By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
President Trump’s executive order– of Jan. 2017 , a heraldry of communal legacy, characterized by Muslim exclusionism– halted the entire US refugee programme for 120 days, indefinitely banned Syrian refugees, and suspended all nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries—Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq ,Libya and Iran. Trump’s order ushers in a new apartheid era towards Muslims. History will determine the futurity (a long-term impact of Mr Trump’s immigration order), but his early praise for its implementation will not easily be forgotten. What a Trump’s euphoria about his order!
“It’s working out very nicely,” Mr Trump said in a brief response to a question on Saturday afternoon. “You see it in the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely, and we are going to have a very, very strict ban, and we are going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.”
On the ground at major US airports, things weren’t going quite so nicely, however. Immigration officials were having a difficult time implementing Trump’s order after receiving conflicting instructions on who to bar from entry into the US – and what to do with them once they were held. And as the day progressed, and word spread of the detentions, crowds of protesters at international terminals grew from dozens to hundreds to thousands.
While on the campaign trail, it was easy for Mr Trump to roundly decry the US immigration system as broken and make a general call for bans and moratoriums. As president, however, his team has had to fill in the details – and it seems they faced some difficulty translating his pre-election rhetoric into policy. The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.
There had been some debate whether green card holders should be even allowed to board international flights. It was decided by the Department of Homeland Security they could fly to the US and would be considered on a case-by-case basis after passing a secondary screening. President Trump’s executive order on immigration, parts of which have already been put on hold by several federal judges, is likely to face a series of new legal challenges about whether it violates a 1965 anti-discrimination law and the Constitution, scholars said Sunday.
‘’Trump’s order cites seven Muslim-dominant countries, and the president has signaled he favors Christian entrants over Muslims. Four federal judges have put various holds on the ban, and other courts are expected to consider similar stays. A group of 16 state attorneys general said Sunday they believe the executive order is unconstitutional, probably presaging an intense round of legal action against it.
Ruthann Robson, professor of law at City University of New York School of Law, said the fact that all four judges who had reviewed the order by Sunday afternoon put various holds on it indicates that the measure faces serious challenge.’’
“When the federal judges are ruling on the injunctions, one of the requirements is that they have to say that there is a substantial likelihood that the plaintiffs will prevail on the merits,” Robson said in an interview. Trump shows signs of being a compromiser. Apparently while writing the book: The Art of the Deal – a book that discusses his willingness to achieve goals through deals. The executive order is against the thought he narrated in his book. A group of Michiganders, including a Yemeni student and a Syrian seeking to become a permanent U.S. resident, are among those who Monday filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s order suspending the entry of refugees and others from several majority-Muslim nations.
‘’The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, wants a ruling blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order signed Friday, saying it discriminates against Muslims and violates protections for the free exercise of faith and prohibitions on governmental establishment of religion. It also says people affected by the order are being denied due process of law.
Referring to the order as a “Muslim Exclusion Order,” the complaint — which includes 27 plaintiffs from across the U.S. — says it “implements an impermissible religious gerrymander that divides foreign nationals, even those lawfully present inside the United States, into favored and disfavored groups based on their faith.” A group of Michiganders, including a Yemeni student and a Syrian seeking to become a permanent U.S. resident, are among those who Monday filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s order suspending the entry of refugees and others from several majority-Muslim nations.
His executive order went into effect on Saturday which temporarily bans the entry of people trying to get into the United States coming from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. Trump said during his campaign that in order to combat terrorism he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States.The aforementioned countries are all predominantly Muslim nations.
But included in the new president’s executive order are VISA holders, green card holders, and permanent resident’s of the United States who have a legal right to be here. Refugees and asylum seekers from the mentioned countries are also part of the ban. Even military interpreters can’t get visa’s, they must stay in their countries and face retaliation for working with the American Government’’.
Trump’s strategy of making a communal divide between Muslims and Christians paves the way for enhancing the theory of the ‘clash of civilizations’ advocated by Professor Huntington.
‘’Huntington paid due attention to the Islamic World as a civilization field that has a strategic location in the world and has burning points of contact with the West. But he didn’t understand how Islam became widespread outside its birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula reaching the heart of Europe and the heart of China on one hand and how the European colonialism affected Islamic countries later and the effects this has left as a direct impact on the contact between the two parties.
On one hand, the twentieth century has complicated the nature of these relations, for the creation of Israel due to efforts of European countries at the beginning before America adopting it and making its security its own objective, had its impact on poisoning the relations with the Islamic peoples with the West. On the other hand, millions of Arabs and Muslims moved to live in the West, which some estimate their numbers by forty million people. Between this and that the world knew the globalisation and the Information Technology Revolution’’.
By no fair yardstick, Trump immigration order fulfills the pondering human rights values, rather it paves the way for an America, building more communal ghettos-an antithesis to the very semblance of the Declaration of Independence, American constitution, and American credo of ‘exceptionalism’.
