to that sentence, if you are for instance, Canadian
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and you support a parliamentary system of government over the system outlined in the US Constitution,
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are you no longer legally allowed to visit Disney World? Because that does appear now to be the law.
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Also, when foreigners attempt to enter the United States, as in most countries,
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they have the right to seek asylum, and be interviewed by an immigration officer
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to determine if the asylum seeker has a credible fear of persecution
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but the Executive Order explicitly states that "no benefits" will be extended
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to citizens of the affected nations when they attempt to enter the United States
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and such an interview would probably constitute a benefit.
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So as of now it does not appear that people are being allowed to seek asylum,
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which is in violation of an existing US law, called the Immigration and Nationality Act,
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which an Executive Order cannot legally override.
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In short, no matter how you feel about immigration, this Executive Order is a hot mess
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it is too ambiguous, self contradictory, and unclear to be effective law.
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Now, I wanna emphasize that much of this may be moot in 3 or 4 months
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as parts of the order expire,
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but even if that occurs I worry we've already made a dangerous statement
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that the US won't do its part in the refugee crisis,
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and that we will discriminate based solely on place of birth.
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I think those are mistakes. That imagining a diverse group of over 100 million people
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to be some terrifying and singular Other only encourages others to imagine us that way.
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It's hard to imagine people complexly, especially when you're being told to fear them,
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but I found it helpful to listen, so I put together a playlist of refugees telling their stories
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and ask you to listen to them, to believe them,
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and to see them as people, instead of merely as threats.
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Hank, I'll see you on Friday.