On Monday, March 6, 2017, the Trump administration rolled out “a down scaled, but still pernicious” version of the Muslim ban. Of the original seven countries under the first Muslim Ban, the new executive order targets refugees and travelers from six majority Muslim nations, excluding Iraq. They include: Syria, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia. Though the new order may disrupt fewer lives, it still carries the same false message as the first order: one of targeted religious discrimination built on a baseless claim of heightened security. As the New York Times concluded its editorial referring to what it called the “Muslim Ban Lite“, “Resorting to these bunker mentality tactics, which are being peddled with plenty of innuendo and little convincing evidence, will do lasting damage to America’s standing in the world and erode its proud tradition of welcoming people fleeing strife. While these steps are being sold to make the nation safer, they stand to do the opposite.”
Indeed, the United States has a long standing tradition of welcoming immigrants who flee persecution, as the inscription on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor makes clear:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refugees of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I left my lamp beside the golden door.”
This Muslim ban imperils American standing in the world, but also our perennial commitment to religious freedom. As a result, the new executive order was immediately challenged by the State of Washington, with other states joining in. On March 16th, Federal Courts in Hawaii and Maryland issued orders temporarily blocking the implementation of what they correctly saw as a revised executive order but still a ban on Muslim immigration which they declared to be unconstitutional.
These challenges followed a harrowing report by the New York Times portraying the struggle of an immigrant family attempting to flee the United States near Champlain, NY, seeking asylum in Canada. Apparently, families, many with young children are traveling across the country to make this escape, fearing that their legal status in the country may change. Some have been refugees from Yemen and Turkey who fled their original countries in the hope of a better future and now believe they have become targets in their adopted country, the United Sates. A taxi driver who has taken many from Plattsburg Airport, to a point near the Canadian border was quoted as saying, “People just want to live their life and not be scared.”
But America is supposed to be a country to which refugees flee, not a country from which refugees flee. Others who have commented on this have said:
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privilege, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”
– George Washington, 1783
” I never will, by any will or act, vow to the shame of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. ” – Thomas Jefferson, 1803
And the fundamental qualification of an American citizen, an American patriot, after all, is that he or she subscribe to a principle written down in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson for all America: “We take these truths to be self-evident, that all men (women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
But some have suggested as did Professor Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, under George W. Bush, and now a professor at Harvard Law School, that President Trump is in effect playing a game with the judiciary to weaken the courts and set them up to blame for the next international terror attack in the United States: “Trump is setting the scene to blame judges after an attack that has a conceivable connection to immigration” (with respect to the first immigration order).
“If Trump loses in court, he credibly will say to the American people that he tried and failed to create tighter immigration controls. This will deflect blame for the attack and it will also help Trump to enhance his power after the attack. (nevertheless with respect to the first order, the courts did their duty and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the order.)
This outcome was despite Trump’s attack on the courts quoted by Danner, “Just cannot believe that a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system.” But this was the right thing for our independent judiciary to have done as was said long ago:
“The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited constitution.”
– Alexander Hamilton, 1788
“A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning.”
– Alexander Hamilton, 1788
And if someone in the White House should actually harbor thoughts such as those expressed by Professor Goldsmith, then shame on him, her or them, but the courts should do their duty and if after some international terrorist act against the United States – which hopefully will never come – someone in the White House, actually should seek to use such a tragedy to enhance the power of the President beyond its Constitutional limits then some words of Samuel Adams, later know as “Uncle Sam”, expressed long ago are relevant:
“If ever the time should come, when vain & aspiring Men shall posses the highest Seats in government, our Country will stand in Need of its experienced Patriots to prevent its Ruin.”
– Samuel Adams, 1780
John Jay